Our Lady of Lourdes Novena: 9 Days with Bernadette at the Grotto
On February 11 the Church keeps the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. On that day in 1858, in a hollow of the rock of Massabielle outside the small town of Lourdes, in the south of France, a young lady in white appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a poor girl of fourteen who could not yet read. She appeared to her eighteen times between February and July, and on March 25 gave her name: I am the Immaculate Conception.
This page gives the complete nine-day novena to Our Lady of Lourdes, prayed from February 2 to February 10, with a free printable booklet of the same nine days. Each day follows one of the apparitions, from the first morning at the grotto to the last time Bernadette saw the Lady, across the river, and each is shown by the stained glass that tells it in Lourdes.
✦ The Novena as a Free Printable Booklet
The nine days below are also a booklet you can print at home: eleven illuminated pages, one stained glass window and one short reading for each day, the prayer of the novena, and a line on every page to write your own intention. It is free, and there is nothing to fill in.
Download for US LetterDownload for A4
PDF, eleven pages, ready to print.
How to Pray the Our Lady of Lourdes Novena
A novena is nine days of the same asking: not nine different prayers, but one request carried patiently, in imitation of the nine days the apostles prayed with Mary before Pentecost. How to pray it: each day, begin with the opening prayer, read the verse and the short reading of the day, then close with the prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes below, naming your intention. You may add one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Glory Be.
Lourdes is the place of the sick. If you are praying for someone who is ill, keep their name with you all nine days. If you begin late, begin anyway: nine days that end after the feast are still nine days.
Opening Prayer (every day)
O God, who by the immaculate conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling for thy Son: grant to us who honour her apparition at Lourdes health of mind and body. Amen.
This is the collect of the traditional Mass of February 11, the feast of the Apparition of the Immaculate Virgin at Lourdes, in our own English translation. It asks for health of mind and body.
The Nine Days
Day 1: The Lady in White
At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Matthew 11:25
Bernadette Soubirous was fourteen, often ill, and could not yet read; her family lived in one room of a former prison. On February 11, 1858, she went with her sister and a friend to gather wood at the rock of Massabielle. As she took off her stockings to cross a stream, she heard a sound like wind and saw, in a hollow of the rock, a lady in white with a blue sash and a yellow rose on each foot. Bernadette took out her rosary, and they prayed it together.
She came first to the least of the town. Ask her today to find you where you feel smallest.
Day 2: Holy Water
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God.
1 John 4:1
Her mother forbade her to go back. On Sunday, February 14, she went anyway, with a little bottle of holy water. When the Lady appeared, Bernadette sprinkled the water toward her: if she came from God, let her stay. The Lady smiled and bowed her head.
Testing a gift is not the same as refusing it. Ask for a clear heart, able to tell what comes from God from what only looks like it.
Day 3: Would You Be So Kind
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
On February 18 two women of the town came with her, carrying pen and paper, and asked the Lady to write her name. It is not necessary, she answered. Then she spoke to the poorest girl in Lourdes with a courtesy no one else had shown her: Would you be kind enough to come here for a fortnight? And she added: I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the other.
Ask today for the grace to keep a promise when it costs, and for a hope that looks past this world.
Day 4: Penance
Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments.
Joel 2:12-13
By Wednesday, February 24, hundreds of people stood at the rock. The Lady’s message that day was short: Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners. Kiss the ground as an act of penance for sinners. Bernadette moved forward on her knees and kissed the earth, and the people around her did the same.
Name one person you have stopped praying for, and pray for them today.
Day 5: The Spring
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.
John 4:14
The next morning the Lady told her to go and drink at the spring and wash there. There was no spring, only a little mud. Bernadette scratched at the ground, drank on the fourth attempt and smeared her face, while the crowd said she had gone mad. It is for sinners, she answered. Within days clear water was running, and pilgrims still drink it and wash in it.
Ask God for living water in the place in you that looks like nothing but mud.
Day 6: The First Healing
The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.
John 5:7
In the night of March 1, Catherine Latapie walked seven kilometres to the grotto. Her arm had been crippled since a fall; she plunged it into the spring, and her arm and hand moved again. In 1862 the bishop declared her healing miraculous, with six others. The Church has since recognised seventy-two at Lourdes.
Bring before her today, by name, the sick you love, and anyone who has no one to carry them to the water.
Day 7: Go and Tell the Priests
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it.
Haggai 1:8
On March 2 the Lady gave her a message for others: Go and tell the priests that people are to come here in procession and to build a chapel here. The parish priest, Father Peyramale, received her roughly. He wanted the Lady’s name, and a sign: let the wild rose under her feet flower in the middle of winter. Bernadette carried the message all the same.
Ask today for the courage to pass on what you have been given, even to people who may not believe you.
