The Memorare Prayer: Full Text, Meaning and the Flying Novena

1. The Memorare: Full Text

The Memorare is prayed in several English versions, all faithful to the same Latin original. The traditional version below is the one most Catholics learn by heart. Wording differs slightly between prayer books ("intercession" or "intercessions", "clemency" or "mercy"); every standard version is correct.

Learn the traditional version by heart this week. Pray it once each morning and once each night for seven days, and you will have it for every emergency of your life.

2. What Is the Memorare?

The Memorare is a prayer of confident petition to the Blessed Virgin Mary, named after its first word in Latin, Memorare, "Remember". It reminds Mary, and really reminds the person praying, that no one who has ever turned to her for help has been abandoned. It then asks, boldly and humbly, for her help now.

It is one of the best-loved Marian prayers in the Catholic Church, alongside the Hail Mary, the Hail, Holy Queen and the Angelus. It is prayed in emergencies, before surgery, at deathbeds, by mothers of wayward children, by people fighting temptation, and by people with nothing left to say. The Church also lists it in the Rite of Exorcism (1999) among the prayers the faithful may use privately in the struggle against the powers of darkness.

Why go to Mary at all? Because Jesus gave her to us from the Cross: "Behold, your mother!" (John 19:27). Because at Cana she noticed the need before anyone else, told her Son, and told the servants, "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:3-5). Mary never keeps anyone for herself. Every request you give her, she brings to Jesus. Meet her in Scripture and Tradition on our page on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

3. Who Wrote the Memorare?

No one knows who wrote the Memorare. It is traditionally attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153), the great Cistercian abbot and Doctor of the Church, but no evidence links the prayer to him, and the attribution is now generally regarded as mistaken. Its words first appear as part of a longer fifteenth-century Latin prayer that begins Ad sanctitatis tuae pedes, dulcissima Virgo Maria ("At the feet of your holiness, sweetest Virgin Mary").

The man who made it famous was a different Bernard. Fr. Claude Bernard (1588 to 1641), a French priest known as "the Poor Priest", spent his life serving the poor, prisoners and men condemned to death in Paris, and he taught the Memorare to all of them. He reportedly had some 200,000 copies printed in several languages to give away. The shared name may explain how the prayer came to be credited to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

The attribution is understandable for another reason. St. Bernard was one of the great Marian preachers of the Middle Ages. In a famous homily on the Annunciation he urged Christians caught in storms of temptation to "look to the star, call upon Mary", and the Memorare breathes the same confidence. Read his story in our profile of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

By Catholic tradition, St. Francis de Sales, as a young student in Paris in the 1580s, was freed from a terrible temptation to despair about his salvation after praying the Memorare before a statue of Our Lady. He later wrote that he had prayed it as a student. Whatever the details, the prayer has been helping Catholics out of despair for at least five hundred years.

So when you pray it, you join a long line: an unknown fifteenth-century writer, a Paris priest kneeling with condemned men, a young saint on the edge of despair, and millions since. The prayer has passed the only test that matters. People in trouble have used it, and kept using it.

4. What the Memorare Means, Line by Line

The Memorare is a short argument for confidence, and each line moves from memory to trust to request. Pray it once slowly with these notes.

• "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary": the prayer starts by recalling a track record. Biblical prayer often begins this way: "Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope" (Psalm 119:49).
• "that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection... was left unaided": three verbs, fled, implored, sought, cover every kind of asking. The claim is bold: in two thousand years, Mary has abandoned no one who came to her. Her help may come in a different form than we asked, and it always comes.
• "Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee": confidence comes from memory. You run to her the way a child runs to a mother, without first making a speech.
• "O Virgin of virgins, my mother": she is both: utterly holy and utterly yours.
• "To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful": you come as you are. The prayer assumes you are a sinner, and it does not ask you to clean up first.
• "O Mother of the Word Incarnate": her whole power is in her Son. She is the mother of God's Word, so she can bring your words to Him.
• "despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me": you ask her to hear and to answer, and you leave the answer to her.

Confidence grows by praying, every day, for years. Pro gives you audio-guided prayer sessions you just press play on, calming audio devotionals, and a circle of believers who will pray your intention with you. Get Pro. $49 once, no subscription, 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. Mother Teresa's Flying Novena

The "flying novena" is the practice, attributed to St. Teresa of Calcutta, of praying the Memorare nine times in a row for an urgent need, and then a tenth time in thanksgiving, as if the favour had already been granted. A normal novena lasts nine days. The flying novena compresses it into a few minutes, for needs that cannot wait nine days.

The best-known account comes from Msgr. Leo Maasburg, a priest who travelled with her for years and wrote about her in Mother Teresa of Calcutta: A Personal Portrait. He calls it her "Quick Novena" and describes her praying it for a sick child, before important meetings, when passports went missing, and on the road at night when fuel was running low. Her Missionaries of Charity still pray it and call it the flying novena. Some tellings count nine Memorares and some count ten; the tenth, in Maasburg's account, was her prayer of thanks in advance.

Treat the stories as they are: testimonies from people who knew her, of confident prayer by a saint. The flying novena is a devotion. It carries no guarantee of a particular result, and the Church makes no such claim. What it teaches is trust, prayed fast.

How to pray the flying novena:

1. Name the need. Say it to God plainly: "Lord, through Mary, I ask for..."
2. Pray the Memorare nine times, slowly enough to mean it. Count on your fingers.
3. Pray it a tenth time in thanksgiving, trusting that God has heard and will answer in the way that is best.
4. Then act. Make the call, see the doctor, go to confession, do the next right thing. Mary's own advice at Cana was "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).

