The Memorare

The Memorare is the prayer of desperate confidence to the Blessed Virgin Mary, traditionally attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and beloved across the Catholic world for nine hundred years. It is the prayer Catholics turn to in moments of great need, when ordinary recourse to the Mother of God is intensified into the kind of urgency that the prayer's opening line itself names: Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection... was left unaided.

Origin and historical development

The attribution of the Memorare to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is traditional rather than documentary. The prayer in its current form appears in printed Catholic devotional literature from the seventeenth century, particularly in the work of Father Claude Bernard (no relation to the saint), a French priest known as the "Poor Priest" who promoted the prayer extensively in the early seventeenth century. The prayer is drawn from the Marian writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and reflects his characteristic confidence in Mary's intercession, but the precise verbal form is later than Bernard himself.¹

The substance of the prayer is what matters, and the substance is genuinely Bernardine. Saint Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs and his Marian sermons (especially In Praise of the Virgin Mother) develop the theology that underlies the Memorare: that the Mother of God hears every petition addressed to her, that her intercession with her Son is universally efficacious, and that the soul that flees to her in confidence is never abandoned.

Theological foundation

The Memorare expresses three principles of Catholic Marian theology.

First, Mary's universal intercession: the conviction that the Blessed Mother prays for every soul that turns to her, without exception. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect" (CCC 969).

Second, the soul's confidence in approaching Mary: the recognition that the Mother of the Word Incarnate is also our Mother by the gift of the Lord Jesus on the Cross. "Behold, your mother" (John 19:27). The confidence of the Memorare is not presumption; it is the proper response of the child to the Mother who has been given to him.

Third, the urgency of the petition: the recognition that there are moments in Christian life when the ordinary recourse to Mary is intensified into a kind of desperate flight. "Sinful and sorrowful", the prayer says: not pretending to be anything other than what we are, and not pretending the situation is anything other than what it is. The Memorare is for these moments.

The "flying novena" of Mother Teresa

Saint Teresa of Calcutta taught the Missionaries of Charity to pray the Memorare nine times in succession for urgent intentions, calling the practice the "flying novena" (because it is "flown" rather than spread over nine days). The flying novena has spread widely in the modern Catholic world and is used by many faithful in moments of acute crisis: a medical emergency, a sudden family conflict, an unexpected loss. The nine successive Memorares take only a few minutes and have been found, in the testimony of those who have prayed them, to be remarkably efficacious for urgent needs.

When the Memorare is prayed

The Memorare is prayed:

• In moments of acute personal crisis, alone or with family.
• In the daily prayer of many religious orders and lay Catholic faithful.
• In the closing prayers of many Catholic novenas (see the novenas hub).
• At the bedside of the seriously ill or dying.
• As the flying novena of Mother Teresa, nine times in succession for urgent needs.

Pairing the Memorare with other prayers

The Memorare is paired in Catholic practice with:

• The Ave Maria, as the brief and fuller forms of the same Marian recourse.
• The Holy Rosary, particularly when the Memorare is added at the close of the rosary as a final petition.
• The Salve Regina, in the daily Marian rhythm.
• The Surrender Novena of Don Dolindo, particularly when the desperate situation is also a cause of severe interior anxiety.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Memorare," available at newadvent.org. Father Claude Bernard, La Pratique du chapelet de l'Immaculée Conception (seventeenth century). Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the Virgin Mother (twelfth century). Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 969-975 (Mary in the order of grace). Available at vatican.va. ↩