Nine days, one prayer, one favor: the Novena of the Twenty-Four Glory Bes — one for every year Thérèse lived on earth — with a different theme lit by the Gospel each day and the Way of the Day. The devotion began with a Jesuit priest who asked for a rose as a sign, in 1925, and received one on the third day. Pray with us, with a free companion book.
Months after Thérèse was canonized, a Jesuit priest had a simple idea: ask for a sign, and see whether she would answer.
On December 3, 1925 — seven months after Thérèse's canonization on May 17 of that year — Father Putigan, a Jesuit, began a novena for a favor he carried in his heart. For nine days he recited the Glory Be twenty-four times, one for every year she had lived on earth, thanking God for the graces poured on her soul. He asked for a sign: that a freshly cut rose would reach his hands if the favor had been granted. On the third day, an unknown person sought him out and handed him a rose.
He prayed the novena again three weeks later, starting on December 24, asking this time for a white rose. On the fourth day, one of the Sister-nurses brought him a white rose, saying, "Saint Thérèse sent you this." That is how the devotion known as the Novena of the Twenty-Four Glory Bes was born. It spread across the English-speaking world in the same form, printed and prayed to this day: twenty-four Glory Bes, one for each year of her life, with the invocation "Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, pray for us."
The novena is not the saint's own words — it is an anonymous devotional formula, born in 1925, that spread from parish to parish. Her own words, our novena carries too: excerpts of the Act of Oblation of Myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Merciful Love, written by Thérèse on June 9, 1895, quoted within each day's meditation and printed whole, as an appendix to the book, in our own translation from the original French public-domain text.
It is from that Act that her most repeated promise comes: "I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth." These are words her sisters gathered in her last days, in 1897, and which the Carmel of Lisieux itself now acknowledges as tradition recorded by testimony, not a verbatim recording. And it is this same promise that, more than a century later, led Pope John Paul II to proclaim her a Doctor of the Church, in 1997, and Pope Francis to dedicate to her, in 2023, the apostolic exhortation C'est la confiance — "It is confidence."
Each of the nine days in this book carries the same prayer — the Novena of the Twenty-Four Glory Bes, in full — and a different theme, lit by a Gospel passage: the request you carry, the little way, the empty hands, love in small things. Each day closes with the Way of the Day. The companion book in PDF carries the whole novena, ready to print and pray alone or with a group.
“I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth.”
It is the most quoted promise about Saint Thérèse — and the most delicate to present honestly. Her sisters recorded these words at her deathbed, in 1897; the Carmel of Lisieux itself acknowledges that part of the material from those days was edited, decades later, by her sister. Even so, it is the heart of the devotion: the Carmel of Loretto and the official publishing house of the Discalced Carmelites in the United States still print this promise in the closing prayer of their own novena. In our book, it appears the same way — as the tradition that has come down to us, not as an uncontested verbatim transcript.
Nine days, one prayer: the Novena of the Twenty-Four Glory Bes, in full, with a different theme each day.
The opening prayer to the Holy Trinity, the twenty-four Glory Bes — one for every year of the saint's life — and the closing invocation, nothing cut.
Each day lights a different theme through the Gospel — the request you carry, the little way, the empty hands, love in small things — with the same prayer and the Way of the Day.
Excerpts of the Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, written by Thérèse in 1895, quoted in the meditations and, in full, as an appendix — in our own translation from the original French.
The whole novena in PDF, ready to print and pray alone, with your family, or with your prayer group, one day at a time.
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