There is a particular kind of tired that comes from praying the same desperate prayer over and over. Maybe you have prayed it for yourself. Maybe you have prayed it for a son, a daughter, or a spouse who cannot seem to stop.
A novena gives that prayer somewhere to go. Instead of one frantic plea, you get nine quiet days, a little structure, and the company of people who have walked this road before you.
This guide covers what a novena is, which Catholic saints people turn to for alcoholism and addiction, and the full text of the two novenas prayed most often. You do not need perfect faith to begin. You only need to show up.
What Is a Novena, and Why Nine Consecutive Days?
A novena is a prayer said across nine consecutive days for one specific intention. The word comes from the Latin word for nine, and the practice traces back to the nine days the apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary spent waiting for the Holy Spirit.
Nine days of prayer does something that a single prayer cannot. It builds a rhythm, and rhythm is exactly what early recovery is missing.
Novena prayers can be said out loud or silently, alone or with other people, at any hour that you can actually keep. The point is not to earn anything. Most people describe it as a way of staying near the God of life long enough to hear something back.
The Patron Saint of Addiction Novena: Who You Are Praying To
Several novenas within the Catholic tradition are said for people struggling with alcohol and other drugs. These are the ones that come up most.
Venerable Matt Talbot. An Irish laborer who got sober in 1884 and stayed sober more than forty years. The most frequently prayed of the group.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe. A Franciscan friar and martyr, invoked for various forms of addiction and compulsion.
Saint Monica. Prayed by family members, especially mothers.
Saint Jude Thaddeus. The patron of hopeless causes and desperate times.
Our Lady of Lourdes. Not specific to addiction, but long associated with the healing power of body and spirit.
Saint Rita of Cascia. Another advocate for impossible situations, often prayed by people supporting someone they love.
The rest of this guide walks through the two prayed most often, then offers shorter options for days when nine feels like too many.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Martyr of Charity
When people search for a patron saint of addiction, the name that comes up most often is Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Polish Franciscan friar and a faithful follower of St. Francis of Assisi who founded the Militia Immaculata movement, placing his work in the service of our Heavenly Queen.
He is remembered less for what he wrote than for how he died.
A Franciscan Friar in the Horrors of a Concentration Camp
During World War II, Kolbe was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. When a fellow prisoner was condemned to die, Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place, and the man he saved was very nearly a total stranger to him.
He spent his last days in a starvation bunker and died from the injection of a deadly drug. Few of us can imagine such ardent charity, or an intense degree of love that never stopped to calculate the cost.
That ultimate sacrifice is why the Church holds him up as an example of unselfish love. Greater love has no one than this, and countless souls have taken his story to heart since.
Why His Story Speaks to the Work of Recovery
Kolbe died from a substance forced into his body inside a place designed to break him. People who know the chains of addiction from the inside often say his story lands differently than a tidy sermon does.
He knew captivity. He knew what it costs to hand your life over to something larger than fear.
That is a different conversation than the one about the underlying root causes of addiction, though both matter. Prayer works on the part clinical language cannot reach.
Traditional Prayers for His Powerful Intercession
Two versions of the novena seeking the intercession of St. Maximilian Kolbe circulate most widely. One is prayed by the person in recovery, the other by the people who love them. Say one of them daily for nine days.
For the Person in the Grip of Alcohol or Drugs
First Prayer
God of mercy, I bless You in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who ministered to all who come to Him. Give Your strength to me, Your servant, bound by the chains of addiction. Enfold me in Your love and restore me to the freedom of God’s children. Lord, look with compassion on all those who have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of Your unfailing mercy, and strengthen them in the work of recovery. To those who care for me, grant patient understanding and a love that perseveres. I ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Second Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, who said, “Greater love than this no man has that a man lay down his life for his friends,” through the intercession of St. Maximilian Kolbe whose life illustrated such love, we beseech you to grant us our petitions . . . (mention addiction recovery)
Through the Militia of the Immaculata movement, which Maximilian founded, he spread a fervent devotion to Our Lady worldwide. He gave up his life for a total stranger and loved his persecutors, giving us an example of unselfish love for all men, a love that was inspired by true devotion to Mary.
Grant, O Lord Jesus, that we too may give ourselves entirely without reserve to the love and service of our Heavenly Queen in order to better love and serve our fellowman in imitation of your humble servant, Maximilian. Amen.
