The Surrender Novena

The Surrender Novena is a nine-day prayer of total trust in God, in which each day carries a short meditation spoken in the voice of Our Lord, followed ten times by the single act: "O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything." It was written by an Italian priest, Fr Dolindo Ruotolo (1882–1970), a friend of Padre Pio, and it is prayed when a soul has done all it can and must now hand a burden — an illness, a marriage, an impossible situation — entirely over to the will of God. Below we give the complete text of all nine days, the history of the devotion, and an honest account of where it stands in the Church.

A note on this devotion

The Surrender Novena belongs to the twentieth century, not to the ancient treasury of the Church. Fr Dolindo Ruotolo, who wrote it, died in 1970 and is at present a Servant of God — his cause for canonization has been opened and is promoted by the Archdiocese of Naples; he has not been beatified. The novena spread very widely only after about 2015. We give it here in full because it is constantly sought, entirely orthodox, and a genuine help to worried souls — but it should not be presented as a medieval or apostolic prayer, and it carries no formal ecclesiastical approval as a novena.

Its doctrine is nothing new: it is the Gospel's own "Thy will be done" (Matthew 6:10) and "Be not solicitous for the morrow" (Matthew 6:34), standing in a long tradition of holy abandonment. Those attached to the 1962 books may prefer the older forms of the same trust — the Suscipe of St Ignatius ("Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty"), the classic Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, or the Litany of Trust. If the very idea of a nine-day prayer is new to you, see first what is a novena.

The full Surrender Novena

Each day is prayed the same way: read the day's meditation slowly, then repeat the surrender ten times, and close with the invocation to Our Lady (said on the final day, though many say it daily). This is the complete text.

Day 1

Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 2

Surrender to me does not mean to fret, to be upset, or to lose hope, nor does it mean offering to me a worried prayer asking me to follow you and change your worry into prayer. It is against this surrender, deeply against it, to worry, to be nervous and to desire to think about the consequences of anything. It is like the confusion that children feel when they ask their mother to see to their needs, and then try to take care of those needs for themselves so that their childlike efforts get in their mother's way. Surrender means to placidly close the eyes of the soul, to turn away from thoughts of tribulation and to put yourself in my care, so that only I act, saying, "You take care of it."

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 3

How many things I do when the soul, in so much spiritual and material need, turns to me, looks at me and says to me, "You take care of it," then closes its eyes and rests. In pain you pray for me to act, but that I act in the way you want. You do not turn to me, instead, you want me to adapt to your ideas. You are not sick people who ask the doctor to cure you, but rather sick people who tell the doctor how to. So do not act this way, but pray as I taught you in the Our Father: "Hallowed be thy Name," that is, be glorified in my need. "Thy kingdom come," that is, let all that is in us and in the world be in accord with your kingdom. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," that is, in our need, decide as you see fit for our temporal and eternal life. If you say to me truly, "Thy will be done," which is the same as saying, "You take care of it," I will intervene with all my omnipotence, and I will resolve the most difficult situations.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 4

You see evil growing instead of weakening? Do not worry. Close your eyes and say to me with faith: "Thy will be done, You take care of it." I say to you that I will take care of it, and that I will intervene as does a doctor and I will accomplish miracles when they are needed. Do you see that the sick person is getting worse? Do not be upset, but close your eyes and say, "You take care of it." I say to you that I will take care of it, and that there is no medicine more powerful than my loving intervention. By my love, I promise this to you.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 5

And when I must lead you on a path different from the one you see, I will prepare you; I will carry you in my arms; I will let you find yourself, like children who have fallen asleep in their mother's arms, on the other bank of the river. What troubles you and hurts you immensely are your reason, your thoughts and worry, and your desire at all costs to deal with what afflicts you.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 6

You are sleepless; you want to judge everything, direct everything and see to everything, and you surrender to human strength, or worse — to men themselves, trusting in their intervention — this is what hinders my words and my views. Oh, how much I wish from you this surrender, to help you; and how I suffer when I see you so agitated! Satan tries to do exactly this: to agitate you and to remove you from my protection and to throw you into the jaws of human initiative. So, trust only in me, rest in me, surrender to me in everything.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 7

