Novena to St Gabriel the Archangel: Prayers & 9 Days

The novena to St Gabriel the Archangel is nine days of prayer to the angel who brought the Blessed Virgin the news of the Incarnation, made for one settled intention and best kept from 15 to 23 March, the nine days before his feast. Each day we say the traditional St Gabriel prayer, the Collect of his Mass and the Angelus, and we read one passage of the Scripture in which Gabriel speaks. Below are the full prayers, the nine days and the old feast of 24 March.

The daily prayers of the novena

A novena repeats the same prayers on each of its nine days; that steady return is the whole form, as we explain in what a novena is. Begin each day with the Sign of the Cross, name your intention, and pray the three prayers below in order.

1. The St Gabriel prayer: "O blessed Archangel Gabriel"

This is the best-known prayer to St Gabriel the Archangel in the English prayer-books. It asks exactly what his office suggests: that the angel who announced the Incarnation should help us receive its fruits, the very petition of the Postcommunion of his Mass, which asks that "as by the message of Gabriel we have known Thine Incarnation, so by his help we may obtain the benefits of the same."

O blessed Archangel Gabriel, we beseech thee, do thou intercede for us at the throne of divine mercy in our present necessities (here name your intention), that as thou didst announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation, so through thy prayers and patronage in heaven we may obtain the benefits of the same, and sing the praise of God forever in the land of the living. Amen.

2. The Collect of the feast of St Gabriel

This is the Church's own prayer to God on Gabriel's day, the Collect of the Mass of 24 March in the Missale Romanum of 1962:

O God, who from among all the Angels didst choose the Archangel Gabriel to announce the mystery of Thy Incarnation: mercifully grant that we who keep his feast on earth may feel the benefit of his patronage in heaven. Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

3. The Angelus

The Angelus is Gabriel's own prayer in the sense that it opens with his message and repeats his greeting three times. To pray it is to stand at Nazareth with him every day of the novena.

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.
Hail Mary…

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
Hail Mary…

V. And the Word was made Flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary…

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Close with an Our Father and a Glory Be for your intention, and the invocation St Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

The nine days of the St Gabriel novena

We do not add nine new prayers of our own making. Instead each day sets before us one of the passages where Scripture names Gabriel, in the Douay-Rheims, with a grace to ask. Read it slowly, then pray the daily prayers.

Day 1 (15 March): for understanding. "And I heard the voice of a man between Ulai: and he called, and said: Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision" (Daniel 8:16). Gabriel first appears as the angel sent to give understanding. Ask for light on the matter you bring to him, and for a mind that sees it as God sees it.

Day 2 (16 March): for perseverance in prayer. "The man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly touched me at the time of the evening sacrifice" (Daniel 9:21). Daniel was praying when the answer came. Ask for the grace to keep praying, and not to stop on the third or fourth day.

Day 3 (17 March): for holy desires. "From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am come to shew it to thee, because thou art a man of desires" (Daniel 9:23). God answered Daniel at the very start of his prayer. Ask that your own desires be made worthy of being heard.

Day 4 (18 March): for reverence at the altar. "And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense" (Luke 1:11). Gabriel came to Zachary in the Temple, during the offering. Ask for devotion at Holy Mass, where the angels still stand about the altar.

Day 5 (19 March): for those who wait for a child. "Fear not, Zachary, for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John" (Luke 1:13). Gabriel brought word of a child to a couple long childless. Pray for husbands and wives who long for children, and for every mother who is expecting.

Day 6 (20 March): for faith against doubt. "I am Gabriel, who stand before God: and am sent to speak to thee, and to bring thee these good tidings" (Luke 1:19). Zachary doubted and was struck dumb until the promise came true. Ask for a faith that takes God at His word.

Day 7 (21 March): for devotion to Our Lady. "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1:28). These are the first words of the Hail Mary, and they came from Gabriel's mouth. Ask for a true love of the Mother of God and the grace to say her prayer well.

Day 8 (22 March): for confidence in hard causes. "Because no word shall be impossible with God" (Luke 1:37). Gabriel gave Our Lady the sign of Elizabeth's conception, and with it this sentence for every soul that has run out of human means. Ask for confidence without presumption.

Day 9 (23 March): for conformity to God's will. "And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her" (Luke 1:38). The message was given and Our Lady accepted it; Gabriel's work was done. Ask for the grace to say her fiat to whatever God answers.

