Novenas
Novena to St Joseph of Cupertino and Prayer for Exams
The St Joseph of Cupertino prayer for exams and the full nine-day novena to St Joseph of Cupertino, patron of students and examinees, with the Collect of his feast on 18 September and his life from the old accounts.
The St Joseph of Cupertino prayer for exams is the old petition asking the Franciscan friar who, slow at his books, was examined only on what he knew, to obtain the same help for a student about to sit a test. The novena to St Joseph of Cupertino joins that prayer to the Collect of his feast and says them together for nine days, before an examination or before his feast on 18 September. Below we give the whole novena, the short exam prayer, his feast and patronages, and the life of this saint as the Breviary and Butler's Lives tell it.
This is not St Joseph the foster-father of Our Lord: for him, see the novena to St Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin. St Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) is a seventeenth-century Italian priest of the Conventual Franciscans, who bore the name of the great Patriarch from his baptism.
The novena to St Joseph of Cupertino
A novena is nine days of prayer for one grace; if you are new to the practice, our guide to what a novena is explains its origin in the nine days of the Upper Room. The novena to St Joseph of Cupertino has a simple order, the same each day:
- Begin with the Sign of the Cross.
- Read the short meditation for the day, below.
- Say the prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino, naming your intention.
- Say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Glory be.
- Close with the versicle and the Collect of his feast.
The daily prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino
This is the traditional prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino, printed on holy cards and in student prayer-books for generations. The wording varies a little from card to card; the substance never does.
O great St Joseph of Cupertino, who while on earth didst obtain from God the grace to be asked at thy examination only the questions thou didst know, obtain for me a like favour in the examination for which I am now preparing. (Here name the examination, or your intention.)
In return I promise to make thee known and cause thee to be invoked. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
St Joseph of Cupertino, pray for us.
The versicle and Collect of his feast
The closing prayer is the Church's own: the Collect of the Mass of St Joseph of Cupertino in the Roman Missal, which plays on his ecstasies, for it asks that we too be "lifted above" every earthly desire. The versicle is that of Vespers in the Common of a Confessor not a Bishop in the Breviary.
V. The Lord loved him and adorned him.
R. He clothed him with a robe of glory.Let us pray. O God, who didst ordain that thine only-begotten Son, being lifted up from the earth, should draw all things to Himself: mercifully grant that, by the merits and example of thy seraphic Confessor Joseph, we may be raised above all earthly desires, and be found worthy to come unto Him: Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
In Latin, as the Missal gives it:
Deus, qui ad unigénitum Fílium tuum exaltátum a terra ómnia tráhere disposuísti: pérfice propítius; ut, méritis et exémplo seráphici Confessóris tui Joséphi, supra terrénas omnes cupiditátes eleváti, ad eum perveníre mereámur: Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
The Collect echoes Our Lord's own words: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself" (John 12:32).
The nine days of the novena
The meditations below follow the saint's life as the Breviary lesson of his feast and Butler's Lives of the Saints record it, one step for each day. They are for reflection, not recitation: read the day, offer the intention, then say the daily prayer and the Collect above.
Day 1: The boy they called "the gaper"
Joseph Desa was born at Cupertino, a village between Brindisi and Otranto, on 17 June 1603, in a shed behind a house that was being sold for his father's debts. As a child he was so absent-minded that the village called him Boccaperta, "open-mouth". God chose what the world thought dull. Intention: for all who think themselves slow or unfit, that they may trust God with their limits.
Day 2: Turned away
The Conventual friars refused him; the Capuchins took him as a lay brother and sent him home after eight months, for he dropped the dishes and forgot what he was told. His own uncle called him a good-for-nothing. Intention: for those who have failed an examination or been rejected, that they may not lose heart.
Day 3: The stable at Grottella
Taken in at last as a servant of the friars at Grottella, he worked in the stables, and there his humility, sweetness and love of penance won him admission to the choir in 1625. Intention: for faithfulness in small and hidden duties, and in the daily work of study.
Day 4: The one text he knew
Try as he would, he read badly and wrote worse. There was one Gospel text he could explain: "Blessed is the womb that bore thee" (Luke 11:27). At his examination for the diaconate the bishop opened the book at random, and his eye fell on that very verse. Intention: for the grace to study honestly, and to be questioned on what we have learned.
Day 5: Passed by Providence
At the examination for the priesthood, the first candidates answered so well that the examiner passed the rest, Joseph among them, without questioning him. He was ordained priest in 1628. Intention: for calm and a clear mind on the day of the examination, and for trust in Providence whatever the result.
