Holy Family Novena – 9 Days of Prayer

A nine-day novena for the Feast of the Holy Family (Sunday after Christmas) — asking Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to bless and protect every family, and to transform ordinary household life into something holy.

The Holy Family novena asks Jesus, Mary and Joseph to bless every Christian home. The feast falls in the Christmas season, on the Sunday after Christmas in many places. It is a good time to pray for peace in your house. The nine days honour the household of Nazareth as a school of love and work. Nazareth was a quiet household where work, prayer and love were ordinary. Pray the novena after dinner with your children, light a candle before an image of the Holy Family, and ask for peace in your home.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph · December 299 daysfeast

A novena is nine consecutive days of prayer. Begin nine days before the feast (December 29) and finish on its eve. You can pray this novena at any time of year.

Pray this novena with daily reminders in the Sacred Novenas app

Open in the app App Store Google Play

Holy Family Novena – prayer for all nine days

Intention: For Every Family — for Marriages Under Strain, for Parents and Children, and for the Grace to Make Our Homes into Domestic Churches

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — you who lived together in Nazareth for thirty years, and of whom the Gospel says only this: that Jesus 'grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.' The holiness was in the ordinary. The love was in the daily. Teach us. Amen.

Holy Family of Nazareth —
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph —
you lived together in a small village
in an occupied country
in a carpenter's house.

You knew the smell of sawdust.
You knew the weight of tired muscles at the end of a day.
You knew what it was to share a table,
to argue gently about small things,
to carry worry about money,
to mourn those who died.

You were ordinary.
You were holy.
You were both at the same time.
That is the miracle of Nazareth —
not that it was extraordinary,
but that it was not.

Holy Family, look on our families.
On the marriages that are tired.
On the parents who don't know what they're doing.
On the children who feel unseen.
On the families separated by distance or by silence.
On the households fractured by grief or addiction or anger.

Come into our ordinary.
Sit at our table.
Bless our chaos.
Make our homes — like yours — a place
where holiness grows without fanfare,
where love is practiced in small acts,
where God is not an idea but a presence.

Jesus, bless our children.
Mary, steady our mothers.
Joseph, strengthen our fathers and all who protect.
Holy Family, make our families holy.

Amen.
Hail Mary... Our Father... Glory Be...

Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us.

Pray this prayer once a day for nine days in a row.

Traditional Catholic Devotional Prayer · Feast Day: Sunday after Christmas (December 29 when Christmas falls on Sunday). The Feast of the Holy Family was extended to the universal Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1893. Nazareth is presented by the Church as the model of every Christian home — where holiness was practiced not in miracles but in thirty years of ordinary domestic life.

More novenas

Frequently asked questions

When should I start the Holy Family Novena?

Begin nine days before the feast, which falls on the Sunday after Christmas (or on December 30 when Christmas is a Sunday), and finish on its eve.

How do I pray the Holy Family Novena?

Pray the daily prayer once a day with your family, and share a meal together.

Who is the Holy Family Novena for?

It is for families of every kind, especially during the Christmas season.

Pray this novena with daily reminders in the Sacred Novenas app

Open in the app App Store Google Play