I perform miracles in proportion to your full surrender to me and to your not thinking of yourselves. I sow treasure troves of graces when you are in the deepest poverty. No person of reason, no thinker, has ever performed miracles, not even among the saints. He does divine works whosoever surrenders to God. So don't think about it any more, because your mind is acute and for you it is very hard to see evil and to trust in me and to not think of yourself. Do this for all your needs, do this, all of you, and you will see great continual silent miracles. I will take care of things, I promise this to you.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 8

Close your eyes and let yourself be carried away on the flowing current of my grace; close your eyes and do not think of the present, turning your thoughts away from the future just as you would from temptation. Repose in me, believing in my goodness, and I promise you by my love that if you say, "You take care of it," I will take care of it all; I will console you, liberate you and guide you.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

Day 9

Pray always in readiness to surrender, and you will receive from it great peace and great rewards, even when I confer on you the grace of immolation, of repentance and of love. Then what does suffering matter? It seems impossible to you? Close your eyes and say with all your soul, "Jesus, You take care of it." Do not be afraid, I will take care of things and you will bless my name by humbling yourself. A thousand prayers cannot equal one single act of surrender; remember this well. There is no novena more effective than this.

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)

The closing invocation (said after the tenth surrender, especially on the final day):

Mother, I am yours now and forever. Through you and with you I always want to belong completely to Jesus.

The surrender prayer itself

If you remember nothing else, remember the one line that is the whole novena in miniature: "O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything." It is not a magic formula, and Fr Dolindo insists on this: to say "You take care of it" while secretly dictating to God how He must do so is not surrender at all.

The act asks two things at once — that we truly hand the matter over, and that we let Him answer in His own way and His own hour. Prayed like that, it is one of the purest short acts of trust a soul can make, close kin to the Gospel's "Into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46) and to the Divine Mercy invocation "Jesus, I trust in You," which many carry through the day as an aspiration.

The Surrender Novena for an impossible situation

Souls reach for this novena because they face something they cannot fix: a diagnosis that will not turn, a marriage unravelling, a child who has walked away. The novena is made exactly for this. It does not tell you to stop acting where you can act; it tells you to stop torturing yourself over the part you cannot govern, and to place it, whole, in the hands of Christ. Name the impossible thing plainly as you begin Day 1, and let each day's meditation loosen your grip a little more. For causes the world has given up on entirely, it pairs naturally with the intercession of the patron saint of hopeless cases and with the Novena to St Joseph, long invoked when every human means is spent.

How to pray the Surrender Novena

The form is simple, and part of its appeal is that it asks almost nothing of the memory:

• Choose your intention. Name, at the start, the one burden you most need to surrender. You may pray it for another as easily as for yourself.
• Pray on nine consecutive days. A novena is nine days; keeping them unbroken is part of the discipline. Pick a fixed hour — morning or before sleep — and hold to it.
• Each day, read that day's meditation slowly, as though Our Lord were speaking it to you, then repeat "O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything" ten times, unhurried, meaning it more with each repetition.
• Close with the invocation to Our Lady, entrusting your surrender to her who surrendered perfectly.
• Frame each day as you would any prayer. Many open and close with the Sign of the Cross and name their intention aloud before reading the meditation. None of this is required, but it steadies the soul into the act.
• There is no fixed feast attached to this novena — you may begin it on any day, whenever the need arises. Many begin it at once, the very day the trouble lands.

Above all, pray it in the disposition it describes: not to bend God's will to yours, but to bend yours to His. To help that, some join it to the Litany of Humility or to a devotion to the Sacred Heart, the furnace of the trust this novena asks.

Who was Fr Dolindo Ruotolo?

Dolindo Ruotolo was born in Naples on 6 October 1882 and died there on 19 November 1970, ordained a priest on 24 June 1905. His name, given by devout parents, means "sorrow" — and it proved fitting: his was a life of extraordinary suffering and hiddenness. For years he was gravely misjudged by Church authorities and even suspended from priestly ministry under a cloud of suspicion; he bore it in silence and was in time fully vindicated and restored. In his last decade he was almost completely paralyzed. Through all of it he offered himself as a victim soul, calling himself, with tender humility, "Mary's little old man."