Other prayers to the Archangel Gabriel

The St Gabriel prayer and the Collect above are the heart of the devotion, and they can be said at any time of year, not only during the novena. A few more needs bring people to pray to Archangel Gabriel, and each finds its answer in the same texts.

Prayer to St Gabriel for protection

Gabriel is not the warrior among the archangels; that office belongs to St Michael. Yet his feast-day Secret asks that he who is honoured by us on earth "may be our advocate with Thee in heaven," and the Introit of his Mass calls on all the angels of the Lord, "you that are mighty in strength, and execute his word" (Psalm 102:20). A St Gabriel prayer for protection is therefore the daily prayer above with that intention named, joined, if the danger is from the enemy of souls, to the novena to St Michael the Archangel.

Archangel Gabriel prayer for conception and pregnancy

Gabriel announced two conceptions: that of St John the Baptist to the aged Zachary, and that of Our Lord to the Virgin. It is fitting, then, that couples hoping for a child pray to him, and that expectant mothers ask his help. The Day 5 meditation was written for them; many join it to the novena for fertility to conceive a baby.

Archangel Gabriel prayer for healing

The angel of healing in Scripture is St Raphael, whose name means "the medicine of God" and who healed the blind Tobias. Those who want an Archangel Gabriel prayer for healing may of course pray the daily prayer with that intention, but the Church's own pattern points the sick to the novena to St Raphael.

Prayer to Archangel Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

Many search for one prayer to the three archangels together. The tradition gives each his own Collect and his own feast, and joins the three in the Chaplet of St Michael, which closes with an Our Father to St Michael, one to St Gabriel, one to St Raphael and one to our Guardian Angel. Their different offices are set out in the archangels: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

The Archangel Gabriel prayer in Latin

For those who pray in the Church's own tongue, here is the Collect of 24 March as it stands in the Missal:

Deus, qui inter ceteros Angelos, ad annuntiandum incarnationis tuae mysterium, Gabrielem Archangelum elegisti: concede propitius; ut, qui festum ejus celebramus in terris, ipsius patrocinium sentiamus in caelis. Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

A word of care belongs here, once. Prayers to Gabriel "for abundance," "for love" or for "communication" in the sense of channelling messages from the angel, along with the so-called sigils, belong to the occult, not to the Church. The holy angels are not summoned and do not answer charms; they serve God, and we ask their prayers through Christ our Lord.

When and how to pray the novena to St Gabriel

The dates. In the traditional Roman calendar St Gabriel has his own feast on 24 March, the eve of the Annunciation, so the novena runs from 15 to 23 March and the feast itself crowns it. In the 1962 Missal the feast is of the third class. Because it always falls in Lent, under the rubrics of 1960 the Lenten day takes precedence and St Gabriel is kept as a commemoration, his Collect said after that of the day (when 24 March falls in Holy Week, even the commemoration is omitted); you can see each year's arrangement in the 1962 liturgical calendar. The day after, 25 March, is the Annunciation, and many continue straight into it, or begin the Annunciation novena for the same intention.

The St Gabriel novena may also be prayed at any time of real need: before an important message must be given or received, when a family waits on news, or when a soul must make a decision and needs God's light.

How to pray it. Fix one intention and keep to it for nine days. Pray at the same hour if you can, and noon, the hour of the Angelus bell, is a natural one. Add the Mass of the day or a Communion where possible. If a day is missed, do not start over in scruple; continue and finish. And pray as Our Lady answered Gabriel: be it done to me according to thy word.

Who St Gabriel the Archangel is

Gabriel is one of the three angels named in Holy Scripture, with Michael and Raphael, and his name is usually rendered "strength of God." He is a pure spirit, created by God, of the choir of archangels, the eighth of the nine choirs of angels. Scripture names him four times. In the book of Daniel he explains the vision of the ram and the he-goat and then gives the prophecy of the seventy weeks, the reckoning of the time until the Messiah. In St Luke he stands at the altar of incense to promise Zachary a son, St John the Baptist, and six months later he is "sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph" (Luke 1:26-27).