Read the life and the long dark night of the woman behind it in our profile of St. Teresa of Calcutta.

6. When to Pray the Memorare

Pray the Memorare whenever you need help and do not know what else to say, and pray it daily so it is ready when the crisis comes. These are the moments Catholics have reached for it most:

• In an emergency: a phone call from the hospital, a child missing, a car skidding. Pray it under your breath while you act.
• In temptation: the moment it starts. Then move: leave the room, close the screen, call someone.
• In despair: as St. Francis de Sales did. When you think you are beyond help, the prayer's first line answers you.
• Before confession: to ask for courage and an honest heart. Our guide to making a good confession helps with the rest.
• For a child who has left the faith: every day, for years if needed, the way St. Monica prayed for Augustine.
• Before surgery, exams, interviews and court dates.
• At a deathbed: pray it aloud for the dying, with the Hail Mary's "now and at the hour of our death".
• At night: as your last Marian prayer before sleep. Our page on Catholic night prayer shows where it fits.

Build it into your day so you never have to search for it: once in your morning prayer (see our morning prayer routine), once at night, and as often as you need between.

7. How to Pray a Nine-Day Memorare Novena

A Memorare novena is the Memorare prayed every day for nine days for one intention. It follows the pattern of the first novena, when the apostles prayed with Mary in the upper room for nine days before Pentecost (Acts 1:14). Here is a simple way to do it; our guide on how to pray a novena covers novenas in general.

1. Choose one intention and write it down.
2. Pick a fixed time each day for nine days. Set a phone reminder.
3. Each day: make the Sign of the Cross, read a short Gospel passage about Mary (Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:39-56, Luke 2:1-20, Luke 2:22-35, Luke 2:41-52, John 2:1-11, John 19:25-27, Acts 1:12-14, Revelation 12:1-6, one per day), state your intention, pray the Memorare three times, and finish with a Glory Be.
4. Add a decade of the Rosary if you can. Our guide to praying the Rosary shows how.
5. On day nine, go to Mass if possible, and give thanks whatever the answer so far.

Nine days is long when you are worried. Pro gives you audio-guided prayer sessions for anxiety and healing, calming audio devotionals for the waiting, and a circle of believers who will carry your intention through all nine days. Get Pro for $49, paid once, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you miss a day, do not start over in guilt. Pick up where you are. God hears your heart, and He keeps no tally of missed days.

8. Is Praying to Mary Biblical? Protestant and Orthodox Views

Catholics and Orthodox ask Mary's intercession; most Protestants do not, and each side has its reasons. State them fairly before you answer them.

• The Protestant objection: "There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). Many Protestants hold that praying to Mary takes something from Christ, or that the dead cannot hear us.
• The Catholic answer: Christ's mediation is unique, and the Church teaches that Mary's role flows from His and depends entirely on it (Lumen Gentium 60). Asking Mary to pray for you is like asking a friend to pray for you, and Scripture tells Christians to pray for one another (James 5:16). The saints in heaven are alive in God (Luke 20:38), and Revelation shows them offering the prayers of the saints before God (Revelation 5:8). Mary is also the one Jesus gave as mother to the beloved disciple (John 19:26-27), and every generation calls her blessed (Luke 1:48).
• "Never was it known" sounds like an exaggeration. The phrase expresses the Church's experience across centuries. Mary's help does not always look like the outcome we asked for. Sometimes it is strength to carry what is not taken away. That is still help.
• The Orthodox pray to the Theotokos (the Mother of God) constantly, in hymns such as the Akathist, and cherish the ancient prayer "Beneath your compassion" (in Latin, Sub tuum praesidium). The Memorare itself is Western, but its trust in the Mother of God is shared East and West.

For the wider comparison between traditions, see our guide to Catholic and Protestant beliefs and our guide to the saints and the communion of saints.

9. What If My Prayer Is Not Answered?

If you prayed the Memorare and the answer seems to be no, your faith was not too small, and Mary has not ignored you. Jesus Himself prayed in Gethsemane, "remove this cup from me", and the cup was not removed (Mark 14:36). The Father answered with strength, and then with the Resurrection. Mary stood at the Cross and watched her Son die, and she kept faith.

Keep praying. Tell God and Mary honestly how you feel, including anger; the psalms do (Psalm 13). Keep going to Mass. Let others pray for you when you cannot. Our guides to grief and suffering are written for this season.

If you are praying for healing, keep taking the treatment your doctors give you; God works through medicine. Our guide to praying for healing explains how the Church prays for the sick. If anxiety or low mood is part of the burden, read our guides to Catholic prayer for anxiety and despair, and talk to your doctor.

10. Prayers for Specific Needs With the Memorare

Pray one of these short prayers to name your need, then pray the Memorare. The pairing gives Mary your situation and your trust at once.

Not sure which saint to ask alongside Mary? Our free patron saint finder matches you with a saint for your situation, and our prayer generator writes a personal prayer for any need.

11. Start Today: Make the Memorare Your Own

The way to make the Memorare your own is to pray it twice a day for a week, until it comes to you without effort in a crisis. Do not wait for the emergency to learn it.

1. Today: pray the traditional text aloud three times, slowly.
2. This week: pray it every morning and every night. By day seven you will know it by heart.
3. Write it on a card and keep it in your wallet or on your phone's lock screen.
4. Teach it to someone: your child, a friend, someone in trouble. Mother Teresa told her sisters to teach it to the poor.
5. Keep the flying novena ready for real emergencies, and the nine-day novena for long intentions.
6. Pair it with the sacraments: Mary always leads to her Son. Go to Mass, and go to confession this month.