He was a contemporary and friend of St Padre Pio, who held him in the highest regard, telling pilgrims who came from Naples: "Why do you come here, when you have Don Dolindo in Naples? Go to him — he is a saint!" Fr Dolindo was a prolific spiritual writer, above all a commentator on Sacred Scripture, and the meditations of the Surrender Novena come from that vast body of work — his teaching on holy abandonment to the will of God.

He is honoured today as an Apostle of Surrender. His cause for canonization has been opened in Naples, and he bears the title Servant of God; the Church has not yet pronounced on his sanctity, so we call him neither Blessed nor Saint. His grave in the church of San Giuseppe dei Vecchi in Naples has become a place of quiet pilgrimage for those learning, as he did, to close the eyes of the soul and let Jesus take care of everything.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Surrender Novena?

It is a nine-day prayer of total trust in God, composed by Fr Dolindo Ruotolo. Each of the nine days offers a short meditation written as if spoken by Our Lord, teaching the soul to stop worrying and hand its burdens over to Him, followed by the act "O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything," repeated ten times. It is prayed above all in situations that feel impossible, when a soul must let go of what it cannot control.

Who wrote the Surrender Novena?

Fr Dolindo Ruotolo (1882–1970), a priest of Naples, a friend of Padre Pio, and a Servant of God. He drew the meditations from his own spiritual writings on abandonment to the will of God. The words are his; the doctrine is the Gospel's.

Is the Surrender Novena approved by the Catholic Church?

The novena's content is entirely orthodox — it teaches nothing but the Gospel's own "Thy will be done" and the Church's constant call to trust in Divine Providence — and it is prayed freely by Catholics everywhere with the encouragement of many priests and bishops. It does not, however, carry a formal decree of approval as a devotion, and its author, though a Servant of God, has not been beatified or canonized. It is a sound private devotion, not a liturgical or dogmatically approved prayer, and it should be prayed as such.

How many days is the Surrender Novena?

Nine days, prayed on nine consecutive days — the meaning of novena, from the Latin for "nine." Each day has its own distinct meditation, so the nine days are not identical: they build, day by day, toward a fuller and freer act of trust.

How do you pray the Surrender Novena?

Choose one intention, and for nine days running read that day's meditation slowly, then repeat "O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything" ten times, and close with the prayer to Our Lady. There is no set start date and no attached feast: begin whenever the need arises, keep the nine days unbroken, and pray in genuine surrender — not to command God, but to trust Him.

Why is the prayer repeated ten times?

The tenfold repetition is deliberate. Surrender is not a single decision made once but a habit the soul must be trained into, against all its instinct to seize control. Saying the act ten times, slowly, wears down that instinct and lets the trust sink from the lips into the heart. It is the same wisdom by which the Church gives us the beads of the Rosary: repetition is not vain when it deepens the surrender it speaks.

Are there miracles attached to the Surrender Novena?

Countless souls testify that after praying it an impossible situation turned — a healing, a reconciliation, a door opened where there was only wall. In the meditations Our Lord himself promises "great continual silent miracles" to those who truly let go. We report these as the pious testimony they are, not as guaranteed outcomes: the novena is no lever that forces God's hand, and the deepest miracle it works is often not the change we asked for but the peace of a soul that has finally handed the matter over.

Is there a PDF or printable Surrender Novena?

Yes. The complete text of all nine days is available as a free PDF, ready to print and keep beside you: the Surrender Novena PDF. The Iter Fidei app carries the whole novena with day-by-day reminders and audio, so it can also be prayed from your phone.

Pray the Surrender Novena in the Iter Fidei app, with a gentle reminder each of the nine days and the meditations read aloud, so you have only to listen and surrender. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Scripture (Matthew 6:10, 6:34; Luke 23:46); the Novena of Surrender to the Will of God of Fr Dolindo Ruotolo (1882–1970), Servant of God, from his spiritual writings; the Suscipe of St Ignatius Loyola and the tradition of Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence; the Catechism of St Pius X on prayer and confidence in God.