Day 8: I Am the Immaculate Conception
Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
The Song of Solomon 4:7
On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette asked her name once more. The Lady opened her arms, joined her hands as if in prayer, and said in the language of Lourdes: Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou, I am the Immaculate Conception. Bernadette did not know the words, and ran to the priest repeating them so as not to forget. Pius IX had declared the dogma four years before. The rose did not flower, but the priest was shaken.
Ask her today to keep you close to the grace that kept her.
Day 9: More Beautiful Than Ever
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
The authorities closed the grotto with a fence. On July 16 Bernadette knelt on the other bank of the river and saw the Lady one last time: more beautiful than ever, she said. In 1866 she entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers. She never saw Lourdes again, was ill for much of her life, and died there on April 16, 1879, at thirty-five. She was canonised in 1933, and since 1993 the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes has also been the World Day of the Sick.
Tomorrow is her feast. Bring back the request you have carried nine days, and leave it with her.
Closing Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes (every day)
Our Lady of Lourdes, who didst ask Bernadette to pray for sinners and to drink at the spring, look upon me who come to thee in this need, and carry to thy Son the thing I now name before thee: (here make your request).
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us. Saint Bernadette, pray for us. Amen.
The invocation O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee is the prayer of the Miraculous Medal, given in Paris in 1830, twenty-eight years before Lourdes; the Lady of the grotto would name herself with the same words: the Immaculate Conception.
✦ Free Christian & Catholic Printables
Love this one? Find it, and our complete collection of illuminated prayer cards, novenas and Scripture printables, ready to print, free, in one place.
When to Pray the Novena in 2027
The novena runs from February 2, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, to February 10, so that it ends on the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11. In 2027 it begins on Tuesday, February 2, and its ninth day falls on Ash Wednesday, February 10: the novena of the Lady who asked for penance ends on the first day of Lent. To go on through the forty days, follow our Lenten calendar, one great painting a day. The feast follows on Thursday, February 11.
Since 1993, February 11 has also been the World Day of the Sick, instituted by Pope John Paul II in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes. The novena may of course be prayed at any other time of need.
The Images of This Novena
No painter of the great centuries could paint Lourdes: the apparitions took place in 1858. The images that tell the story were made in the decades that followed, for the shrine itself. The days of this novena are illustrated by the stained glass windows of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, built above the grotto and consecrated in 1876, whose medallions follow the apparitions one by one. The copies of these windows at the Musée Sainte-Bernadette in Lourdes carry the date of each scene.
The cover of the booklet is The Apparition of the Virgin to Bernadette, painted by Antonio Ciseri in 1879, the year Bernadette died, and now in the church of the Sacro Cuore in Florence. Ciseri painted the Lady as Bernadette described her, in white with a blue sash, a rosary on her arm and roses at her feet. More of his work, including his famous Ecce Homo, is gathered on our page of Antonio Ciseri paintings. For the dogma the Lady named, see our article on Murillo’s Immaculate Conception.
If you love novenas, you may also want our Our Lady of Guadalupe novena for December, or the Saint Jude novena for causes that seem lost.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Our Lady of Lourdes novena start?
It starts on February 2 and ends on February 10, so that the ninth day falls on the eve of her feast on February 11. In 2027 it begins on Tuesday, February 2, and ends on Ash Wednesday, February 10.
What did Our Lady say at Lourdes?
Her words to Bernadette were few. On February 18, 1858 she asked: Would you be kind enough to come here for a fortnight? and added: I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the other. On February 24 she asked for penance and prayer for sinners, on February 25 she told Bernadette to drink at the spring and wash there, on March 2 she asked the priests for a procession and a chapel, and on March 25 she said: I am the Immaculate Conception.
What does I am the Immaculate Conception mean?
It means that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her existence, by the grace of God and in view of the merits of Christ. Pope Pius IX had defined it as a dogma of the Catholic faith in 1854. Bernadette did not know the expression, and repeated it all the way to the parish priest so as not to forget it. The words troubled him deeply: a girl who could not read had brought him the exact language of a dogma.
Why is February 11 the World Day of the Sick?
Because Lourdes has been a place of pilgrimage for the sick since 1858, when the spring found by Bernadette began to flow. Pope John Paul II instituted the World Day of the Sick in 1992 and set it on February 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes; it was first kept in 1993. The Church has recognised seventy-two miraculous healings at Lourdes.
Can I pray the Lourdes novena for someone who is sick?
Yes, and it is the most common intention of this novena. Name the person in the silence of the closing prayer each day. The opening prayer, the collect of the feast, itself asks for health of mind and body.
Is there a printable Our Lady of Lourdes novena?
Yes. The nine days on this page are also a free booklet of eleven illuminated pages, in US Letter and A4, with one stained glass window and one short reading for each day and a line to write your intention. The download links are at the top of this page.
