Novena to St Monica

The novena to St Monica is nine days of prayer to the mother of St Augustine — the woman who wept and prayed for eighteen years over a son sunk in heresy and vice, and who lived to see him baptized a Catholic and set on the road to sainthood. It is the novena of choice for anyone carrying a wayward child, a husband or wife fallen away from the Faith, a marriage under strain, or a loved one lost to drink, because no saint knew those sorrows longer or answered them more patiently than she. Below is the full novena — the daily prayer, an intention for each of the nine days, and the variants the faithful most often seek — grounded in the traditional life of the saint whose tears "could not perish."

When to pray the novena to St Monica

In the traditional Roman calendar St Monica is kept on 4 May; in the reformed calendar her feast falls on 27 August, the day before her son's on the 28th. Most who keep this novena pray it in the nine days from 18 to 26 August, ending on the eve of her August feast, though a novena may rightly be made at any time a need presses — for the meaning of the devotion and why it runs nine days, see what is a novena. St Monica is the patroness of wives, mothers, widows, and of the conversion of relatives, and her intercession is sought above all for those we love who have wandered from God.

The full novena to St Monica

The prayer below is said once on each of the nine days. Begin with the Sign of the Cross, name your intention where marked, and close with an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be. It is the same daily prayer throughout; the distinct daily intentions that follow let you carry a different corner of your sorrow to St Monica each day.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Exemplary mother of the great Augustine, you perseveringly pursued your wayward son not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven. Intercede for all mothers in our day so that they may learn to draw their children to God. Teach them how to remain close to their children, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray.

Dear St Monica, troubled wife and mother, many sorrows pierced your heart during your lifetime. Yet you never despaired or lost faith. With confidence, persistence, and profound faith, you prayed daily for the conversion of your beloved husband, Patricius, and your beloved son, Augustine; your prayers were answered.

Grant me that same fortitude, patience, and trust in the Lord. Intercede for me, dear St Monica, that God may favourably hear my plea for

(here name your request)

and grant me the grace to accept His will in all things, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Our Father… Hail Mary… Glory Be…

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The nine days, day by day

Say the daily prayer above each day, adding the day's particular intention. Many keep this from 18 to 26 August, but any nine consecutive days will serve.

Day 1 — For our own perseverance in prayer. With St Monica we ask for the grace never to grow weary or lose heart, but to keep praying, as she did for eighteen years, until God's own hour comes.

Day 2 — For the conversion of a wayward child. We commend to her the sons and daughters who have left the Faith, that God may draw them back as He drew Augustine, and that mothers and fathers may learn to reach their children through prayer rather than reproach.

Day 3 — For those baptized but living far from the Church. We pray for the many baptized Catholics who were never taught or who have drifted, that they may be given the light and the good example that leads them home.

Day 4 — For those wounded by others in the Church. We pray for all who have been hurt, scandalized, or driven away, that they may find healing and forgiveness and return without bitterness.

Day 5 — For those who reject the Church's teaching. As St Monica bore with Augustine's years in heresy, we ask that the Holy Spirit open hearts and minds hardened against the truth.

Day 6 — For those crushed by their sins. We pray for souls who believe themselves too far gone to be forgiven, that they may know the mercy of God and the joy of repentance.

Day 7 — For the young who have turned from Christ. We commend the young, so pressed by the world and by their companions, that they may be given courage and the support of a faithful family.

Day 8 — For those who feel abandoned by God. We pray for the discouraged and the despairing, that their faith may be restored and their steps turned back toward the Church.

Day 9 — In thanksgiving, for a welcome home. We give thanks for St Monica's intercession and ask that when the wanderers return they may find, in us and in the whole Church, only open arms — as Augustine found in his mother.

The novena to St Monica for conversion

The heart of this devotion is conversion — the turning of a soul back to God. St Monica is invoked for the conversion of a child, a spouse, a parent, or a friend precisely because she obtained the conversion of the two she loved most: her pagan husband Patricius, baptized the year before he died, and her son Augustine, who by God's grace became one of the greatest saints and Doctors of the Church. Pray the full novena above with that intention named plainly, and take heart from the words a wise bishop spoke to her when she despaired: "It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish." For a conversion long resisted, many join this novena to a novena to a patron of desperate and impossible causes, such as the novena to St Jude or the novena to St Rita.

