Prayers for Discernment
Discernment is slower than a decision. These prayers are for the season of weighing — asking for honesty about your own motives and for the freedom to go either way.
Several come from traditions with long experience in this work, and they are written to be prayed repeatedly over weeks rather than once.
12 prayers
- A Prayer for Discerning My Vocation
A contemporary prayer of discernment shaped by Ignatian spirituality, particularly the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises…
- A Prayer for Letting Go of What I Cannot Control
A contemporary pastoral prayer in the lineage of the Serenity Prayer and of Ignatian indifference — the practice of holding all things…
- Colloquy Before the Crucified (St. Ignatius of Loyola)
The first colloquy of the Spiritual Exercises, written by St. Ignatius around 1522–24 at Manresa. Its three questions have been asked by…
- Gideon's Prayer of the Fleece
Gideon asks twice for a sign in the fleece, and God is patient with him both times. Christian tradition has read the dew on the fleece as…
- Joshua's Plea After Defeat
After the rout at Ai, Joshua tears his clothes and lies before the ark until evening, asking why God brought Israel over Jordan at all. A…
- Let Me Know Myself, Let Me Know You (St. Augustine)
A prayer drawn from Augustine's Soliloquies, written shortly after his conversion while waiting for baptism. Its double request —…
- Prayer for Ordering a Life Wisely (St. Thomas Aquinas)
One of the prayers preserved in the Dominican collection of St. Thomas Aquinas's private devotions. It is a prayer about the shape of a…
- Prayer of Thomas à Kempis
From the Imitation of Christ, written by Thomas à Kempis in the Netherlands around 1420 and, after the Bible, the most widely read…
- Prayer to Protect the Faculties
A precise prayer reflecting the Catholic anatomy of the soul as it comes down from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas: intellect, will,…
- Prayer to St. Thérèse for a Difficult Decision
St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), a Carmelite who died at twenty-four and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, taught the 'little…
- Solomon's Prayer for Wisdom
Solomon's request at Gibeon (1 Kings 3:7–9), offered when God invited him to ask for anything. Because he asked for discernment rather than…
- Thomas Merton — The Road Ahead
Written by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and published in Thoughts in Solitude (1958). It has become one of the most widely prayed modern…