Prayers for Hope
Hope is not optimism. In Christian use it means trusting a God who keeps promises, including when nothing has visibly improved.
These prayers are for waiting: for news, for healing, for a relationship to change, for a season to end.
43 prayers
- A Prayer for Adult Children
A contemporary pastoral prayer in the tradition of St. Monica, who prayed seventeen years for her son Augustine. It is written for parents…
- A Prayer for Expectant Parents
A prayer for pregnancy drawing on Psalm 139:13–16. The Church has long prayed for safe childbirth — the Roman Ritual, the Book of Common…
- A Prayer for the Sick
This is the classic prayer for the sick from the Book of Common Prayer's Ministration to the Sick, in use since 1549 and shaped by much…
- A Prayer for Those Seeking Work
A contemporary pastoral prayer for unemployment and job seeking, drawing on Matthew 6:25–33. St. Joseph the Worker and St. Cajetan are the…
- A Prayer for Those Who Are Single
A contemporary pastoral prayer for single life, whether chosen or not. Christianity has always honored the unmarried state — Christ…
- A Prayer in Depression
A contemporary pastoral prayer in the tradition of Psalm 42 and 88 — psalms the Church has always kept in its prayer book precisely because…
- A Prayer When Life Feels Unbearable
A contemporary pastoral prayer for moments of despair, grounded in Christ's own agony in Gethsemane and cry of abandonment from the cross.…
- All Shall Be Well (Julian of Norwich)
From the Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich, the anchoress who received her visions in 1373 during a near-fatal illness — the…
- Alma Redemptoris Mater
One of the four seasonal Marian antiphons of the Western Church, traditionally sung from Advent through the Presentation of the Lord.…
- Ave Regina Caelorum
The Marian antiphon traditionally sung from the Presentation of the Lord until Holy Week. Its medieval text joins Old Testament images —…
- Breaking the Spirit of Death
A prayer against what deliverance ministry calls "the spirit of death" — the settled interior orientation toward despair and…
- Collect for Advent Sunday
Cranmer's own composition for the first Sunday of Advent, repeated every day of Advent in the Book of Common Prayer. It sets the whole…
- Collect for Easter Day
The Prayer Book collect for the feast of the Resurrection, said throughout Easter week. It asks that the new life given at Easter be…
- Disturb Us, Lord (Prayer of Sir Francis Drake)
A prayer of daring long associated with Sir Francis Drake and the voyage of 1577, though its present English form belongs to the…
- Gaze, Consider, Contemplate (St. Clare of Assisi)
From St. Clare of Assisi's Second Letter to Agnes of Prague (thirteenth century). Clare's counsel — gaze, consider, contemplate, imitate —…
- Hail, Holy Queen (Salve Regina)
The Salve Regina is an eleventh-century Latin antiphon, often attributed to Hermann of Reichenau, a monk born severely disabled who spent…
- Hannah's Prayer
Prayed by Hannah after years of infertility and the birth of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1–8). Its themes of reversal — the lowly lifted, the…
- Hezekiah's Prayer in Sickness
The writing of Hezekiah after his recovery: 'I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.' Used as an Old Testament…
- Jeremiah's Lament: His Mercies Are New Every Morning
From the middle of the book of tears comes the line the Church sings every morning: 'They are new every morning: great is thy…
- Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Pope Pius IX entrusted the ancient Byzantine icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorists in 1866 with the instruction to “make…
- Novena to St. Jude, Patron of Hopeless Cases
St. Jude Thaddeus was one of the twelve apostles, and because his name was so close to that of Judas Iscariot, Christians for centuries…
- Novena to St. Monica
St. Monica (c. 331–387) prayed and wept for seventeen years over her brilliant, dissolute son Augustine, following him from North Africa to…
- Novena to St. Padre Pio
St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968), the Capuchin friar known throughout the world as Padre Pio, bore the visible stigmata for fifty years…
- Novena to St. Rita of Cascia
St. Rita of Cascia (1381–1457) was an Italian wife, mother, widow, and finally an Augustinian nun. She endured an abusive marriage and the…
- Novena to St. Thérèse of Lisieux (The Rose Novena)
Before her death in 1897, St. Thérèse of Lisieux promised to “let fall a shower of roses” from heaven. Those praying this novena…
- Pardon Prayer of the Angel of Fatima
Taught by the Angel of Peace to the three shepherd children of Fatima — Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta — during the spring apparition of…
- Prayer for Freedom from Bondage
A prayer woven from three New Testament passages that together form the scriptural basis of Christian deliverance: Colossians 1:13-14 on…
- Prayer for the New Year
A traditional collect for the beginning of the civil year, used at watchnight services and New Year's Day worship in Anglican, Methodist,…
- Prayer for the Vision of God (St. Bede the Venerable)
The closing sentence of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed at Jarrow in 731 — the prayer with which the first…
- Prayer for Troubled Souls
A gentler prayer offered for those under interior affliction, which the deliverance tradition treats as a distinct and far more common…
- Prayer of St. Monica for a Wayward Child
St. Monica prayed for the conversion of her son Augustine for nearly thirty years. Her patronage of mothers of wayward children rests on…
- Prayer of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Widely circulated as a prayer of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and consistent with her “Little Way,” though its exact provenance in her writings…
- Prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Devotion to the Byzantine icon known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help spread worldwide after Pope Pius IX entrusted it to the Redemptorists in…
- Psalm 126 — They That Sow in Tears Shall Reap in Joy
A psalm of return from exile, when the mouth was filled with laughter. Its promise about sowing in tears is prayed by those in a long…
- Psalm 130 — Out of the Depths (De Profundis)
The De Profundis is one of the seven Penitential Psalms and has been prayed for the dead and by the desperate since the earliest centuries…
- Psalm 42 — Why Art Thou Cast Down, O My Soul
Psalm 42 is the Bible's clearest prayer of depression. Written by the sons of Korah, likely in exile far from the Temple, it describes a…
- Psalm 43 — O Send Out Thy Light and Thy Truth
Once joined to Psalm 42, this short plea to be led to God's holy hill was for centuries prayed by the priest at the foot of the altar…
- Psalm 71 — Cast Me Not Off in the Time of Old Age
The prayer of a believer growing old, asking not to be abandoned when strength fails and promising to declare God's power to the next…
- St. Teresa's Bookmark (Let Nothing Disturb You)
These lines were found written on a bookmark in the breviary of St. Teresa of Ávila after her death in 1582. Teresa was a Carmelite…
- The Act of Hope
The second of the three traditional Acts, the Act of Hope names precisely what a Christian is entitled to expect: forgiveness, grace to…
- The Benedictus (Song of Zechariah)
The song of Zechariah at the birth of his son John the Baptist (Luke 1:68-79), spoken after nine months of imposed silence. Since at least…
- The Magnificat (Mary's Song of Praise)
The Magnificat is Mary's song of praise spoken at the Visitation, when she greeted her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:46-55). It echoes the song…
- The O Antiphons of Advent
The seven ancient antiphons sung at the Magnificat from 17 to 23 December in both the Roman and Anglican traditions, each addressing Christ…