The Flying Novena: Mother Teresa's Memorare Novena

The flying novena is the emergency novena Mother Teresa of Calcutta prayed whenever a need could not wait nine days: nine Memorares said one after another for the intention, and a tenth at once in thanksgiving, as though the grace were already given. It is called "flying" because the whole novena rises in a few minutes instead of nine days, and "express" or "quick" for the same reason. Below we give the full prayer in English and Latin, the exact order of the ten Memorares, the nine-day Memorare novena for those who have more time, and the story of a prayer far older than the saint who made it famous.

What is the flying novena?

A novena is, properly, nine days of prayer for one intention, after the nine days the Apostles spent with Our Lady in the Upper Room before Pentecost; if you are new to the practice, we explain what a novena is and why the number nine. The flying novena keeps the number but compresses the time. Instead of one prayer a day for nine days, it says nine prayers in a single sitting, and the prayer it uses is the Memorare, the old Marian prayer of confidence that begins Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary.

Mgr Leo Maasburg, a priest who travelled with Mother Teresa for years, describes it in his memoir of her. He calls it her "Quick Novena"; the Missionaries of Charity call it the "flying novena." It consisted of ten Memorares, not nine, because she "always added a tenth Memorare immediately, in thanksgiving for the favor received." She used it, he writes, for the cure of a sick child, before important discussions, when passports went missing, and when the fuel was running short on a journey by night. It is the prayer of a woman with no time and complete trust.

The Memorare: the prayer of the flying novena

This is the only prayer the flying novena needs. Here is the traditional English text:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

And the Latin, Memorare, o piissima Virgo Maria, as the Church indulgenced it:

Memorare, o piissima Virgo Maria, non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad tua currentem praesidia, tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia, esse derelictum. Ego tali animatus confidentia, ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater, curro; ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto. Noli, Mater Verbi, verba mea despicere; sed audi propitia et exaudi. Amen.

Notice the words I fly unto thee, ad te curro: "to thee I run." The name of the flying novena is already inside the prayer. For the meaning of each line and the prayer's long history on its own, see our page on the Memorare.

How to pray the flying novena, step by step

The whole devotion takes five to ten minutes. There is no fixed formula beyond the ten Memorares; the opening and closing below are simply a devout way to frame them.

1. Make the Sign of the Cross and place yourself in the presence of God.
2. Name your intention plainly, once, to Our Lady: the operation, the lost child, the job, the soul in danger.
3. Pray the Memorare nine times in a row, slowly, holding the intention before her each time. Many count them on the beads of a Rosary.
4. Pray a tenth Memorare in thanksgiving, at once, before you have seen any answer, thanking her for the grace you trust she is already obtaining.
5. Close, if you wish, with Thy will be done and the Sign of the Cross.

The tenth Memorare is the heart of the thing. It obeys the counsel of St Paul: "Be nothing solicitous; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions be made known to God" (Philippians 4:6). Thanksgiving offered in advance is an act of faith that Our Lady has heard, and that whatever God sends in answer will be good.

Why ten Memorares, if a novena is nine?

Because the nine are the petition and the tenth is the thanks. The novena proper is the nine; the tenth is the soul turning, before it rises, to say thank you. That is why some call it "the novena of nine Memorares" and others "the ten Memorares": both are right.

The Memorare novena over nine days

Not every need is an emergency, and many prefer to pray the Memorare novena in the ordinary way, over nine days. The form is simple: on each of the nine days, at a fixed hour, name the intention and say the Memorare, adding if you wish a Hail Mary and a Glory Be. Some say it three times a day; some join it to their daily Rosary, after the Hail, Holy Queen. Others combine both forms and pray the flying novena once on each of nine consecutive days when a matter is grave and drawn out.

The Memorare novena in difficult times

The Memorare was born among people in extremity. Fr Claude Bernard, who spread it in seventeenth-century Paris, taught it to prisoners and to men condemned to death. It is therefore exactly the prayer for difficult times: illness, grief, temptation, a family coming apart, a vocation in danger. The nine-day form suits a long trial; the flying form suits a sudden blow. In both, the soul says what the prayer says: before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.