Butler's Lives of the Saints records that by a decree of the Congregation of Sacred Rites of 26 October 1921, issued at the command of Pope Benedict XV, the feast of St Gabriel was to be kept on 24 March throughout the Western Church. Butler adds that the devotion was no novelty: an ancient chapel beside the Appian Way kept a fresco giving the archangel, named beneath, the place of principal patron, and early Christian art in East and West shows that his connection with the Incarnation was remembered long before the thirteenth century.

Butler calls him "the appropriate patron-saint of postal, telegraph and telephone workers." In 1951 Pope Pius XII extended this patronage, naming St Gabriel the heavenly patron of telecommunications and of all who work in them. The fuller story of the angel, his symbols and his place in art is told in St Gabriel the Archangel.

He must not be confused with the young Passionist St Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, Francis Possenti (1838-1862), patron of youth and students, whose feast falls on 27 February (28 February in leap years). The two share a name and nothing else; if your search was for him, there is a separate novena to St Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Through the eyes of tradition

Most pages today give St Gabriel's feast as 29 September. That date comes from the reformed General Roman Calendar promulgated in 1969, which suppressed the separate feasts of St Gabriel (24 March) and St Raphael (24 October) and merged both into the feast of St Michael as "Sts Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels." It is not Gabriel's traditional day, and it is absent from the 1962 calendar in that form: there, 29 September is the Dedication of St Michael the Archangel, of the first class, and Gabriel is honoured on his own.

The older arrangement teaches something the merger loses. Placed on the eve of 25 March, Gabriel's feast belongs to the mystery he served: first the messenger, then the message. For the traditional equivalents of the three archangels' days, keep St Gabriel on 24 March, St Raphael on 24 October, and St Michael on 29 September, and time this novena to the March feast.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you pray to Archangel Gabriel?

We pray to him as to any saint: not adoring him, which belongs to God alone, but asking his prayers. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, explaining the First Commandment, teaches that the Angels and Saints may be honoured and invoked, because they pray for us and obtain for us from God what we need. So we speak to Gabriel simply, ask him to present our need to God, and end, as the Church's prayers always do, "through Christ our Lord."

When should I start the novena to St Gabriel the Archangel?

Start on 15 March to finish on 23 March, the eve of his traditional feast. If you follow the modern calendar's date, the novena would run 20 to 28 September; we keep the March dates, which bind the novena to the Annunciation.

What is St Gabriel the Archangel the patron saint of?

He is the patron of messengers and of postal, telegraph and telephone workers, as Butler records, and since 1951 the patron of telecommunications, by the act of Pope Pius XII.

Is St Gabriel the Archangel the same as St Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows?

No. The archangel is an angel, never a man, named in Daniel and St Luke. St Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows was an Italian Passionist student who died in 1862 and was canonized in 1920. Their feasts, patronages and novenas are distinct.

Is the Archangel Gabriel a saint?

Yes. The Church gives the title "saint" to the holy angels who are in glory, which is why we say St Gabriel, St Michael and St Raphael. They are not canonized like human saints; they are saints because they stood firm when the rebel angels fell, and they now "stand before God" (Luke 1:19).

Is there a printable PDF of the novena to St Gabriel the Archangel?

We do not offer a PDF. The full novena is on this page: the three daily prayers and the nine days of Scripture, and the page prints as it is if you want paper beside you. Better still, Join early access here. gives you each day's text in order, reminds you to pray, works offline, and carries the prayers in Latin and English.

Can I pray the novena to St Gabriel for someone else?

Yes, and it is a work of charity to do so. Name that person in the daily St Gabriel prayer where it says (here name your intention); the novena is no less complete for being offered on another's behalf.

The Iter Fidei app carries the novenas, the Angelus and the prayers to the holy archangels in Latin and English, with a reminder for each of the nine days. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Daniel 8:16, 9:21-23; Luke 1:11-38; Psalm 102:20); Missale Romanum 1962, Mass of St Gabriel the Archangel, 24 March (Introit, Collect, Secret, Postcommunion); the Angelus, as given in the traditional prayer-books; the prayer O blessed Archangel Gabriel, from the traditional prayer-books; Butler's Lives of the Saints, St Gabriel the Archangel (24 March); decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 26 October 1921, under Pope Benedict XV (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 13, 1921); apostolic letter of Pope Pius XII naming St Gabriel patron of telecommunications (1951); Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, on the First Commandment (veneration and invocation of the Angels and Saints).