MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Prayer — Novenas

All Prayers

Novena to St. Alphonsus Liguori

by St. Alphonsus Liguori (the graces he taught men to ask for)

Nine invocations for the nine days, each asking the Doctor of prayer for one grace necessary for salvation — faith, hope, love, resignation, sorrow, charity, purity, devotion, and above all final perseverance and the grace always to pray for it.

The Prayer
English · Original
PRAYERS TO OBTAIN THE GRACES NECESSARY FOR SALVATION
One for each of the nine days, or all nine each day.

1. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me a lively faith in all the truths that the holy Catholic Church teaches, together with light to know the vanity of all earthly things and the hideousness of my sins. Glory be to the Father, etc.

2. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me the firm hope of receiving from God, through the merits of Jesus Christ and the intercession of Mary and your prayers, the pardon of my sins, final perseverance, and paradise. Glory be, etc.

3. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me an ardent love of God that will detach me from all created things and from myself, to love Him alone and consume myself for His glory. Glory be, etc.

4. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me perfect resignation to the holy will of God, that I may accept in peace sufferings, persecutions, contempt, loss of goods and reputation, the loss of my relations, and finally death itself. Glory be, etc.

5. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me a heartfelt sorrow for my sins, that I may never cease to weep over the displeasure I have given my God. Glory be, etc.

6. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me a practical love towards my neighbour that will make me do good even to those who have offended me. Glory be, etc.

7. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me the holy virtue of purity, and the help required to resist impure temptations, by invoking the holy names of Jesus and Mary. Glory be, etc.

8. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me a tender devotion to the passion of Jesus Christ, to the Most Blessed Sacrament, and to my dear Mother Mary. Glory be, etc.

9. O most zealous doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus, obtain for me above all the grace of final perseverance, and the grace always to pray for it, especially in the time of temptation and in the hour of my death. Glory be, etc.

(Here name the intention of the novena.)
When the Prayer is Said

23–31 July before his feast on 1 August; for perseverance; by those who hear or make missions; among the Redemptorists.

History & Background

Alphonsus Liguori gave up a brilliant legal career in Naples after losing a case he had prepared perfectly, founded the Redemptorists to preach to the abandoned poor of the countryside, wrote more than a hundred books, and was made a Doctor of the Church in 1871 for his moral theology. But the one thing he said over and over, in every book and every mission, was that he who prays is saved and he who does not pray is damned — and that the grace to ask for final perseverance must itself be asked for. That is why this novena ends where it does.

Each of the nine days is one invocation and a Glory be, which is the whole of it: he was not a man for long formulas. His own prayers — the night prayer and the prayer before the Blessed Sacrament — are on this site under the prayers of the saints.

His feast is 1 August, the day he died in 1787 at the age of ninety; before the calendar of 1969 it was kept on 2 August, because 1 August belonged to St. Peter's Chains. The novena is made in the nine days before it. (The 1897 manual heads this novena with 4 November, which is the date of the novena printed beside it, to St. Charles Borromeo.)

A novena is nine consecutive days (or nine consecutive weeks of one fixed day) of the same prayer for the same intention; a day missed breaks it, and it is begun again. Confession and Communion during the nine days, or on the last, were the ordinary conditions for the plenary indulgence.

Related Saints
St. Alphonsus Liguori
September 27, 1696, Marianella – August 1, 1787, Nocera de' Pagani
All Prayers