The emergency novena for financial help

Many pray the emergency novena for money troubles: a debt that cannot be paid, a lost job, rent that is due. It is right to bring these to Our Lady, who knew poverty at Bethlehem and exile in Egypt. Name the need exactly, pray the ten Memorares, and add a word to St Joseph, provider of the Holy Family, as in our novena to St Joseph. Ask first for what you need, then for the grace to use it well.

The Memorare novena chaplet

A Memorare chaplet is simply the flying novena counted on beads. Any Rosary will do: say the nine Memorares on nine of the small beads of a decade, and the tenth, in thanksgiving, on the tenth. There is no separately approved chaplet with its own indulgence; the beads are only a help to counting so that the mind stays on the prayer.

Flying novenas to Our Lord and the saints

The word "flying" has spread beyond the Memorare, and people now search for flying novenas to other intercessors. They are related but distinct devotions.

The flying novena to the Infant of Prague

The other devotion known as a "flying" novena is the nine-hour novena to the Infant Jesus of Prague, in which a short prayer is said every hour, on the hour, for nine hours on the same day; it is also called the "storm novena", for the petitions storm heaven. The full prayers and the hours are in our Infant of Prague novena.

The flying novena to St Joseph

A flying novena to St Joseph follows Mother Teresa's pattern, but with the Memorare to St Joseph, a later and devout imitation of the Marian prayer, here in the form used by the Oblates of St Joseph:

Remember, O most pure spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, my great protector, Saint Joseph, that no one ever had recourse to your protection, or implored your aid without obtaining relief. Confiding therefore in your goodness, I come before you. Do not turn down my petitions, foster father of the Redeemer, but graciously receive them. Amen.

It is said nine times for the intention and a tenth in thanksgiving. For the longer devotions to him, see the prayer to St Joseph.

The novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help with the Memorare

Many who keep the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help add the Memorare at its close, and in urgent need the ten Memorares may be said before her icon. The full Redemptorist novena, with its opening prayer and closing oration, is given in our novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

The Memorare novena en español

Spanish-speaking Catholics pray the same novena with el Acordaos, also printed as Acuérdate. Wordings vary from one prayer-book to another; this is the text the bishops of the United States print:

Acuérdate, ¡oh piadosísima Virgen María! que jamás se ha oído decir que ninguno de los que han acudido a tu protección, implorando tu auxilio, haya sido abandonado. Animado por esta confianza, a Ti acudo, oh Madre, Virgen de las vírgenes, y gimiendo bajo el peso de mis pecados me atrevo a comparecer ante Ti. Oh Madre del Verbo Encarnado, Dios, no deseches mis súplicas, antes bien, escúchalas y acógelas benignamente. Amén.

The order is the same: nine Memorares for the intention, a tenth in thanksgiving.

Flying novena miracles and testimonials

The flying novena owes its fame to stories, and the best attested come from those who lived beside Mother Teresa. She herself recalled, in words her postulator has published, that during the Holy Year of 1984, when rain threatened an open-air Mass with the Pope, she told her sisters: "Let us say a flying novena of nine Memorares to Our Lady in thanksgiving for beautiful weather." By the ninth, she said, all the umbrellas were closed. Mgr Maasburg records the sick children, the lost passports, the fuel running short.

Such accounts encourage confidence; they are not guarantees. The Memorare promises that no one who flies to Our Lady is left unaided, not that every request will be granted in the form we name. Treating the ten Memorares as a formula that compels God would turn a prayer into superstition, which the Church has always condemned. The novena "works" because the Mother of God never fails to help, and sometimes her help is the grace to accept a different answer.

A flying novena PDF or printable

The whole flying novena is on this page: the Memorare in English, Latin and Spanish, and the order of the ten prayers. It prints as it is, and since the Memorare is short, most people know it by heart after a few days. Better still, keep it on your phone in Join early access here., which carries the Memorare and the great novenas in Latin and English, reminds you each day, and works offline.

The story of the Memorare: St Bernard and Fr Claude Bernard

The Memorare is far older than the flying novena. It is traditionally attributed to St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), the Cistercian abbot and Doctor of the Church whom Butler's Lives of the Saints shows as the great preacher of Our Lady in the twelfth century. Born at Fontaines near Dijon, he entered Cîteaux with four of his brothers and an uncle, founded Clairvaux, and filled the Church with his sermons on the Mother of God. The prayer is not found among his writings, but it breathes his spirit. In his second homily on the Gospel Missus est, which the Breviary reads at Matins on the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, he gives the counsel the Memorare puts into practice: In dangers, in difficulties, in doubts, think of Mary, call upon Mary.

