About This Novena
This novena is for anyone grieving a death, whether the funeral was last week or ten years ago. It is prayed with Our Lady of Sorrows, the Mother of Jesus as she stood at the cross, and it asks her to pray with you and for the person you lost.
A novena is nine consecutive days of prayer for one intention. Each day here has a short Scripture passage, a reflection on one part of grief, and a prayer written for this page. Scripture is quoted from the Douay-Rheims Bible; where its numbering differs from modern Bibles, both are given.
Prayer does not replace care. Grief can take your sleep, your appetite and your ability to function, and those are medical matters too. Pray this novena with your doctor, your counselor and your parish, never instead of them.
Our Lady of Sorrows and This Need
Our Lady of Sorrows is the Mother of Jesus seen from one angle: the woman who stood by the cross. The title rests on two Gospel moments. When the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple, Simeon told his mother, "And thy own soul a sword shall pierce" (Luke 2:35). Years later she stood under the cross while her Son died, and he gave her to the disciple he loved (John 19:26-27). Devotion counts seven sorrows in her life, from Simeon's prophecy to the burial of her Son, and the Church's own Office for her feast names them.
No decree makes her patroness of the grieving; the patronage is by tradition. The Catholic Encyclopedia says her feast honors "the spiritual martyrdom of the Mother of God and her compassion with the sufferings of her Divine Son." Catholics do not go to Mary under this title because she fixed her grief. They go because she had it. She buried her Son, she was given no explanation at the time, and she did not leave. Her memorial is September 15, the day after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
How to Pray This Novena
Pray once a day for nine days in a row, at a time you can keep; many people choose the evening, when the house is quiet and the loss is loudest. Each day, say the Opening Prayer, read the Scripture slowly, read the reflection, say the day's prayer, and end with "Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us." On the ninth day add the Closing Prayer.
If you miss a day, do not start over. Continue the next day; grief already makes enough things feel like failure. You can begin on any day of the year. The traditional time is the nine days before her memorial, September 6 to 14, leading up to the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15.
Opening Prayer (Pray Each Day)
Mary, Mother of Sorrows, you stood at the cross and watched your Son die. You know what I am carrying. I come to you with the name of the one I have lost: say their name. Pray with me, because I do not have many words of my own right now. Ask your Son to receive the one I love, to hold me up through these nine days, and to stay close when the prayers are finished. Lord Jesus, you wept for your friend. Do not let me grieve alone. Amen.
Day 1 — The First Shock
Scripture: "And Jesus wept. The Jews therefore said: Behold how he loved him." — John 11:35-36
Reflection: The first days after a death have a strange quality. You make phone calls and sign forms while something inside you keeps insisting this cannot be happening. Some people cry without stopping; others cannot cry at all. Both are grief.
The shortest verse in the Gospel belongs here. On the way to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, Jesus wept. The people watching drew the obvious conclusion: look how he loved him. Your tears, or your numbness, are the same evidence. They are the shape love takes when the person is gone.
Today you do not have to understand anything or feel the right thing. Show up and say the name. If even that is too much, read the verse again and let it be the whole prayer.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you wept. I have no better prayer than that today. I bring you the moment I learned that name had died, and everything since that I have done without feeling it. Stand at this grave with me, as you stood at the grave of Lazarus, and count my tears as love. Receive name into your mercy. Stay with me tonight and tomorrow. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 2 — Anger and Questions
Scripture: "Wherefore I will not spare my mouth, I will speak in the affliction of my spirit: I will talk with the bitterness of my soul." — Job 7:11
Reflection: Sooner or later grief turns into anger. At the doctors who missed it. At the disease, the driver, the person who died for not taking better care of themselves. At God, for allowing it. Many Catholics are frightened of that anger and hide it from God, as if he could not see it anyway.
Job had lost all his children. When his friend Eliphaz told him to accept God's chastising, he answered: I will not spare my mouth. Scripture kept his words. It is full of people who shouted at God, and he answered them.
Honest anger said to God's face is prayer. Today, tell him exactly what you think, out loud if you need to. Ask the questions that have no answers. He can carry them.
Prayer:
God, I am angry, and I am going to say so. I do not understand why name had to die, or why it happened the way it did, or why you did not stop it. I have said kinder things to you before, and I will again; today this is what I have. Hear it as prayer, because it is. Keep me talking to you, even like this. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 3 — The Empty Place
Scripture: "I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me back empty." — Ruth 1:21
Reflection: Grief is not only an event. It is a place that stays empty: the chair, the side of the bed, the number you cannot delete, the first Tuesday with no one to tell about your day. Visitors stop coming after the funeral. The emptiness does not.
