September 22 to September 30, 2026
Nine days of prayer with the Little Flower,
ending on the eve of her feast.
“After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon the earth.”
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Each morning you’ll receive
The traditional dates are September 22 to September 30. The ninth day falls on the eve of her feast, October 1, so the novena closes the night before the Church celebrates her. In 2026 that means beginning on September 22 and praying the last day on September 30.
These dates are traditional rather than required. If you find this page in the middle of the year, or in the middle of the nine days, begin today. The novena needs nine consecutive days, not a particular nine.
A novena is nine consecutive days of prayer offered for one intention. The shape comes from the nine days the Apostles and Our Lady spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost, waiting for the Holy Spirit.
The nine days are not a formula that obliges God to answer. They are a way of staying with a single request long enough to mean it. Most people find that the intention they carry into day one is not quite the intention they are carrying by day nine, and that the change is the point.
Each day has the same three parts:
Name your intention on the first day and hold the same one through all nine. Pray at a settled time, usually the morning. If you miss a day, pick up where you left off rather than starting the count again.
The full text of all nine days, with the opening and closing prayers, is in the complete novena to St. Thérèse. If you would rather have it arrive one day at a time, the form above sends each day on its morning.
“After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon the earth.”
St. Thérèse of LisieuxShe said this from her deathbed at twenty-four, and Catholics have taken her at her word ever since. People who pray her novena often report a rose arriving in some form during or just after the nine days: an actual flower from an unexpected place, a rose in a name or an image, a stranger’s kindness that lands exactly where the wound was.
Two things worth saying plainly. A rose is a sign of her intercession, not the proof of it, and the prayer is heard whether or not you notice one. And signs are read badly when we go looking for them too hard. Thérèse’s own counsel was to stay small and expect little, which is a strange preparation for a shower of roses and probably the right one.
Asking St. Thérèse to pray for your intention is what asking any friend for prayer means. The novena does not treat her as a source of grace. It asks her to bring your intention to God alongside you, which is what she said she intended to spend her heaven doing.
She is a good one to ask. She was a cloistered Carmelite who died at twenty-four having done nothing the world counts, and her whole teaching, the Little Way, is that small things done with love are the ordinary road to holiness. People bring her the intentions they are embarrassed to think are too small.
Yes, and it often is. The September dates are the traditional ones because they end at her feast, but the novena is commonly prayed in the nine days before a surgery, a decision, a court date, or an anniversary. What matters is that the nine days run consecutively and carry one intention.
Nothing formally. Practically, most people want to keep something of the rhythm they just built. Some carry the intention into a spiritual bouquet, gathering prayers and small sacrifices for the person they were praying for. Some keep praying for others in the Chapel of Intercession, where intentions are posted by strangers and prayed for by strangers.
The Little Way app carries the novena, a rose journal for recording what you notice, and the daily practice her Little Way actually asks for: a morning offering, and an examen at night.