Third Prayer
In the name of the Father, you made St. Maximilian Kolbe one of the foremost Catholic evangelists of the difficult twentieth century. Through the Militia of the Immaculata movement which he founded, he implanted the truths of the Immaculate Conception and your merciful plan for us all in countless hearts, thus moving them to full conversion in faith and hope, to perfect obedience and union with the Heart of Jesus, and to complete observance of the New Covenant.
You made him fruitful through carrying the cross of suffering with dignity and hope, loving his persecutors, and giving up his life for a total stranger. Through his intercession grant us (recovery from addiction). Give us dignity and hope in our sufferings and sacrifices, and if it will glorify you, heal us of all our infirmities, both physical and spiritual.
Finally, enable us to follow his example of effective Catholic evangelism with Mary for the return to you of all the masses of mankind, and of every individual person, family, society, and culture of our time and of all time to come. Amen.
Fourth Prayer
O St. Maximilian Kolbe, faithful follower of St. Francis, inflamed by the love of God you dedicated your life to the practice of virtue and to works of the apostolate. Look down with favor upon us who devoutly confide in your intercession. Having consecrated yourself to the Immaculate Virgin Mary, you inspired countless souls to a holy life and various forms of the apostolate in order to do good to others and to spread the kingdom of God. Obtain for us the grace by our lives and labors to draw many souls to Christ.
In your close conformity to our Divine Savior, you reached such an intense degree of love that you offered your life to save a fellow prisoner. Implore God that we, inflamed by such ardent charity, may through our living faith and our apostolic works witness Christ to others, and thus merit to join you in the blessed vision of God.
Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, your life of love and labor for souls was sacrificed amid the horrors of a concentration camp and hastened to its end by an injection of a deadly drug.
Look with compassion upon all those who are now entrapped in addictions to drugs, alcohol, and other harmful behaviors and whom we now recommend to your powerful intercession:
(Silently remember all who are in need of healing from addictions and those who have entrusted themselves to the novena.)
Dear St. Maximilian, Priest of God, intercede with Christ for mercy for all who are trapped in the bonds of any addiction. Devout servant of the Immaculate Mother of God, beg Her to crush with her heel the demons of addiction that afflict me and our brothers and sisters. Obtain for us the grace never to withhold our love and understanding, not to fail in persevering prayer that the enslaving bonds of addiction may be broken and that full health and freedom may be restored to me and all for whom we pray.
For Family Members Who Are Watching and Waiting
First Prayer
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, your life of love and labor for souls was sacrificed amid the horrors of a concentration camp and hastened to its end by an injection of a deadly drug. Extend your compassion upon (name) who is now entrapped in addiction to drugs and whom we now commit to your powerful intercession. Having offered your own life to preserve that of a family man, we turn to you with trust, confident that you will understand and help. Obtain for us the grace never to withhold our love and understanding for (name), nor to fail in persevering prayer that the bonds of addiction may be broken and that full health and freedom may be restored to (name) whom we love. We will never cease to be grateful to God who has helped us and heard your prayer for us. Amen.
Second Prayer
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, the most faithful son of St. Francis, the beggar of Assisi, inflamed with love for God, journeyed through life practicing heroic virtues and performing true apostolic deeds. Turn your gaze on us who honor you and have recourse to you.
Radiating with the light of the Immaculate Virgin, you brought countless souls to holiness and introduced them to various apostolic endeavors for the victory of good over evil thereby extending the Kingdom of God throughout the whole world. Obtain for us the light and the strength we need to do good and to bring many souls to Christ.
Perfectly conformed and united with Jesus Christ, our Lord, and Savior, you achieved such a high degree of love of neighbor that you were able to freely offer your life in exchange for a fellow prisoner in witness of true evangelical charity. Beg the Lord on our behalf that, filled with the same fire of love, our faith, and good example might also bring others to Christ and secure for us the reward of everlasting life, where we shall praise Him together with you in eternal glory. Amen.
Third Prayer
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, you gave your life so that a family might not be deprived of a husband and father. By your heroic martyrdom of charity, teach us that the value of family life is worth our sacrifices also. Just as you found in Mary the channel of those graces that strengthened you to be faithful to her Son, help us to rejoice also in her who was given to us as a mother by Jesus from the cross. Be with us, St. Maximilian, as we pray for the special needs of our family (say addiction recovery here). Amen.
Say any one of these for nine days, then close with the Hail Mary three times and the Glory Be.
A powerful intercessor does not do the work for you. He keeps you company while you do it.