The form we pray was spread in the seventeenth century by Fr Claude Bernard (1588–1641), the "poor priest" of Paris, who taught it to prisoners and to the condemned and had it printed by the thousands. The likeness of the two names helped the attribution to St Bernard. Pope Pius IX indulgenced the prayer in 1846, and the Raccolta (no. 339) grants an indulgence of three years for each recitation, and a plenary indulgence once a month, on the usual conditions, to those who say it daily. For what these grants mean, see our explanation of indulgences.

Beside it, Our Lady's own gesture at Cana stands behind every Memorare: "And the mother of Jesus saith to him: They have no wine" (St John 2:3). She asked, without fuss, for an urgent need, and her Son answered.

Through the eyes of tradition

Mother Teresa of Calcutta died on 5 September 1997, was beatified on 19 October 2003 and canonised by Pope Francis on 4 September 2016; she has no feast in the 1962 calendar, and we have a separate novena to St Teresa of Calcutta for those who wish to ask her intercession. The flying novena itself is a twentieth-century custom of the Missionaries of Charity. What it uses, however, is wholly traditional: the Memorare, indulgenced in 1846 and carried in countless pre-conciliar prayer-books.

A Catholic attached to the old calendar loses nothing by praying it, and can root it in the feasts the 1962 liturgical calendar keeps: St Bernard on 20 August, whose spirit the Memorare carries; the Immaculate Heart of Mary on 22 August, to which our novena to the Immaculate Heart leads; and the Holy Name of Mary on 12 September, when the Breviary sets St Bernard's "call upon Mary" before us. For a long Marian novena in the same spirit of petition and thanksgiving, there is the 54-day Rosary novena; for a modern devotion of abandonment, the Surrender Novena.

Our Lord taught "that we ought always to pray, and not to faint" (St Luke 18:1). The flying novena is that teaching in miniature: ask quickly, ask again, ask nine times, and give thanks before the answer comes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a flying novena?

A novena compressed into one sitting: instead of nine days of prayer, nine prayers said one after another for an urgent intention. Mother Teresa's form uses the Memorare and adds a tenth in thanksgiving.

How do you pray the flying novena?

Name your intention to Our Lady, say the Memorare nine times, then once more in thanksgiving. It takes a few minutes and may be said anywhere: in a chapel, in a hospital corridor, in the car.

How do you pray the Memorare novena?

Either all at once, as the flying novena, or over nine days, saying the Memorare at a fixed hour each day for the same intention. Choose by the urgency of the need.

Is the emergency novena the same as the flying novena?

Yes. "Emergency novena," "express novena," "quick novena" and "flying novena" are names for the same ten Memorares.

Can I pray the flying novena for someone else?

Certainly. Mother Teresa prayed it constantly for others, beginning with the cure of a sick child. Name the person to Our Lady at the start, as you would any intention.

Can the flying novena be prayed more than once?

Yes. Many pray it again whenever the need returns, or once a day for nine days when a trial is long. There is no rule limiting how often one may fly to Our Lady.

Can I pray the flying novena in Latin?

Yes. The Latin Memorare, o piissima Virgo Maria is the original text of the prayer, and it may be said in Latin, in English or in any language one prays in, alone or alternating with others.

The Iter Fidei app sets the Memorare and the great novenas before you day by day, in Latin and English, with a reminder and without a connection. Join early access here.

Sources. Scripture in the Douay-Rheims version (St John 2:3; St Luke 18:1; Philippians 4:6); the Memorare (Memorare, o piissima Virgo Maria), indulgenced by Pope Pius IX (S. C. Ind., 11 December 1846) and given in The Raccolta, no. 339; St Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilia II super Missus est; Butler's Lives of the Saints, St Bernard (20 August); Breviarium Romanum (1962), feast of the Holy Name of Mary (12 September), Matins lesson from St Bernard; the canonisation of St Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis (4 September 2016).