The Surrender Novena

Every day of the novena ends in the same prayer, said ten times. It is the whole novena in one line:

1. Choose what you are handing over. One situation, named plainly: this diagnosis, this child, this debt, this decision.
2. Begin with the Sign of the Cross and a moment of quiet.
3. Read the meditation for the day, slowly. Day 1 on the first day, Day 2 on the second, and so on.
4. Say the prayer ten times: “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!” Some people count on the ten beads of a rosary decade.
5. Close with a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, or simply the Sign of the Cross.
6. Through the day, when the worry comes back, say the line once more. That is where the novena is actually prayed.

It takes about five minutes. It lasts nine days, like every novena, after the nine days the disciples and Mary spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost. Miss a day and simply continue; you do not have to start again.

The meditation, in summary: Jesus asks why we tie ourselves in knots with worry, and asks us to leave the care of our affairs to him. Surrender, he says, does not mean fretting, going over the problem again and again, or anxiously hunting for a way out while asking him for help. It means turning the eyes of the soul away from the trouble and toward him, and letting him act.

Scripture says it the same way: “casting all your worries on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). And Jesus himself: “Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient” (Matthew 6:34).

The meditation, in summary: surrender is not being upset, agitated or losing hope, and it is not a worried prayer that asks Jesus to follow our plan. It is the trust of a small child who rests in its mother’s arms and lets her see to everything. To surrender is to say, calmly and completely, “you take care of it.”

The psalmist prays it: “Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2). And Jesus makes it a condition: “unless you turn and become as little children, you will in no way enter into the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

The meditation, in summary: we pray for help and then tell God exactly what the help must look like, like a patient instructing the doctor on the treatment. Jesus asks us to pray as he taught, for the Father’s name, kingdom and will, and to leave the method to him. He knows what we need in this life and the next better than we do.

“Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father knows what things you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

The meditation, in summary: sometimes, after we pray, the situation seems to get worse, the illness deepens, the trouble grows. Jesus asks us not to panic then, but to close our eyes and keep trusting, and to say again, “you take care of it.” He compares himself to a doctor who knows what he is doing even when the treatment hurts.

The disciples woke him in the storm: “Teacher, don’t you care that we are dying?” He calmed the sea and asked them, “Why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith?” (Mark 4:38-40).

The meditation, in summary: Jesus promises to carry us like a sleeping child across a river we could not cross alone. What wears us out, he says, is less the trouble itself than our own reasoning about it: the endless thinking, planning and rehearsing. Stop, and let yourself be carried.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

The meditation, in summary: we want to judge everything, direct everything and see to everything ourselves, and the result is agitation. The novena names that agitation as something the enemy of souls uses to draw us away from trust and into our own weakness. The answer is not more effort but less: to rest in God and rely on him alone.

“In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

The meditation, in summary: God’s great works in a life come through full surrender, not through our cleverness. The saints did not do what they did by working it all out; they abandoned themselves to God and let him work through them.

“Commit your way to the LORD. Trust also in him, and he will do this” (Psalm 37:5).

The meditation, in summary: close your eyes and let yourself be carried on the current of grace. Stop thinking about the present and the future as if they depended on you; leave both with him, the way you would lie down to sleep. He will take care of what you have given him.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

The meditation, in summary: the last day promises peace to the one who surrenders, and says that a single act of real surrender is worth more than a great many anxious prayers. Read that as it is meant: not that prayer does not matter, but that the prayer God wants most is the heart handed over, not the demand repeated. Jesus himself ended his life on earth with it.

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46).

Dolindo Ruotolo was born in Naples on October 6, 1882, and ordained a priest on June 24, 1905. His life as a priest was marked by suffering and by conflict with Church authority. He was suspended from ministry twice, for years at a time, and restored. His ten-thousand-page commentary on Scripture, La Sacra Scrittura, was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books on November 20, 1940. Through all of it he stayed obedient to the Church. He called himself “Mary’s little old man.” For the last ten years of his life he was paralysed. He died in Naples on November 19, 1970, and is buried in the parish of San Giuseppe dei Vecchi e Immacolata di Lourdes, where pilgrims still come to pray.

In May 2021 the Archbishop of Naples, Domenico Battaglia, issued a decree naming the archdiocese and that parish as the parties who will promote his cause for beatification, and the decree calls him a Servant of God. That is the first step. The Church has not beatified him, so he is not called Blessed or Saint, though anyone may pray privately for his cause.

You will often read that Padre Pio admired him. The story is told that when pilgrims from Naples came to San Giovanni Rotondo, Padre Pio asked why they had come so far when they had Don Dolindo at home. The promoters of his cause also quote Padre Pio’s esteem for his writing. We give these as what is told and reported, not as documented history. Devotion to Our Lady ran through his life, and many who pray the novena pray it alongside the Rosary; the mysteries of the Rosary give a scene from the Gospel for each decade.

It does not need to be. The Surrender Novena is a private devotion, and Catholics are free to pray any private prayer that is consistent with the faith. Every line of it is. Its single prayer is addressed to Jesus, and what it asks for, trust in God’s providence, is exactly what the Catechism teaches: “Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children’s smallest needs” (CCC 305). And again: “Abandonment to the providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow” (CCC 2547).

What the Church has not ruled on is the claim that Jesus dictated the meditations to Fr. Dolindo. That would be a private revelation, and the Catechism is clear about those: some have been recognised by the Church, but “they do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith” (CCC 67). No Catholic is required to believe this one came from Jesus. You can pray the novena with full freedom either way, because its content stands on the Gospel, not on the claim.

His diocese has opened the way to his cause, which means the Church is willing to look closely at his life. It is not a judgment on the novena, and it does not make him a saint.

You will see it called “the most powerful novena” and “a novena that never fails.” Neither is Catholic teaching, and the second is simply untrue. No prayer is a mechanism that obliges God to deliver a result on the ninth day. Nor is there any rule that you must publish the novena, pass it on to a number of people, or pray it without a break or lose its effect. Those are chain-letter habits that have attached themselves to many novenas, and you can ignore them.

What people actually mean when they call it powerful is that it changes the one praying it. Most prayers in a crisis are requests for a particular outcome. This one asks for the grace to let go of the outcome, and that is the change people notice first: they sleep, they stop rehearsing, they can act without panic. The Catechism describes the same Christian attitude toward the future: “putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future” (CCC 2115). Handing something over to God is not the same as neglecting it. The same paragraph warns that improvidence can be a lack of responsibility. Go to the doctor, pay the bill, have the hard conversation. Just stop carrying the result alone.

Many people find this novena when anxiety has become a daily weight, and its words fit: stop rehearsing, let him carry you. For ordinary worry it can be a real help. But anxiety that has become constant, keeps you from sleeping or working, or comes with panic, is something to bring to a doctor as well as to God. The Church has never asked anyone to choose between prayer and treatment. Praying the novena while you get help is surrender too.

If you are thinking about harming yourself, or feel you cannot stay safe, please reach out now: