'Never has it been heard that anyone ever invoked thy protection, or besought aid of thee, without being consoled' — St. Bernard's Memorare turned toward the carpenter, and indulgenced by Pius IX in 1863.
Remember, most pure spouse of Mary ever Virgin, my loving protector, St. Joseph, that never has it been heard that anyone ever invoked thy protection, or besought aid of thee, without being consoled. In this confidence I come before thee, I fervently recommend myself to thee. Despise not my prayer, foster-father of our Redeemer, but do thou in thy pity receive it. Amen.
Memorare, o purissime Sponse Virginis Mariae, o dulcis Protector mi, sancte Ioseph, non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia, esse derelictum. Ego tali animatus confidentia ad te venio, tibique fervide me commendo. Noli, quaeso, o Pater putative Redemptoris, verba mea despicere, sed audi propitius. Amen.
In any urgent need; on Wednesdays; on 19 March and 1 May; for a happy death.
The Memorare to our Lady is the most confident prayer in the Catholic repertoire: it does not ask so much as remind. Some time before the middle of the nineteenth century an Italian hand turned the same sentence toward St. Joseph, and the result has the same nerve — it tells him that his record is unbroken and then asks him not to break it.
Pius IX attached an indulgence of three hundred days to it by a brief of 26 June 1863, in the years when devotion to St. Joseph was rising fast; seven years later the same pope would declare him Patron of the Universal Church. The English is the Raccolta's of 1910.
Three hundred days, once a day — Pius IX, brief of 26 June 1863 (Raccolta, 1910, no. 303).
