Traditional prayer
Prayer to St. Gerard Majella
V. Pray for us, O Blessed Gerard.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray.
O Almighty and Everlasting God, who didst draw to Thyself the Blessed Gerard even from his tenderest years, making him conformable to the Image of Thy crucified Son,
grant, we beseech Thee, that imitating his example we may be made like unto the same Divine Image, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
About this prayer
Gerard Majella was born at Muro, south of Naples, in April 1726. His father died while he was a child, and poverty sent him to be apprenticed to a tailor. He became a Redemptorist lay brother in 1749 and died on 16 October 1755, not yet thirty. Leo XIII beatified him in 1893 and Pius X canonized him on 11 December 1904. He was once falsely accused of a shameful crime and bore the calumny with such patience that St. Alphonsus said, “Brother Gerard is a saint” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Gerard Majella”).
Mothers have invoked him for more than two centuries. The English translation of his Life published in Boston in 1907 speaks of “the marvellous privilege which God seemed to have imparted to our saint, namely, that of protecting mothers and children in the numerous dangers that accompany maternity.” It also tells the story mothers still repeat: at Oliveto a girl ran after him with a handkerchief he had left behind; he told her to keep it, that it would be useful to her some day; years later, near death in her first childbirth, she asked for it, and the danger passed. That is a story handed down by his biographers, not a matter of faith. The devotion that grew from such stories, above all after his death, is real.
The prayer above is the versicle and prayer said on each day of his novena in Fr. Vassall-Phillips’s Life of the saint, approved for publication in 1909. It does not mention childbirth. It asks to be made like the crucified Christ, as Gerard was. Then bring him your intention: a child hoped for, a pregnancy, a safe delivery. The seventh day of the same novena asks him for “patience and resignation in our sorrows.”
You may know a longer prayer for motherhood that begins “O good St. Gerard.” We could not establish its author, date or rights, so we do not print it here.
When to pray it
- Through pregnancy, especially when it is difficult.
- While you are waiting and hoping for a child.
- Before the birth, and in labour.
- On 16 October, the day of his death, and in the nine days before it.
- Prayer goes with medical care, never instead of it: keep every appointment, follow your doctor or midwife, and in an emergency call 911.