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Discernment and Guidance

Prayer Before Study

Also known as Aquinas prayer before study, Creator of all things, Ineffable Creator

St. Thomas Aquinas’s prayer before beginning work. Useful before anything that requires thinking clearly, which is most things.

Traditional English

Ineffable Creator,
who out of the treasures of thy wisdom
hast appointed three hierarchies of angels
and set them in wondrous order above the heavens,
and who hast disposed the parts of the universe in such marvellous array:

thou who art called the true fount of light and wisdom,
and the highest beginning,
be pleased to cast a beam of thy radiance
upon the darkness of my mind,
and drive from me the twofold darkness
of sin and ignorance in which I was born.

Grant me keenness of understanding,
capacity to remember,
method and ease in learning,
insight in interpretation,
and copious eloquence in speech.

Instruct my beginning, guide my progress,
and bring my work to its proper completion,
through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Source

St. Thomas Aquinas, prayer “Ante Studium”

This text is in the public domain. About these texts

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