The novena to St Monica for a troubled marriage

St Monica endured a difficult marriage with heroic patience. Her husband was, in the old account, "violent-tempered and dissolute," yet by her forbearance, her prayers, and her example she won him at last to Christ. She is therefore a true patroness of wives and of marriages under strain, and this novena is fittingly prayed for a husband or wife who has fallen away, for peace in a home, or for the conversion of a difficult spouse. Name the marriage or the person in your daily petition. Where there is real cruelty or danger, St Monica's patience is not a counsel to endure abuse in silence — commend such suffering also to the novena to St Dymphna, patroness of those in anguish and mistreatment, and seek the help and protection that prudence requires.

The novena to St Monica for alcoholics

There is an old and fitting reason St Monica is invoked for those enslaved to drink. As a girl, charged with drawing wine for the household, she fell little by little into the habit of secret sips and then whole cupfuls — until a servant's sharp word shamed her free of it for life. She knew the pull of drink from within, and she watched a husband and a world given to intemperance. To pray this novena for an alcoholic — a spouse, a child, a parent — is to bring the bondage to a saint who understood it and overcame it. Name the person and the deliverance you seek, and ask St Monica to obtain for them the grace of true sobriety and conversion of heart.

The short novena to St Monica

For those who want a briefer daily prayer, this shorter form may be said once on each of the nine days in place of the longer one:

Dear St Monica, you were once the mournful mother of a prodigal son. Your faithfulness to prayer brought you and your son so close to God that you are now with Him in eternity. By your intercession and God's grace, your son St Augustine became a great and venerable saint of the Church. Please take my request to God with the same fervour and persistence with which you prayed for your own son. (Mention your intentions.) With your needs, worries, and anxieties you threw yourself on the mercy and providence of God. Through sorrow and pain you constantly devoted yourself to God. Pray for me, that I might join you in such deep faith in God's goodness and mercy. Above all, dear St Monica, pray for me, that I may, like your son, turn from my sin and become a great saint for the glory of God. Amen.

The ancient prayer of the tears of St Monica

Older than any of the modern forms is the traditional collect of her feast, which begs God, who accepted her tears for Augustine, to grant us sorrow for our own sins. It makes a fitting close to each day:

O God, the Comforter of the sorrowful and the salvation of those that put their trust in Thee, who didst mercifully accept the loving tears of blessed Monica in the conversion of her son Augustine: grant, by the intercession of them both, that we may bewail our sins and obtain the grace of Thy pardon. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The novena to St Monica and St Augustine

Because their feasts fall on consecutive days in August, and because mother and son are inseparable in the story of grace, many pray a joint novena to St Monica and St Augustine — asking the intercession of the two together for the conversion of a loved one. You may simply add to the daily prayer a petition to St Augustine, who was himself the "son of so many tears" and who became the Church's great teacher of grace and mercy. Where St Monica represents the faithful prayer of the one who waits, St Augustine represents the wanderer God brings home; to invoke them together is to pray from both sides of the same hope.

Is there a St Monica novena chaplet or PDF?

There is no chaplet of St Monica prescribed in the Church's traditional books; the "St Monica novena chaplet" that some seek is simply the nine-day novena above, sometimes prayed on the beads of a rosary, one prayer for each day. As for a printable sheet, the complete text is on this page — the daily prayer, the nine intentions, the short form, and the collect — and you may copy it to keep beside you for the nine days. Better still, the Iter Fidei app carries the whole novena with day-by-day reminders, so nothing need be printed at all.

How to pray the novena to St Monica

A novena is not a formula that compels God; it is nine days of trusting, persevering prayer, and St Monica is its perfect teacher, for she persevered not nine days but eighteen years. Pray at a fixed hour each day. Name your intention plainly and, if you can, join the novena to Mass, to Holy Communion, or to a decade of the Rosary. Above all, pray as she prayed — "with confidence, persistence, and profound faith," yet resigned to God's will and God's own timing. If the grace you ask is delayed, do not lose heart: her son's conversion came only after long years, and it came completely. For another sure intercessor for a holy household and a happy death, see the novena to St Joseph; and for the mothers and grandmothers of a family, the novena to St Anne.

