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A novena is a traditional Catholic prayer that continues for nine days and is intended to ask for a particular favor or blessing—or to give thanks for blessings received.

The novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help is prayed weekly around the world. To make the novena, pray the three prayers below (each followed by three Hail Marys) for nine consecutive days.

June 27 is Mary’s feast day under the title Our Mother of Perpetual Help, and every year we begin a special novena to her around that time. Of course, Mary is always listening, so the novena can be prayed at any time of year.

First novena prayer

Behold at your feet, O Mother of Perpetual Help, a wretched sinner who has recourse to you and confides in you. O Mother of Mercy, have pity on me. I hear you called by all the refuge and the hope of sinners. Be then my refuge and my hope. Assist me, for the love of Jesus Christ. Stretch forth your hand to a miserable fallen creature who recommends himself to you and who devotes himself to your service forever.

I bless and thank Almighty God, Who in His mercy has given me this confidence in you, which I hold to be a pledge of my eternal salvation. It is true, dearest Mother, that in the past I have miserably fallen into sin because I had not recourse to you. I know that with your help I shall conquer. I know too that you will assist me if I recommend myself to you, but I fear, dear Mother, that in time of danger I may neglect to call on you and thus lose my soul.

This grace, then, I ask of you, and this I beg with all the fervor of my soul, that in all the attacks of hell I may ever have recourse to you. O Mary, help me! O Mother of Perpetual Help, never suffer me to lose my God. Amen.

Pray the Hail Mary three times.

Second novena prayer

O Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke your most powerful name, which is the safeguard of the living and the salvation of the dying. O purest Mary! O sweetest Mary! Let your name henceforth be ever on my lips. Delay not, O Blessed Lady, to help me whenever I call on you, for in all my temptations, in all my needs, I shall never cease to call on you, ever repeating your sacred name, Mary! Mary!

O what consolation, what sweetness, what confidence, what emotion fills my soul when I utter your sacred name or even only think of you. I thank the Lord for having given you, for my good, so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name. But I will not be content with merely uttering your name. Let my love for you prompt me ever to hail you, Mother of Perpetual Help.

Pray the Hail Mary three times.

Third novena prayer

O Mother of Perpetual Help, you are the dispenser of all the gifts which God grants to us miserable sinners, and for this end He has made you so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful in order that you may help us in our misery.

You are the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to you. Come to my aid, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to you. In your hands I place my eternal salvation and to you I entrust my soul. Count me among your most devoted servants; take me under your protection, and it is enough for me.

For if you protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing: not from my sins because you will obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils because you are more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my Judge, because by one prayer from you, He will be appeased.

But one thing I fear—that in the hour of temptation I may through negligence fail to have recourse to you and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, therefore, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace to have recourse to you, O Mother of Perpetual Help.

Pray the Hail Mary three times.