The Most Powerful Novenas and Prayers

Novenas and other prayers are something my mom taught me, her mom taught her, her mom taught her, and so on and so forth. I’m proud to be the one my friends trust to not only recommend the most powerful novenas and prayers, but to also pray with them and share my inspiring personal testimonies.

Novenas have worked for me since before I was even born.

Before I was born, my mommy prayed the Divine Mercy and St. Joseph novenas for me. I’ve prayed them for my son, too. When she was a baby herself and taking too long to start walking, in the 1950s when polio was a justifiable fear, her grandmother would take her to the St. Anne shrine on Ursulines Avenue, to “make the steps” and put holy water on her legs. She started walking soon after, and kinda never stopped haha. One of her best friends, my Auntee Mel, who is also someone I go to for prayer advice, used to say, “You know Betty Jo walks all around the city like Jesus.'”

Believing in even the most powerful novenas is hard when you’re stubborn.

Oddly enough, I vividly remember the first time I listened to my mom and asked St. Anthony to help me find something. I was in 4th grade, upstairs coloring with my new Crayola Gem Tone crayons. My favorite, malachite, somehow went missing. Of course as a perfectionist-only-child-and-grandchild-gifted-student, I’m dying because well now the crayons are ruined because they are no longer a full set. For years my mommy had been telling me to ask St. Anthony to help me find lost items, but I thought that was silly because hellooooo I lost it, I’ll find it, who is he and why is he in it?

But I was desperate. So I prayed aloud, “St. Anthony, St. Anthony please come down. Something’s been lost and can’t be found.” And almost instantly, my mind became clear and I knew where it was! I ran downstairs to tell my mom, and of course she was glad but also a bit smug haha. “Chile St. Anthony and I so close, I call him ‘Tony,'” she would joke with her friends over the phone, helping them find their lost things.

College and adulthood are when I really started to believe in the powerful prayers and novenas, even sharing them with others.

More about St. Anthony

My family died at the beginning of my senior year of high school, so long story short the money I had was the money I had. I couldn’t phone or write home or anything, so if I lost money it was a huge issue. On my side of my little dorm room, in, essentially, a jumbo trailer, I couldn’t find my $5 bill. And I kept my room perfect, so I was shocked I’d even lost it. A few minutes into turning my side of the room upside down, I asked St. Anthony to help. Almost immediately, I knew to look in my sock drawer.

Introducing, St. Joseph

In that same dorm room, a few months later, I casually did a St. Joseph novena to ask if I should keep wasting time with this guy. I swear on the 9th day, I heard a voice say “NO” as I awakened. But did I listen? As St. Joseph said, “NO.” Dealing with that clown was one of my biggest mistakes in life, and I realized after about a year or so that, yep, I shoulda listened. Yuck.

Oddly enough, the St. Joseph novena says, “It has never been known to fail, so be sure you really want what you ask.” Whoopsy daisy! Let me also add that I’ve always been a fan of St. Joseph, because when I was in kindergarten, my friend Wardell Washington’s big sister Courtney taught me a way to know who your own special saint is. I think she learned this in CCD, at Epiphany. I don’t recall the exact steps, but I do remember that when I sat at the dining room table to do it, I heard something say, “St. Joseph,” and we been rocking ever since. St. Joseph, I think, is also the one who literally told me, “New Orleans East newspaper.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”

When I was little, I had a children’s book of saints. It was from the St. Jude Shrine gift shop, a place my mommy and I would visit often. In it, was St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who I thought was really pretty. My Maw Maw had her prayer card under her nightstand glass, too. When I was in college, pretty soon after my family died, another one of my mom’s best friends, my Auntie Linda, was telling me about the time her daughter did the novena and on the last day, a random man gave her a dozen roses.

Since then, I’ve prayed her novena so many times and every time it works somehow. What I love about it, is that she gives you “proof” it’s working, in the form of roses. Maybe you’ll smell them, see them, find one in the street, open a book to a passage about someone named “Rose.” Will you always get exactly what you pray for? Of course not. But, you’ll see the roses along the way and you’ll know she’s listening and helping you somehow.

Here are my favorite powerful novenas and never-fail prayers, in alphabetical order.