A Novena to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots
Maria Knotenlöserin
The Knot
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
The devotion has no reported apparition behind it: unlike Fatima, Lourdes, or Guadalupe, its origin is entirely a painting and its documented history, not a vision.
An Old Image
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
The image of a knot undone by Mary's obedience is far older than the painting: Irenaeus of Lyon, writing around the year 180 in Against Heresies, already described Eve's disobedience as a knot loosed by Mary's obedience.
The Painting at Augsburg
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
The painting itself, by the German artist Johann Georg Schmidtner, was commissioned around 1700 for the church of St. Peter am Perlach in Augsburg by a nobleman whose grandparents' marriage had nearly ended and was reconciled through prayer.
A Ribbon, Not a List
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Devotional accounts of the painting often count a fixed number of knots being untied or a set sequence of steps in the prayer, though neither detail appears in any document from the painting's own century; both are later additions to the tradition.
Bergoglio's Print
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, encountered the painting while a graduate student in Germany in 1986 and brought a copy of it back to Argentina, where as a bishop he promoted the devotion for decades before his election as pope.
Spreading Through Argentina
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
A novena and prayer card built around the image circulated widely in Argentina and across Latin America from the 1990s onward, largely through Bergoglio's own promotion of it as auxiliary bishop and then archbishop of Buenos Aires.
No Feast Day
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Despite its worldwide popularity, Mary Undoer of Knots has never been given a feast day on the universal Church calendar, and the devotion remains, officially, a private one rather than a liturgical one.
The Painting Today
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
The original canvas has never left the church it was painted for, St. Peter am Perlach in Augsburg, even as photographs and prints of it reached a worldwide audience only after 2013.
Undone
The Novena Prayer
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exist in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the knot that exists in my life. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Interest in the devotion increased sharply after Bergoglio's election as Pope Francis in March 2013, when his own long attachment to the image became widely known outside Argentina for the first time.
The prayer above is a novena prayer to Mary, Undoer of Knots, of unknown authorship and in wide modern circulation, given here as it is commonly printed — not an ancient text like the images and history behind it. The image itself is Irenaeus’s, Against Heresies III.22, second century: the knot of Eve’s disobedience loosed by Mary’s obedience. The devotion grew around Johann Georg Schmidtner’s painting of about 1700 in St. Peter am Perlach, Augsburg, commissioned in thanks for a marriage saved, and spread widely after Jorge Bergoglio encountered it there in the 1980s. What follows each day is a fact about the painting or the devotion's documented history, one per day.
