St. Jude Prayer for Impossible Causes and Novena
You did not come here out of curiosity. Something has gone wrong, and it has gone wrong badly, and you have run out of ideas. Maybe it is a diagnosis, a marriage, a child, money, or a thing you cannot say out loud. You want a prayer to Saint Jude because he is the one people turn to when nothing else has worked.
That is allowed. The Church has never told people in trouble to keep their voices down. This page gives you the traditional prayer and a nine day novena you can actually keep, even if you are tired, even if you miss a day, even if your faith feels thin as paper right now. Start where you are.
Who Saint Jude was
Jude was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew call him Thaddeus, a second name used to keep him apart from Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed the Lord. Same man, two names, and the Church has carried both ever since.
The New Testament has a short letter that bears his name, the Letter of Jude. It runs to 25 verses. Tradition places his preaching in Mesopotamia and Persia, and he is honoured together with the apostle Simon. Their feast day is 28 October. Tradition also says he was killed in Persia, and Christian art shows him with an axe and a club, the tools of his death.
He is not a minor figure you have to apologise for asking. He was in the room when Jesus called the twelve. He wrote something the Church still reads. And for reasons that are partly history and partly the plain need of ordinary people, he became the saint of the hopeless case.
Why he became the patron of impossible causes
Part of it is his name. Jude sounds like Judas, so for centuries people were shy of asking him for anything, and he was left for the cases nobody else would take. The logic of the faithful ran this way: if few ask him, he must be eager for company. So the hardest causes went to him, and the reports came back.
Catholics call him the patron of impossible causes, of desperate situations, and of things almost despaired of. Almost despaired of is the phrase worth holding. It describes the place just before you give up, when the doctor has said what he said, when the money is gone at the end of the month, when the person you love has stopped answering.
And there is a public sign of it. A nine day novena to Saint Jude began in Chicago in 1929 and is still prayed there today. People have been showing up to that devotion for nearly a century, in bad years and good ones. You are joining a line that is already long.
The prayer to Saint Jude
The traditional prayer is short. You can say it in under a minute, which matters when you are too worn out to compose anything. Say it slowly. You do not have to feel anything while you say it. The prayer block on this page has the full text, so you can pray it as it has been prayed for generations.
If you want to understand what a novena is before you start one, the explanation of how a nine day novena works is a good place to spend five minutes. It is not a formula or a machine. It is persistence, nine days of it, and the Church has always trusted persistence.
Most holy apostle Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honours and invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of.
Pray for me, who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded to you, to bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of.
Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolation and help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and sufferings, and that I may praise God with you and all the elect for ever.
I promise, O blessed Saint Jude, to be mindful of this great favour, to always honour you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you. Amen.
Traditional prayer to Saint JudeThis is a devotional text, not an official prayer of the Church.
The nine day novena to Saint Jude
A novena is nine days of prayer, and that number comes from the nine days the apostles spent waiting with Mary in the upper room between the Ascension and Pentecost. You can start on any day. You do not need to begin on a feast or a Sunday. Start today if today is when you found this page, or start tomorrow morning if that is when you can give it ten quiet minutes.
The Chicago novena, prayed publicly since 1929, gathers people once a week over nine weeks rather than nine straight days, and the devotion is still kept there. That tells you something useful. There is more than one way to keep nine days. If you miss one, pick it up the next day rather than starting over. God is not counting with a clipboard.
What to do daily: set a time, keep it small, and keep it fixed. Read the day's prayer, add your own intention, and stop. Ten minutes is enough. If you want something to say alongside it, this novena for healing can run in parallel with no harm at all.
Day 1. Name the situation out loud. One sentence is enough.
Day 2. Ask for help with the part of it you can still change.
Day 3. Ask for peace about the part you cannot change.
Day 4. Pray for the other people caught in the same mess.
Day 5. Pray for anyone who has wronged you in it.
Day 6. Ask for one concrete step you can take tomorrow.
Day 7. Say the prayer above slowly, without asking for anything else.