Day 6: Ecstasy and obedience
From his ordination his life became a long succession of ecstasies: anything that spoke to him of God, even the sight of a lamb in a friary garden, could carry him out of his senses. Pricked with needles or burnt, he felt nothing; only the voice of his superior could bring him back, and he came to himself laughing at his "fits of giddiness". Intention: for obedience to God, to our parents, and to those who teach us.
Day 7: His Mother
His most famous flight, before the Admiral of Castile and his wife at Assisi, carried him some dozen paces over the heads of the people to the foot of a statue of Mary Immaculate above the altar, and back again. At Osimo, in his last years, his brethren saw him rise to kiss the statue of the Infant Jesus over the altar. Intention: for a true, childlike devotion to Our Lady; and for all who travel by air.
Day 8: The Inquisition and the dark night
Crowds followed him, and he was denounced to the Inquisition of Naples as a deceiver. The inquisitors found nothing to censure, yet they did not release him: he was sent to Rome, then to Assisi, where he suffered years of dryness and temptation in which God seemed to have left him. Intention: for those who are misjudged, and for those in dryness of soul.
Day 9: Poverty and a holy death
From 1653 he was kept in strict seclusion among the Capuchins and then at Osimo, forbidden to write, to receive letters or to speak with anyone but the friars. "Have I got to go to prison then?" he asked, and left at once, leaving behind his hat, his cloak, his breviary and his spectacles. He died at Osimo on 18 September 1663, at the age of sixty. Intention: for detachment from all earthly things, and for a happy death.
The St Joseph of Cupertino prayer for exams
Most people searching for the St Joseph of Cupertino prayer for exams, the exam prayer or the test prayer, want the short prayer given above as the daily prayer of the novena: it is the same text, and it may be said on its own, at the desk, in the minute before the paper is turned over. It suits every kind of examination, from a school test to a professional licence.
The prayer asks for help, not a fraud. Joseph of Cupertino knew one text because he had worked to learn it; the student who prays to him still studies all he can, and asks the saint's intercession for what lies beyond his strength. For the other prayers a student can say in the same hour, to the Holy Ghost and to St Thomas Aquinas, see a prayer before an exam.
A prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino for students
There is no separate traditional "student prayer" to St Joseph of Cupertino: students pray the same prayer through the whole term, naming the course or the examination ahead. Those who need light for the work of study itself pray beside it the prayer of the Angelic Doctor, Creator ineffabilis, given in St Thomas Aquinas' prayers before study, Mass and Communion. The two saints divide the labour well: St Thomas for understanding, St Joseph of Cupertino for the trial of the examination. Our page on the patron saints of students gathers the others.
The prayer card and the printable text
The St Joseph of Cupertino prayer card and the St Joseph of Cupertino prayer for exams PDF are much sought before examinations. The full text is above and prints as it stands, the daily prayer and the Collect together. Better still, Join early access here. carries the novena with its text each day, a reminder at the hour you choose, the prayers in Latin and English, and works offline in an examination hall where there is no connection.
How to pray the novena: dates and feast
The feast of St Joseph of Cupertino falls on 18 September, the day of his death. In the 1962 calendar it is a feast of the third class, with its own Collect and Mass, Dilectio Dei; the Breviary keeps his Office, with the story of his life read in the lesson at Matins. Pope Clement XIV, himself a Conventual Franciscan, extended that Office and Mass to the whole Church, so the feast has stood in the universal calendar since the eighteenth century. You can find it in the 1962 liturgical calendar.
There are two good times to make the novena:
- Before his feast, from 9 to 17 September, so that the ninth day falls on the eve of 18 September. This is the classic novena, suited to the start of the school year.
- Before an examination, beginning nine days before it, so that the last day falls on the eve or the morning of the test.
Pray at a fixed hour, and join it where you can to Mass or Holy Communion. A good confession during the nine days is the best preparation of all; the examination of conscience is the examination no Catholic should sit unprepared.
Who was St Joseph of Cupertino?
St Joseph of Cupertino is the flying friar of the seventeenth century, a priest of the Conventual Franciscans whose ecstasies lifted him bodily from the ground. Butler's Lives says of him that his life was "one long succession of ecstasies, miracles of healing and supernatural happenings on a scale not paralleled in the reasonably authenticated life of any other saint."
