St. Jude Prayer and Novena: The Traditional Prayer and Nine Full Days

1. The St. Jude Prayer (Traditional Text)

The traditional St. Jude prayer asks the apostle, as patron of "hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of," to bring "visible and speedy help" in a great need, and it ends with a promise to honor him and encourage devotion to him. This is the text distributed by the National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago. Pray it slowly, and when you reach the bracket, tell St. Jude exactly what you need.

Older prayer books print a longer opening, in which the prayer says that "the name of the traitor who delivered thy beloved Master into the hands of His enemies has caused thee to be forgotten by many." That line preserves the old pious explanation for Jude's patronage: Christians avoided praying to a saint whose name sounded like Judas Iscariot's, so he became the saint of last resort. Both forms are the same prayer. Use whichever one you learned.

Many people add a short invocation before or after the main prayer:

Close with an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be. That is the whole St. Jude prayer as most Catholics pray it.

2. Who Is St. Jude, and Why Is He the Patron of Hopeless Cases?

St. Jude Thaddeus is one of the twelve apostles, named "Judas son of James" by Luke (Luke 6:16, Acts 1:13) and "Thaddaeus" by Matthew and Mark (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18). He speaks once in the Gospels, at the Last Supper (John 14:22), and Catholic tradition identifies him with the author of the short Letter of Jude. His feast is 28 October, shared with St. Simon.

The title "patron of hopeless cases" is a devotional development, much later than his lifetime, and the explanation usually given (that he was seldom invoked because of his name, so he is eager to help those who do call on him) is pious tradition. What is certain is that in the twentieth century the devotion exploded, and the reason is the history in section 7 below. For his full life, the Gospel record and the martyrdom traditions, read our profile of St. Jude Thaddeus.

3. How to Pray the St. Jude Novena

To pray the St. Jude novena, pray the traditional St. Jude prayer every day for nine days in a row, adding that day's novena prayer below and an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. Here is the method, step by step.

1. Write down your one request. A single sentence. Put it where you will see it.
2. Pick your nine days. Start today. The National Shrine and many parishes also hold the solemn novena from 19 to 27 October, ending on the eve of his feast, and you can join that one every year.
3. Each day, make the Sign of the Cross and briefly ask God's forgiveness for your sins.
4. Pray the day's prayer from the nine days below.
5. Pray the traditional St. Jude prayer above, naming your request at the bracket.
6. Close with an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be.
7. Do one concrete thing each day toward the need, if there is anything you can do. St. Jude prays; you act. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26).
8. Go to confession and Mass during the nine days if you possibly can.

If you miss a day, pray it when you remember and carry on. There is no magic number of repetitions, and no penalty for an interrupted novena. For the general method and the history of novenas, see our guide on how to pray a novena.

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4. The St. Jude Novena: Nine Days in Full

Each day below gives a prayer drawn from St. Jude's life and from his Letter. These daily prayers were written for this page and are original; the traditional St. Jude prayer above is the one you add each day. Together they take about five minutes.

On the tenth day, thank God, whatever the outcome. If your prayer has been answered, keep your promise from the traditional prayer: honor St. Jude and encourage devotion to him. Tell one person what God has done.

5. St. Jude Prayer for Financial Help

A St. Jude prayer for financial help asks the apostle to pray for you when money trouble has become desperate: an eviction notice, a debt you cannot pay, a business on the edge, a family that cannot cover the basics. St. Jude is the right saint when every human option has run out. Pray the traditional prayer above, and add this one.

Two warnings, said plainly. First, St. Jude is not a lottery ticket. No prayer to any saint guarantees money, and anyone who tells you that a donation, a "seed offering" or a forwarded prayer will make you rich is selling the prosperity gospel, which is a lie. Second, pray and act together. Open the letters. Make the calls. Our guide to debt and money gives a ten-step debt plan and lists free, non-profit debt help.

For a full nine-day novena aimed at money worries, with St. Joseph and St. Cajetan, the patron of the unemployed, pray the novena for financial help. If your crisis is a lost job, pray the novena for a job alongside a practical job-search plan.

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6. St. Jude Prayers for Other Desperate Needs

St. Jude is invoked for every kind of hopeless case, and these short prayers can be added to the novena or prayed alone. Each is an original prayer written for this page.

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7. The History of the St. Jude Devotion: Chicago, 1929

The modern St. Jude devotion was spread across the world from one parish on the south side of Chicago. In 1929 the Claretian Missionaries' Fr. James Tort, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in South Chicago, founded what became the National Shrine of St. Jude. Many of his parishioners depended on work in the nearby steel mills, and the late 1920s were hard years for them. Fr. Tort had a personal devotion to St. Jude, who was then little known to most Catholics, and he began public devotions to him. According to the shrine's own history, the first Solemn Novena was held on 17 February 1929.

