Why aren't my novenas ever answered?

[LittleBits]

I pray novenas in time of need, especially to St. Jude (since his novena is never known to fail), and I have full faith in the prayer, the saint, and God. I don’t ask for frivolous things either. I pray for things like a job, good friends, and that I will pass my driver’s liscense test. Does the fact that my prayer is not being answered mean that the saint doesn’t like me?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

No. Saints share in God’s love for all. Your aside however, noting that you pray to St. Jude because “his novena is never known to fail,” may indicate a lack of regard on your part for him. If you are praying to him because you have been “guaranteed” the result you specify, and not out of love for him, that demonstrates use of another person as a means to an end rather than faith in the saint or in God. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it also demonstrates superstition:

Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition (CCC 2111).

There is nothing wrong with choosing to pray to a particular saint because that saint has often been invoked for a particular set of circumstances. That is why the Church assigns patrons for causes to begin with. But there is a problem with utilitarian invocations that are made not out of personal regard for or devotion to the saint but merely to achieve the desired goal.

With all that said, I would also say that it may be possible that St. Jude is answering your prayers but that you may not have fully recognized the answers received. Saints pray that we receive all that we need – not necessarily all that we desire – in accordance with God’s will. Perhaps there have been other blessings in your life that are the result of St. Jude’s intercession even though they have not been exactly what you asked for of him.