St. Andrew Christmas Novena

This beautiful prayer is traditionally said 15 times a day, from the feast of St. Andrew through Christmas Eve.  While novenas are usually prayed for 9 days, this one lasts for 25, overlapping most if not all of the season of Advent.

One of the wonderful traditions of the season of Advent is the prayer known as the “St. Andrew Christmas Novena.”  The novena begins on November 30, the Feast of St. Andrew, a date that falls within a few days, and sometimes on, the start of Advent each year. It is prayed every day from November 30 through Christmas Eve, December 24.

Fifteen times a day may sound like a lot, but the prayer is short and easy to memorize or keep handy on a printed note, and it can serve as a way to sanctify the day – you can pray it 15 times in a row, all at once, or you might break it up and say it 3 or 5 times in a row, at intervals spread throughout the day.  See below for the text of the prayer:

St. Andrew Christmas Novena  (Nov. 30 – Dec. 24)

Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God
was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.
In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God,
to hear my prayer and grant my desires.
Through the merits of Our Savior, Jesus Christ, and of his Blessed Mother.
Amen.

(You can state your intentions before or after starting the prayer.)

Adoration of the Christ Child by Gerard van Honthorst, c. 1620.  Public domain.

Why Midnight?

If you’re wondering why this prayer says Jesus was born at midnight, the truth is, we don’t know the exact time of his birth.  But the angels appear to the shepherds at night to proclaim his birth (Luke 2:8), and the shepherds are further told they may find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger – implying the momentous event had just occurred, and the Holy Family is still trying to keep the Son of God warm in a stable.

But primarily, the tradition of Jesus’s birth happening at or just after midnight is actually drawn from a verse in the Book of Wisdom (Wis 18:14-15):

“For when peaceful stillness encompassed everything
and the night in its swift course was half spent,
Your all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throne,
leapt into the doomed land”

Halfway through the night was historically considered midnight, and there you have it.  Whether or not this timing is historically accurate, the image of the newborn king arriving in the stillness and profound silence of the deep of night, but technically at the start of a new day, has a great spiritual significance.  And if praying the St. Andrew Christmas novena for 25 days isn’t for you, at the very least, pull out this prayer on Christmas Eve.  Especially if you’re going to Midnight Mass, this is a lovely prayer to offer right before.