Venerable Matt Talbot and the Sober Catholic Way
The novena to Matt Talbot is the one said most often for alcohol addiction specifically. It stands as a beacon of hope for people who have tried to stop on their own and could not.
The Legacy of a Family Man Who Got Sober Alone
Matt Talbot was born in Dublin in 1856 and took his first drink around age twelve. By sixteen, he was drinking heavily, and by his late twenties, he was pawning his belongings to keep drinking.
At twenty-eight, penniless and out of options, he took a pledge of sobriety. He kept it for the rest of his life, more than forty years, decades before Alcoholics Anonymous existed.
He filled the space drinking had taken with prayer, scripture, and charitable work. His own life experiences make him a natural companion for anyone building a sober life, and many describe following his lead as a sober Catholic way of living one day at a time.
The Catholic Church declared him Venerable in 1975. He has not been canonized yet, so when people call him the patron saint of alcoholics, that is affection rather than formal designation.
The Nine Day Matt Talbot Novena
The novena opens with a prayer for the person who is struggling. It is the same prayer that opens the Kolbe novena above, worded here for someone praying on another person’s behalf.
Day One
God of mercy, we bless You in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who ministered to all who came to Him.
Give Your strength to (name of the person dealing with addiction), Your servant, bound by the chains of addiction.
Enfold him or her in Your love and restore him or her to the freedom of God’s children.
Lord, look with compassion on all those who have lost their health and freedom.
Restore to them the assurance of Your unfailing mercy, and strengthen them in the work of recovery.
To those who care for them, grant patient understanding and a love that perseveres.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Days Two Through Eight
Repeat the Day One prayer, then sit with someone specific. Pray for that person’s strength, faith, and endurance, whether they are still drinking or somewhere in the long middle of getting well.
If you are the one struggling, pray for yourself. That counts.
Day Nine
The final day is given to the Prayer for the Canonization of Venerable Matt Talbot.
O Lord, in your servant, Matt Talbot,
You have given us a wonderful example of triumph over addiction, of devotion to duty, and of lifelong reverence of the Holy Sacrament.
May his life of prayer and penance give us the courage to take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Father, if it be Your will that Your beloved servant should be glorified by Your Church, make known by Your heavenly favors the power he enjoys in Your sight.
We ask this through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.
Then pray for whatever you need, in your own words. Follow that with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be, said once each.
Close by saying three times:
Venerable Matt Talbot, pray for us.
Praying for another person has a way of loosening something in the one doing the praying.
Other Saints and Powerful Intercessors to Pray With
Different stories reach different hearts. If neither novena above fits, one of these might.
Saint Monica, Saint Augustine, and Praying for Family Members
Saint Monica prayed for her son for seventeen years while he lived a life she could not approve of. That son became Saint Augustine, whose writings on grace and appetite still get read in recovery circles.
St. Monica is the patron of wives, mothers, and anyone who loves a person with alcohol use disorder from the outside. Her gift was patient understanding rather than control.
If you are a parent, a sibling, or a spouse, a novena to St. Monica may be the one that fits. St. Augustine, for his part, is proof that a story is never finished.
Saint Jude Thaddeus in Desperate Times
Saint Jude Thaddeus is the patron of hopeless causes, which is exactly how families in need of help often describe their situation. A nine day Saint Jude novena is one of the most commonly prayed novenas in the world, and St. Jude medals turn up in a lot of recovery pockets.
Nothing about your loved one is a lost cause. But in desperate times it helps to pray with someone whose whole job is refusing to write people off.
Our Lady of Lourdes, Saint Rita, and Mary, Undoer of Knots
Devotion to Mary as the Undoer of Knots asks the Immaculate Virgin Mary, preserved from original sin, to patiently untie what has gotten tangled. Addiction ties knots in families that no one can pull apart by force.
Our Lady of Lourdes is invoked for physical and spiritual healing, and Saint Rita of Cascia for situations that look impossible from where you are standing.
Kolbe’s own fervent devotion to Mary shaped everything he did. Whether your devotion is true devotion or something you are still testing out, the Mother of Mercy is a gentle place to start.
A Nine Day Prayer Plan in Plain Language
If the traditional wording feels distant, here is the same nine days in plainer words. Neither version is more correct than the other.
How to Pray Each Day
Pick a time you can actually keep, usually morning or just before bed. Begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, honoring the Holy Trinity as you make the sign of the cross.