Naomi lost her husband and then both of her sons in a foreign country. When she came home, she told the women of Bethlehem to call her Mara, which means bitter, instead of Naomi, which means beautiful. The book of Ruth does not scold her for it.
Today, name the empty places. Do not rush to fill them. Sit in one of them, and ask Mary, who went home from Calvary without her Son, to sit there with you.
Prayer:
Lord, here are the places where name used to be: name them. I went out full and I have come back empty, and I do not know what to do with the silence. Come into the empty places. Do not fill them with distractions; fill them with yourself. And when I cannot bear to sit there alone, send someone to sit with me. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 4 — Praying for the One Who Died
Scripture: "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." — 2 Maccabees 12:46
Reflection: Today the novena turns from you to them. The Catechism explains why Catholics pray for the dead. Those who die in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified are assured of their eternal salvation, yet after death they undergo a purification to reach the holiness needed for heaven (CCC 1030). The Church calls that final purification Purgatory, "entirely different from the punishment of the damned" (CCC 1031). From the beginning the Church has "offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice" (CCC 1032).
Two things follow. Pray the Church's traditional prayer for the dead: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen. And ask your parish to offer a Mass for the person who died. You can no longer call them. You can still do this.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, today I pray for name and not for myself. Whatever was unfinished in them, whatever they carried and never put down, finish it in your mercy. Give them rest. Give them light. Let the Mass I have asked for reach them, and every prayer I say for them in the years ahead. I cannot do anything else for them now. I can do this, and I will not stop. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 5 — Guilt and Things Left Unsaid
Scripture: "For if our heart reprehend us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." — 1 John 3:20
Reflection: Almost everyone who grieves finds a list of regrets waiting. The last conversation was an argument. You did not call back. Years of ordinary love disappear behind one missed phone call, and the mind replays it at three in the morning.
St. John knew that the heart accuses. His answer is that God is greater than your heart and knows all things: the whole story, including the years the regret has erased, and what you could not have known.
Say the unsaid things today, out loud, to God, with the person's name. If some of it is real sin and not grief wearing the mask of guilt, take it to Confession. Then let God, who knows all things, hold the rest.
Prayer:
Lord, my heart accuses me. Here is what I wish I had said to name, and what I wish I had not: say it. You were there for all of it, and you know what I have forgotten or never saw. You are greater than my heart. I give you the words I did not say; carry them to name. Forgive what needs forgiving, and quiet the rest. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 6 — The Body and Sleep
Scripture: "Arise, eat: for thou hast yet a great way to go." — 1 Kings 19:7 (3 Kings 19:7 in the Douay-Rheims)
Reflection: Grief lives in the body. You cannot sleep, or you sleep all day. Food has no taste. None of that is a lack of faith. It is what a body does when it is carrying a loss.
The prophet Elijah, worn out and afraid, lay down under a tree in the desert and asked God to let him die. An angel touched him, told him to get up and eat, and let him sleep again. Then the angel came back with the same order, because the road ahead was long.
Today, do what the angel said. Eat something, even a little. Go to bed at a decent hour. If weeks have passed and you still cannot sleep or eat, call your doctor. That is not giving up on prayer. It is the angel's instruction, carried out.
Prayer:
Lord, my body is tired in a way that sleep does not fix. I bring you the nights I lie awake and the meals I skip. You sent an angel to a man who wanted to die and told him to eat and rest. Tell me the same. Give me sleep tonight, and the humility to see a doctor if I need one. Tomorrow, help me get up again. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 7 — The People Still Around You
Scripture: "Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep." — Romans 12:15
Reflection: Grief narrows the world to one absence. Meanwhile the living are still here: children who lost a parent and need you to be theirs, a spouse who grieves differently from you, friends who say the wrong thing because nobody knows the right one.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was widowed at twenty-nine with five small children and later buried two of her daughters. After her daughter Anna Maria died, she wrote that for three months she was "so often expecting to lose my senses." She leaned on the people God sent her and kept getting up for the children who were left.
Today, let one person weep with you. Answer the call. Accept the meal. And if others are leaning on you, ask for the grace to be present to them without pretending you are fine.
Prayer:
Lord, I have been so turned toward the one who is gone that I have hardly seen the ones who are here. Today I pray for them by name: say their names. Send me people who will sit with me and not try to fix me. Where others lean on me, hold me up so that I can hold them. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 8 — The Hope of the Resurrection
Scripture: "And we will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again; even so them who have slept through Jesus, will God bring with him." — 1 Thessalonians 4:12-13 (4:13-14 in most modern Bibles)
Reflection: St. Paul does not say do not be sorrowful. He says do not be sorrowful like people who have no hope. Christians grieve; the difference is what they believe about the grave.
