Prayers
54 prayers of the Catholic tradition, in English, with a note on each saying what it is and when people pray it. Search by name, by another name for the same prayer, or by what you are actually facing.
Try a name like Memorare, another name for the same prayer like Salve Regina, or simply grief or before surgery.
7 prayers
Prayers to the Holy Spirit
Prayers asking for light, counsel and courage — traditionally prayed before a decision.
Prayers in Hard Times
For illness, fear, grief and the stretches where prayer is difficult.
- Prayer of Abandonment
Written by Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who spent fifteen years in the Sahara with almost nothing to show for it. For the stretches when a person has genuinely run out of plans.
- Lead, Kindly Light
Written by Newman in 1833, becalmed on a boat off Sicily and unable to get home. Its request is deliberately small: not to see the distance, only the next step.
Prayers for Others
For family, for the sick and the dying, for the dead, and for priests.
Discernment and Guidance
For anyone trying to work out what they are being asked to do.
- Come, Holy Spirit2 forms
The short invocation prayed before any undertaking that needs light — a decision, a difficult conversation, study, or the start of a meeting.
- Prayer of Abandonment
Written by Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who spent fifteen years in the Sahara with almost nothing to show for it. For the stretches when a person has genuinely run out of plans.
- Prayer for Priests and Vocations
For those already ordained or in vows, and for those being called and not yet answering. Traditionally prayed on Thursdays.
- Take, Lord, and Receive2 forms
The prayer at the end of the Spiritual Exercises. Four sentences that offer back everything a person has, including the parts they would rather keep.
- Some Definite Service
Newman’s meditation on having a particular purpose that nobody else has. Written for people who cannot see what theirs is — and it says that not seeing it changes nothing.
- Lead, Kindly Light
Written by Newman in 1833, becalmed on a boat off Sicily and unable to get home. Its request is deliberately small: not to see the distance, only the next step.
- Prayer Before Study
St. Thomas Aquinas’s prayer before beginning work. Useful before anything that requires thinking clearly, which is most things.
About these texts
Every prayer here is a received text of the Catholic tradition, reproduced from published sources that are named on each prayer's own page. None of them were written by us, and none have been reworded.
Where a prayer has a modern wording still under copyright — the Mass texts belonging to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, for instance — we publish the older traditional wording instead and say so on the page. GraceBook is not a publisher of liturgical books, and nothing here should be taken as the text to be used in the liturgy.
Scripture passages are from the Douay-Rheims Bible in the Challoner revision. If you find an error in any text, tell us and we will correct it.