Day 9: Confidence in the Mother

The ninth and last day of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena closes with the disposition that the icon itself communicates from the eyes of the Mother to every soul that contemplates it: confidence. The Catholic devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help is, at its core, the formation of the soul in the maternal confidence proper to a child of Mary. Today we close the novena with thanksgiving and with a renewed commitment to this confidence.

Today's invocation

O Mother of Perpetual Help, with the greatest confidence I come before your sacred image to implore your help. (Continue with the full opening prayer.)

Today's meditation

The closing of every Catholic novena is the moment of thanksgiving. Whatever the visible state of the matter for which the novena has been prayed, the Lord through Mary has been at work in the soul over the past nine days, and the proper Catholic response is to give thanks before any further petition is made.

The Catholic devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in its fullest form, is not a one-time novena but a Marian discipline of the lifelong Catholic life. The icon is the visible companion of this discipline: placed in a place of honor in the Catholic home, contemplated daily, prayed before in moments of joy and sorrow alike, and bequeathed to the next generation as the Marian pledge of the family.

Today's intention and act of thanksgiving

Bring to the Mother of Perpetual Help one final time the principal intention you have been carrying through these nine days. Whatever the visible state of the matter at the close of the novena, give thanks for her maternal attention.

A traditional Catholic act of thanksgiving and entrustment:

O Mother of Perpetual Help, I thank you for the prayers you have offered with me and for me through these nine days. I commit my intention finally to your hands and trust your motherly care of it. I promise to honor you as my Mother, to pray daily, and to encourage devotion to you among my friends and family. Mary, my Mother, my hope, I am yours; do with me as you will. Amen.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual writers of the modern era have observed three patterns in the answer to the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena. First, in some cases the answer comes during the nine days themselves, with a visible resolution of the matter and a clear sense of Mary's intervention. Second, in some cases the answer comes in the months following, often through unexpected channels (a phone call, an opportunity, a healing, a reconciliation) that the soul recognizes only in retrospect as the Mother's work. Third, in some cases the visible resolution is not given in this life, but the soul receives instead the deeper Catholic gift: the steady, durable maternal protection that carries it through the unresolved difficulty until the end.

In all three patterns, the Catholic doctrine of Marian intercession is confirmed: Mary hears, and her Son answers through her, in the way that is best for the soul that has prayed.

Practical follow-through

In the days and weeks following the close of this novena, consider:

• Placing or renewing an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in your home, in a place of honor (the family room, the kitchen, the bedroom).
• Adopting the Wednesday devotion as a weekly Catholic discipline (whether in attendance at a Wednesday parish devotion or as a private weekly prayer).
• Praying the Holy Rosary daily under her protection.
• Reading Saint Alphonsus Liguori's Glories of Mary (one of the foundational modern Catholic Marian classics).
• Praying this novena annually in the nine days leading up to her feast on 27 June.

Closing prayers

For the broader theological context, see the Communion of Saints, Mary, Mother of God, and other novenas in the novenas hub.

Pray three times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be, and the closing invocation:

Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.