The Catholic faith stands on one claim: Jesus died and rose again, in his body, and those who died in him will be raised too. The person you buried will be raised, and you may hope to see them again. Jesus said it to Martha, whose brother Lazarus had died: "he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live" (John 11:25).
Hope does not cancel grief; let it stand next to it. Say out loud what you believe about where name is going, even if you only half believe it this week. Faith said through tears is still faith.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you died and you rose. I stake everything on that. I believe that name, who died in you, will rise in you, and that the body I buried is not the end of them. Hold my grief and my hope together. When the grave feels like the last word, remind me that you have already spoken it. Bring name with you when you come. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Day 9 — Standing at the Cross with Mary
Scripture: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." — John 19:25-27
Reflection: On the last day, go to Calvary. Mary did not collapse there. She stood. She did not understand yet, she was given no explanation, and she did not leave. Only a few of his followers stayed to the end, and his mother was one of them.
Then Jesus, dying, gave her and the disciple he loved to each other. The Church has always read that moment as the gift of Mary to all his followers: as she mothered him, she now mothers them. The disciple took her into his home. Take her into yours.
The Stabat Mater, the old hymn of her sorrows, asks her for one thing: "By the cross with thee to stay; / There with thee to weep and pray." You have done that for nine days. She does not leave.
Prayer:
Mary, you stood at the cross and did not leave. Stand with me now. I have prayed for nine days, and the grief is still here; so are you. Take me into your home as you took the beloved disciple, and take name into your prayers. Teach me to stand as you stood, without understanding and without leaving. And when my own hour comes, be there too. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, for nine days I have brought you the name of name and the weight of losing them: the shock, the anger, the empty places, the regrets, the sleepless nights. I have asked for their eternal rest, and I ask it again now. You wept for your friend Lazarus; your mother stood at your cross and did not leave. Let the two of you stay with me when the novena is finished and the grief is not. Give me your peace. Keep name in your light until the day you raise them up. Amen.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
When You Need More Than Prayer
This novena is spiritual support, not treatment.
Your parish. Ask the priest to offer a Mass for the person who died, and ask whether the parish or diocese runs a bereavement group, where you can say the same things more than once to people who do not flinch.
A doctor. Grief that does not lift, or that keeps you from eating, sleeping or working for weeks, is a reason to see your doctor. That is not a failure of faith.
A counselor. A grief counselor can help when you are stuck. Catholic Charities and diocesan family life offices can often point you to one, including Catholic counselors who work within the faith.
If you are thinking of harming yourself or of ending your life, do not wait for the novena to finish. In the United States, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Elsewhere, call your local emergency number. Tell someone tonight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I pray this novena for the person who died?
Yes. The Church teaches that prayer for the dead reaches them and helps them (CCC 1032), and Day 4 is given to it entirely. Add the Eternal Rest prayer to any day, and have a Mass offered for them at your parish. Praying for the dead does not mean you doubt where they are. It is the last thing you can still do for them.
Is it a sin to be angry at God when someone dies?
Feeling angry is not a sin; it is what a wounded heart does. What matters is what you do with it. Telling God honestly that you are angry, as Job did, is prayer. Nursing the anger in silence until you stop praying is the danger. If anger has led you to say or do things that trouble your conscience, take them to Confession.
What if I miss a day of the novena?
Keep going. Pray the next day where you left off; the point of nine days is persistence, not perfection. Some people insist a novena must restart after a missed day, but that is custom, not Church law. For someone grieving, whose days already blur together, a novena that forgives a missed day is the right one. God heard the days you prayed.
Sources Used on This Page
- Sacred Scripture: Douay-Rheims Bible, public domain, at drbo.org — John 11, Job 7, Ruth 1, 2 Machabees 12, 1 John 3, 3 Kings 19, Romans 12, 1 Thessalonians 4, John 19, Luke 2
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1030–1032, "The Final Purification, or Purgatory": vatican.va, reached through the Catechism index
- Our Lady of Sorrows on this site, with its sources: the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), Franciscan Media, and Edward Caswall's 1849 translation of the Stabat Mater
- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton on this site, drawing on the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and Franciscan Media
- The Eternal Rest prayer (Requiem aeternam), a traditional prayer of the Church
Related Guidance
- Patron Saint for Grief and Mourning — the saints Catholics turn to after a death
- Prayer for Grief — one short prayer for right now
- Bible Verses for Grief — Scripture for when the words will not come
- Catholic Guidance for Grief After Losing a Loved One — the full issue page
- Our Lady of Sorrows — her story, feast day, patronage and the Stabat Mater
- Catholic Funeral and Mourning Prayers — the Eternal Rest prayer and the prayers of the funeral rites
- What Catholics Believe About Praying for the Dead — purgatory, Masses for the dead and why it helps