Read the day’s intention slowly, then sit with it for a minute or two. Close with the Our Father and the Hail Mary, which asks Holy Mary, Mother of God, to pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
If you miss a day, start again where you left off. This is a practice, not a test.
Nine Daily Intentions You Can Say in Your Own Words
Day One: Honesty. O Lord Jesus Christ, I stop pretending today. Show me the truth about my own struggles, and let me not look away from it.
Day Two: Willingness. Loving God, I do not have the strength to fix this. Make me willing to be helped, in imitation of your humble servant Maximilian.
Day Three: Freedom. Father, break the enslaving bonds of addiction that hold me or the person I love. Let your healing power reach what no one else can reach.
Day Four: Courage. God of life, tomorrow frightens me. Give me the quiet assurance of your loving presence when the craving or the worry comes.
Day Five: Mercy. Lord, I have hurt people. Grant me the assurance of your unfailing mercy, and grant it to those I have wronged as well.
Day Six: Healing. Father, restore me to full health of body, mind, and spirit. Draw me into close conformity with your Son, in the name of your Son I pray.
Day Seven: Service. Lord, teach me the practice of virtue in small things, and shape an ordinary day into a holy life. Let me be a good example to someone who is still afraid to ask for help.
Day Eight: Love. God, Maximilian showed the world such love that it still speaks eighty years later. Give me a life of love that is bigger than my own comfort.
Day Nine: Gratitude. Father, thank you for one more day. By God’s grace, let me carry the good news of it to someone else, and let my small share of the kingdom of God start right here at home.
Short Prayers for When a Full Novena Feels Like Too Much
Some days you cannot manage a full novena. Say one of these instead, as often as you need to.
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. We have a longer version of the Serenity Prayer if you want the full text.
Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. Help us overcome our struggles and grant us strength to resist temptation.
Prayer to St. Jude Thaddeus
St. Jude, patron of those in despair, I ask for your intercession in my time of need. Help me find hope and healing as I face my struggles with addiction.
Prayer to St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Maximilian Kolbe, guide us in our fight against addiction. Help us conquer our weaknesses and lead us to the path of recovery and freedom.
Prayer to St. Rita of Cascia
St. Rita, advocate for impossible causes, intercede for us as we battle our addictions. Grant us the strength and courage to overcome our weaknesses.
A Prayer for Anyone Still Struggling
God of mercy, grant me the strength to overcome my addiction. Help me embrace healing and restore me to a life of freedom. I seek Your guidance and grace in my journey to recovery.
There is no set book of rules here. A prayer said badly in a parking lot counts as much as one said properly in a pew.
Praying Through Various Forms of Compulsion
Novenas are prayed for various forms of struggle, not just one. People pray them for drug addiction, for alcohol, for sex addiction, and for compulsive overeating.
Others turn to a mental illness novena when depression or anxiety sits underneath everything else. The prayers above work for any of these. Change the words to name what is actually happening in your life.
Some people also pray the Stations of the Cross alongside a novena, especially during Lent. Our collection of saints’ prayers for drug addictions and recovery covers more of these by name.
Where Prayer Meets Treatment on the Recovery Journey
Prayer belongs next to treatment, not instead of it. The love of God shows up in a detox bed, in a counselor’s office, and in a folding chair at a meeting.
Get psychological help if you need it. Take the medication if it is prescribed. None of that competes with the work of recovery you are doing on your knees.
If outpatient care is not enough structure, residential treatment Arizona programs are one place people start. The right program is usually the one you can actually get to, close to the people who will visit you.
Young people especially need to hear that asking for help is not a failure of faith. It is faith in action.
A Beacon of Hope for the Difficult Time You Are In
If you are in a difficult time right now, you are not behind. Nine days from today you will have prayed nine times, and something in you will have shifted, even if the circumstances have not.
Recovery is not a straight line, and no novena removes the work ahead. But it can be the thing you hold on the days when hope is the only thing you can hold.
Start tonight. Say the first prayer badly. Then say it again tomorrow.
For more on this, read our wider look at prayers for addiction and recovery in Catholic spirituality or our collection of Bible verses about addiction.
This article is for education and personal reflection only and is not medical advice. If you or someone you love is struggling with alcohol or other drugs, please reach out to a qualified professional or a local recovery group. If you are in crisis, contact the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
Sober Speak was founded by John M. as a place for honest conversation about recovery, the kind of talk that happens in meetings but rarely makes it online. New episodes drop every Friday, featuring people sharing their experience with the 12 steps, sobriety, and the work of staying well.
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