Day 8. Thank him for one small thing that moved.
Day 9. Repeat the request once, then stop asking and leave it.
Each day: the traditional prayer above, one Our Father, one Hail Mary, one Glory Be. The public novena to Saint Jude has been prayed in Chicago since 1929 and follows the same nine day shape.
A nine day novena to Saint JudeThis is a devotional text, not an official prayer of the Church.
How to pray it when you are desperate
Name the situation. Not in general words like my problems or my situation, but plainly. My son's marriage. The biopsy on Thursday. The rent. The drinking. Say it once and say it clearly. You are not informing God. You are putting your finger on the thing so that you stop circling it.
Keep it short. Desperation makes people wordy, and long prayers said in a panic just wear you out. One sentence and the traditional prayer is plenty. Repeat it. Repetition is not empty when the thing you are repeating is true and you are the one who needs to hear it.
Do not bargain. Do not promise to be a better person for the rest of your life if you get what you want by Friday. That is not prayer, that is a deal, and you will break it the first week and then feel worse. Ask, then leave it in his hands. Ask again tomorrow.
The letter of Jude in one minute
The Letter of Jude is 25 verses, written for a community in trouble. Not a community with a vague spiritual problem, but one where people had slipped in and were teaching that faith in Christ left you free to do as you liked. The author says he had wanted to write about something happier and could not.
What it actually says: contend for the faith handed on once for all, be careful of teachers who flatter and take, remember that God has judged before and rescued before. Then it turns warm. Build yourselves up. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Be gentle with those who are doubting, and be careful with the ones you pull out of the fire.
It ends with the most quoted line in it, an outpouring of praise to the God who is able to keep you from falling and to bring you to glory. That is where the letter lands. Not on your effort. On the One who is able. For more on the saints and what each is asked for, there is the list of Catholic saints and what each one is asked for.
Saint Jude and the saints for hard cases
Saint Jude is the patron of impossible causes. Saint Rita of Cascia is asked for the same kind of thing, often for marriages and family wounds, and she is a good choice if the trouble is in your house. Saint Peregrine is the patron of cancer and serious illness, and he is the one people call on when the body is the problem.
Which one to choose? Choose the one whose life is closest to your trouble and stop worrying about picking the right one. If it is a marriage, Rita. If it is a sickness, Peregrine. If it is everything at once and you cannot name it, Jude. If you want a collection of prayers for illness, these Catholic prayers for healing are here.
You can also ask all three. The communion of saints is not a queue with a doorman. Say the prayer, light the candle, keep the nine days, and let the saints do what they do while you get on with the day in front of you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the prayer to Saint Jude for impossible causes?
It is the traditional prayer asking Saint Jude to intercede for a cause that seems beyond hope, and it is short enough to say in a minute. It asks for help, not for magic, and it places the request in God's hands rather than demanding a result. The full text appears in the prayer block on this page.
How do you pray the Saint Jude novena?
Choose nine days, pick a fixed time each day, and say the traditional prayer with your own intention named plainly. Ten minutes is enough. The public novena in Chicago has been prayed since 1929 and follows its own weekly rhythm, so there is more than one way. If you miss a day, continue the next day.
Why is Saint Jude the patron of lost causes?
Partly through his name, which sounds like Judas Iscariot, so people avoided asking him and he was left for the cases nobody else would take. Partly through what people found when they did ask him. Catholics call him the patron of impossible causes and of things almost despaired of, and that title has stuck.
Is it superstition to pray a novena to Saint Jude?
Not if you are asking God for help through the intercession of a saint who is alive in Christ. It becomes superstition when nine days are treated as a mechanism that forces a result, or when missing a day is feared like a broken spell. Pray with trust, not with calculation, and leave the outcome to God.
What is the difference between Saint Jude and Judas Iscariot?
They are two different men. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and is not a saint. Saint Jude was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus, called Thaddeus in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, and the New Testament carries a short letter bearing his name. The similar names caused centuries of confusion, not a shared identity.