The facts of his life
Born Joseph Desa at Cupertino in Apulia on 17 June 1603, he failed as a shoemaker's apprentice and as a Capuchin lay brother before the Conventual friars of Grottella took him as a stable servant. He was clothed in the habit, ordained priest in 1628, and lived seventeen years at Grottella, where over seventy levitations are recorded. Denounced to the Inquisition of Naples, cleared, and brought before Pope Urban VIII, he was sent to Assisi in 1639, the town of St Francis of Assisi, whom he imitated in poverty and in his command over animals. From 1653 the Holy Office kept him hidden, first among the Capuchins of Pietrarossa and Fossombrone, then, from 1657, with his own friars at Osimo. Among his visitors was John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick, a Lutheran who became a Catholic after seeing him.
He fell ill on 10 August 1663, was rapt in ecstasy at his last Mass on the Assumption, and died at Osimo five weeks after falling ill, on 18 September 1663. He was beatified by Benedict XIV in 1753 and canonised by Clement XIII on 16 July 1767. His body rests at Osimo.
Did St Joseph of Cupertino really fly?
The Church did not take his levitations lightly. Prosper Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV and the great authority on the procedure of canonisation, was Promoter of the Faith (the "Devil's Advocate") during his cause, and his objections were searching. Yet he later wrote, in his work on the beatification of the servants of God, that "eyewitnesses of unchallengeable integrity gave evidence of the famous upliftings from the ground and prolonged flights" of the friar. Butler notes that some early stories, such as the raising of the great cross at Grottella, were written down only after his death; but the flights of his last years at Osimo were sworn to by eyewitnesses within four or five years.
What he taught
He was not a learned man, but his counsel was sound. To the scrupulous he said: "I like neither scruples nor melancholy; let your intention be right and fear not." And to all: "Pray, pray. If you are troubled by dryness or distractions, just say an Our Father. Then you make both vocal and mental prayer."
What is St Joseph of Cupertino the patron saint of?
St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of students and examinees, because of his own examinations, and is invoked by aviators and air travellers, because of his flights in ecstasy. He is also the friend of the slow, the clumsy and all who struggle to learn, for he was one of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is St Joseph of Cupertino known for?
Above all for his levitations: he is the "flying friar", whose raptures lifted him from the ground at Mass and in choir, so often that for thirty-five years he was not allowed to say Mass in public. He is known too for his slowness at his books, which made him the patron of examinees, and for a humility and obedience that never faltered under suspicion. He is not St Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin, but a later saint bearing his name.
Why is St Joseph of Cupertino the patron saint of exams?
Because of his own examinations. Barely able to read, he knew how to explain only one Gospel text, and at his examination for the diaconate the bishop asked him precisely that text. At his examination for the priesthood the examiner passed him without questions after the first candidates answered well. Students have seen in this the hand of Providence and have asked his help ever since.
How do you pray to St Joseph of Cupertino?
Say the short prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino given above, naming your examination or intention, then an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory be, and close with the Collect of his feast. Said once a day for nine days, it becomes the novena; said once, just before the exam, it is the exam prayer.
When is the feast day of St Joseph of Cupertino?
His feast is on 18 September, the anniversary of his death in 1663. In the 1962 Roman calendar it is a feast of the third class, with its own Mass and Office. To end the novena on the feast, begin it on 9 September.
How did St Joseph of Cupertino die?
He fell ill on 10 August 1663, celebrated his last Mass on the feast of the Assumption in a long ecstasy, and died five weeks after falling ill, on 18 September 1663, at Osimo, aged sixty. Cut off from the world in his last years, he was, in Butler's words, "deserted by man but God was ever more clearly with him."
Where is St Joseph of Cupertino buried?
At Osimo, in the Marche of Italy, near Loreto, in the church of the Conventual Franciscans where he spent his last six years, now the Basilica of St Joseph of Cupertino, which keeps his body.
When and why was St Joseph of Cupertino canonized?
He was canonized by Pope Clement XIII on 16 July 1767, after his beatification by Benedict XIV in 1753. The cause rested on his heroic virtue, above all his humility, obedience, poverty and purity, and on miracles proven before the Congregation of Rites, with the sworn testimony of witnesses to his ecstasies.
The Iter Fidei app carries the novenas, litanies and prayers of the saints, St Joseph of Cupertino among them, in Latin and English, with a daily reminder through all nine days. Join early access here.
Sources. Luke 11:27 and John 12:32 (Douay-Rheims); Missale Romanum (1962), Mass of St Joseph of Cupertino, 18 September (Collect Deus, qui ad unigenitum Filium tuum); Breviarium Romanum (1962), 18 September, lesson at Matins, and the Common of a Confessor not a Bishop; Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 18 September; Benedict XIV, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione; Clement XIII, bull of canonization of St Joseph of Cupertino (1767); the traditional prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino before an examination, as carried in traditional prayer-books and on holy cards.