Prayed from Good Friday through Divine Mercy Sunday

This novena comes directly from a private revelation Jesus gave to Saint Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun, in the 1930s. According to her diary, Jesus asked that the novena begin on Good Friday and conclude on Divine Mercy Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, and he gave Faustina a different group of souls to pray for on each of the nine days, from sinners and the doubtful to priests and the souls in purgatory. Each day combines the Divine Mercy Chaplet with a specific intention, and the whole devotion has grown enormously since Pope Saint John Paul II canonized Faustina and established Divine Mercy Sunday for the universal Church. You can find the full nine day text through EWTN’s overview of the most popular novenas, which lays out the origin and structure clearly.

Often prayed November nineteenth through twenty seventh

In 1830, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Catherine Labouré, a young novice in Paris, and asked that a medal be struck showing her standing on a globe with rays of grace pouring from her hands, along with the words O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Countless healings and conversions were attributed to the medal soon after, earning it the name miraculous. Catholics often pray this novena in the days leading up to her feast on November twenty seventh, or simply whenever they are in need of Mary’s intercession. You can read the complete prayers through EWTN’s Miraculous Medal Novena, provided from the original text used at the Miraculous Medal Shrine.

Prayed in the nine days before the Feast of the Sacred Heart

This devotion grew out of a series of visions given to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the seventeenth century, in which Christ revealed his heart as a symbol of his boundless love and asked for greater trust and reparation from the faithful. The Feast of the Sacred Heart falls on the Friday following the octave of Corpus Christi, and many parishes and families pray this novena in the nine days leading up to it, entrusting their needs to the mercy and tenderness of Christ’s own heart. Padre Pio was known to pray a Sacred Heart novena every single day of his life, a small detail that says a great deal about how central this devotion has been to Catholic spirituality for generations.

For desperate situations and hopeless causes

Jude Thaddeus was one of the twelve Apostles, a relative of Jesus, who preached the Gospel with courage in some of the most difficult circumstances of the early Church. Because his name so closely resembled that of Judas Iscariot, devotion to him was largely overlooked for centuries, and it is often said that this very obscurity is part of why he became known as the patron of hopeless and impossible causes, the saint people turn to when nothing else seems to be working. His feast falls on October twenty eighth, and the modern wave of public devotion to him in the United States traces back to 1929, spread largely through the Claretian Missionaries. You can find the traditional prayer through the National Shrine of St. Jude, which also tells his story in full.

Prayed between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost

This is the original novena, the one that gave the whole tradition its shape. In the nine days between Christ’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostles and Mary remained together in prayer, waiting on a promise they did not yet fully understand. Catholics still pray this novena every year in the same nine day window, asking the Holy Spirit to renew in them the same gifts poured out on the early Church, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. It is a quiet, often overlooked novena, but it remains, in a real sense, the mother of all the others.

Traditionally prayed on the nine Tuesdays before June thirteenth

Anthony of Padua was a Franciscan friar and gifted preacher known for his deep knowledge of Scripture and his tender devotion to the child Jesus. He is popularly invoked for the recovery of lost items and lost causes of all kinds, a devotion that grew out of a legend involving a borrowed book of psalms he prayed would be returned to him. His novena is traditionally prayed on the nine Tuesdays leading up to his feast on June thirteenth, a custom tied to the fact that his burial in 1231 happened to fall on a Tuesday, as Franciscan Media explains in its history of novena traditions. Many families also pray it any time something precious, a set of keys, a job, a sense of direction, feels lost.

Twenty seven days of petition followed by twenty seven days of thanksgiving

This unusual and much loved novena traces back to nineteenth century Naples, where a young girl suffering from what doctors considered an incurable illness turned to the Blessed Mother for help. According to the account, Mary appeared and told the girl she would be healed if she prayed three rosaries for twenty seven consecutive days, and prayed three more each day for another twenty seven days in thanksgiving, whether or not the request had yet been granted. The girl recovered, and the devotion spread widely from there. Catholics still pray it today for particularly weighty or long standing intentions, trusting that the second half of the novena, prayed purely in gratitude, is part of what makes it so powerful. Catholic World Report’s overview of popular novenas describes its origin in more detail.