Who is St Monica?

St Monica (332–387) was born in North Africa, probably at Tagaste, some sixty miles from Carthage, of Christian parents. Married young to Patricius, a pagan citizen of Tagaste — generous but, in the old account, "violent-tempered and dissolute" — she bore his temper and infidelity with such patience that she won not only him but his cantankerous mother to the Faith; Patricius was baptized the year before his death in 371.

Her great cross was her brilliant, wayward son. Augustine fell into the Manichean heresy and a life of pleasure, and for years Monica "stormed heaven by her prayers and tears," fasting, watching, and importuning the clergy to reason with him. When he sailed secretly for Rome to escape her, she followed — to Rome, then to Milan, where under the preaching of St Ambrose her son's long conversion finally broke. In August 386 Augustine accepted the Catholic faith in full; at Easter 387 St Ambrose baptized him.

Her life's one prayer answered, Monica had no more to ask of this world. "All I wished to live for," she told Augustine, "was that I might see you a Catholic and a child of Heaven." At Ostia, awaiting a ship home to Africa, she fell ill; asked whether she feared to die so far from home, she answered, "Nothing is far from God." She died there at fifty-five, her son at her side, and is honoured ever since as the pattern of Christian mothers and the patroness of wives and widows. We know her almost entirely from Augustine's own Confessions, in which the great Doctor of grace asks his readers to pray for the mother whose tears had won him — though it is far more often her prayers that the faithful now invoke.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I say a novena to St Monica?

Say the daily prayer above once on each of nine consecutive days — beginning and ending with the Sign of the Cross, naming your intention where marked, and closing with an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be. Add the day's particular intention if you wish, and pray at the same hour each day. The prayer is the same throughout; what makes a novena is the persevering repetition over the nine days.

When does the novena to St Monica begin?

Most begin it on 18 August, so that the ninth day falls on 26 August, the eve of her feast in the reformed calendar (27 August). In the traditional Roman calendar her feast is 4 May, and one may begin the nine days on 26 April to end on its eve. But a novena to St Monica may be begun on any day when a need is pressing; it need not wait for a feast.

What is St Monica the patron saint of?

St Monica is the patroness of wives, mothers, and widows, and especially of the conversion of relatives — of children and spouses who have fallen away from God. Because of her own girlhood struggle and her husband's intemperance, she is also invoked for those enslaved to drink, and for peace in troubled marriages and difficult families.

Why is St Monica invoked for the conversion of children?

Because she obtained, by long and faithful prayer, the conversion of the child she had all but despaired of — Augustine, who became one of the Church's greatest saints. Her example gives hope to every parent of a wayward son or daughter: the bishop's word to her, that "the son of so many tears" could not perish, is the promise on which this whole devotion rests.

Can I pray this novena for my husband or my marriage?

Yes. St Monica endured a hard marriage with heroic patience and won her difficult husband to Christ, so she is a fitting intercessor for a spouse fallen away, for peace in a home, or for the conversion of a husband or wife. Where a marriage involves real cruelty or danger, seek also the practical help and protection that prudence requires; St Monica's patience is a model of prayer, not a command to endure harm in silence.

When is St Monica's feast day?

In the traditional Roman calendar it is 4 May; in the reformed calendar it is 27 August, immediately before the feast of St Augustine on 28 August. Both honour the same holy widow and mother.

How long did St Monica pray for St Augustine?

The constant tradition holds that she prayed for his conversion for some eighteen years — from the time he fell into heresy in his youth until his acceptance of the Catholic faith in 386. Her perseverance is the reason she is invoked whenever a conversion seems slow or impossible; she is proof that such prayers are not wasted.

Pray this novena to St Monica with day-by-day reminders and audio in the Iter Fidei app. Download it here.

Sources. St Augustine, Confessions, especially bk. ix; Butler's Lives of the Saints (St Monica, Widow, 4 May); the traditional collect for the feast of St Monica; the novena prayer Exemplary mother of the great Augustine, the shorter novena Dear St Monica, you were once the mournful mother of a prodigal son, and the joint devotion to St Monica and St Augustine, as carried in Catholic prayer-books.