The devotion caught fire. A Solemn Novena that ended on St. Jude's feast, 28 October 1929, drew an overflow crowd, with more than a thousand people standing outside the church to hear the service. The next day, 29 October 1929, the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began. A devotion for people whose situation had become impossible found its audience in a country where a great many situations had just become impossible. Through the Depression and the Second World War, thousands attended the shrine's novenas, and petitions came in by post from across the country. The Claretians still maintain the National Shrine of St. Jude and still hold solemn novenas there every year.

The other great reason the name is famous is a hospital. The entertainer Danny Thomas, who had prayed to St. Jude early in his career, founded St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which opened in 1962 and treats children with catastrophic illness. Millions of people who have never prayed a novena know St. Jude's name because of it.

The lesson of the history is simple. The devotion grew among people who were genuinely desperate, in a parish of working families, in the worst economic years of the century. That is who this prayer is for. It is for you.

8. Newspaper Thank-Yous and the "Must Publish" Chain

Thanking St. Jude publicly is a good custom; being told you must publish or the prayer will not work is superstition. Both exist, and you need to tell them apart.

For decades, St. Jude devotees placed small notices in the classified sections of newspapers: "Thank you, St. Jude, for prayers answered." The National Shrine's own history records the custom. It grew naturally out of the last line of the traditional prayer, which promises "to gratefully encourage devotion to you." Telling others what God has done for you is biblical (Psalm 66:16, Mark 5:19). Do it freely if you want to.

Alongside it grew a chain version, still passed around on cards and social media: say a short prayer nine times a day for nine days, and "it has never been known to fail," and "publication must be promised." Refuse that version. No prayer comes with a guarantee, and publishing is never a fee you owe God. The Catechism calls it superstition to attribute the power of a prayer to "mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand" (CCC 2111). St. Jude does not need your advertisement. God does not need the right number of repetitions. Both want your trust.

If you have already promised to publish thanks, keep your promise, gladly, as gratitude. If you have been frightened by a chain message, let the fear go. Nothing bad will happen to you for breaking it. Our hub page on novenas and superstition covers the other common chains.

9. St. Jude or St. Rita: Which Saint Should I Pray To?

Pray to St. Jude or St. Rita, or both; each is a patron of impossible causes, and there is no wrong choice. Many Catholics turn to St. Jude for crises that come from outside (a diagnosis, a debt, a court case, a job market) and to St. Rita of Cascia for impossible situations at home (a violent or broken marriage, a family feud, a child in danger, a wound that needs forgiving). St. Rita lived a hard marriage, the murder of her husband and the loss of her sons, and she is called the Saint of the Impossible. Meet her in our profile of St. Rita, and find a complete nine-day St. Rita novena in our guide on how to pray a novena.

You may also find the right patron for your exact need with our free patron saint finder.

10. When the Case Stays Hopeless

Sometimes the novena ends and nothing has changed. The scan is the same. The debt is the same. The person has not come home. That does not mean you prayed badly or that your faith was too weak. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane with perfect faith, and the cup did not pass. St. Paul asked three times for relief and heard, "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9). St. Jude himself, tradition says, died a martyr. Hopeless cases are sometimes healed and sometimes carried, and God is in both.

Here is what to do. Keep praying, perhaps a second novena. Keep doing the practical things. Tell a priest or a friend how hard it is. Let others pray for you when you cannot. And if the hopelessness has turned dark, read this now.

The Church's teaching on despair and how to fight it is set out in our guide to despair, and our guide to suffering covers what God does with pain that does not go away.

11. Is It Biblical to Pray to St. Jude?

Yes, in the sense Catholics mean it: asking St. Jude to pray for you is the same act as asking a fellow Christian to pray for you, which Scripture commands. "The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (James 5:16), and the saints in heaven are the most righteous people there are. Jesus said God "is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him" (Luke 20:38), and Revelation shows the prayers of the saints rising before God's throne (Revelation 5:8; 8:3-4). The Catechism teaches that the saints "do not cease to intercede with the Father for us" (CCC 956).

Most Protestants disagree. Their concern is that Christ is the "one mediator between God and men" (1 Timothy 2:5), and that praying to saints takes something from Him. Catholics agree completely that Christ is the one mediator; asking a saint to pray for us takes nothing from Him, any more than asking your mother to pray for you does. Every prayer to St. Jude ends with God. The traditional prayer asks him to pray "that I may praise God with you and all the elect forever." For the wider debate, see our guide to the saints and to Catholic and Protestant belief.

12. After the Novena: Keep Your Promise to St. Jude

The traditional St. Jude prayer ends with a promise: to be mindful of the favor, to honor him as your patron and to encourage devotion to him. Keep it. Here is how.

1. Thank God first. Every grace comes from Him. Go to Mass in thanksgiving.
2. Tell someone. A friend, your family, your parish. That is what "encourage devotion" means.
3. Give something. Many devotees give alms in thanksgiving: to the poor, to a parish, to a children's hospital.
4. Pray for someone else's hopeless case. Pass on the novena to a person who needs it, as a gift, with no chain attached.
5. Mark 28 October in your calendar, and pray the solemn novena from 19 to 27 October next year.

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