Prayers for Love
These prayers ask for the capacity to love, which the tradition treats as a gift rather than an achievement.
Some are about loving God. Others are about loving a specific person you are finding it very hard to love right now.
33 prayers
- A Prayer for a Marriage
This prayer comes from the marriage rite of the Book of Common Prayer, whose central petitions Thomas Cranmer composed in 1549 and later…
- A Prayer for a Wedding Day
A nuptial blessing in the tradition of the Roman Rite and the Book of Common Prayer marriage service, both of which frame marriage as a…
- A Prayer for Families
This collect, "For Families," entered the Book of Common Prayer in the American revision of 1928 and draws on older English collects going…
- A Prayer for the Human Family
From the Prayers and Thanksgivings of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It is the prayer many parishes turn to after violence, unrest, or…
- Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Composed by Pope Leo XIII for the consecration of the entire human race to the Sacred Heart on 11 June 1899, an act he called the greatest…
- Act of Oblation to Merciful Love (St. Thérèse of Lisieux)
Thérèse made this offering on 9 June 1895, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, and copied it into her notebook; it is the theological heart…
- Christ Has No Body Now But Yours (St. Teresa of Ávila)
A prayer that grew out of St. Teresa's teaching in The Interior Castle and her letters, and reached its present form in the devotional…
- Help Me, O Lord, to Be Merciful (St. Faustina)
A prayer from Faustina's Diary in which she asks for mercy in each part of her body, one sense at a time. It has become a standard…
- Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)
Edward Caswall's translation of the medieval Jesu dulcis memoria, traditionally ascribed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sung in Catholic,…
- Late Have I Loved You (St. Augustine)
From Book X of Augustine's Confessions, written around 400, this is the most quoted passage in Western Christian spirituality. It is the…
- Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Approved for public use by Pope Leo XIII in 1899, the year he consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart, this litany draws its…
- O God, I Love Thee (St. Francis Xavier)
The Latin hymn O Deus ego amo te, long attributed to St. Francis Xavier, in Gerard Manley Hopkins's celebrated English version. It is the…
- O Thou Who Camest from Above (Charles Wesley)
Charles Wesley's hymn of 1762, built on the coal from the altar in Isaiah 6 and the 'holy fire' of 2 Timothy 1:6. It is the classic…
- 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…
- Paul's Prayer for Inner Strength (Ephesians 3)
From Ephesians 3:14–21, written from prison. Unlike most petitions it asks for nothing external — only interior strength, indwelling, and…
- Peace Prayer of St. Francis
Though named for St. Francis, this prayer first appeared in 1912 in the French Catholic magazine La Clochette. Its wide use by St. John…
- Pierce, O Most Sweet Lord Jesus (St. Bonaventure)
From St. Bonaventure's Prayer After Mass, thirteenth century. Bonaventure was a Franciscan mystic and Doctor of the Church. His prayer…
- Prayer Before the Blessed Sacrament (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
The opening of St. Alphonsus Liguori's Visits to the Blessed Sacrament (1745), a book that shaped Catholic eucharistic devotion for two…
- Prayer for the Grace of Repentance (St. Anselm)
Attributed to St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), theologian and Doctor of the Church. The prayer asks for the nine fruits of the Spirit…
- Prayer for the Poor (St. Vincent de Paul)
St. Vincent de Paul (1581–1660) organised charity for the poor of France on a scale no one had attempted, and taught the Daughters of…
- Prayer of Mechthild of Magdeburg
Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207–1282), a Beguine and later a Cistercian nun, wrote The Flowing Light of the Godhead in Low German — one of…
- Prayer of St. Gertrude the Great
St. Gertrude the Great (1256–1302), a Benedictine nun of Helfta, was among the first to receive and record visions of the Sacred Heart,…
- Prayer of St. Isaac the Syrian for Mercy on All
From the Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian (seventh century), a hermit-bishop of the Church of the East whose writings became…
- Prayer of St. Richard of Chichester
St. Richard of Chichester, an English bishop, is said to have prayed these words on his deathbed in 1253. The prayer was little known…
- Prayer of the Cloud of Unknowing
From The Cloud of Unknowing, written in Middle English by an anonymous fourteenth-century English contemplative. It is the founding text of…
- Prayer to Radiate Christ (St. John Henry Newman)
Adapted by Mother Teresa from a longer meditation by St. John Henry Newman on the priestly life, published in his Meditations and Devotions…
- Prayer to St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was a Polish Franciscan who, imprisoned at Auschwitz, stepped forward to take the place of a condemned man…
- Prayer to St. Paul (St. Anselm of Canterbury)
From the Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm (c. 1070), addressed to St. Paul and famous for its maternal imagery of Christ — language…
- The Act of Love
The Act of Love is the third of the traditional Acts and the most demanding, because it does not stop at loving God: it commits the one…
- The Chaplet of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was given its modern shape through the apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial…
- The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus (John 17)
Prayed by Jesus on the night before his death (John 17), and the longest recorded prayer of Christ in the Gospels. Called the "High…
- The Nuptial Blessing
The solemn blessing pronounced over a bride and groom in the Christian marriage rite.
- The Suscipe (Prayer of St. Ignatius)
The Suscipe — Latin for "receive" — comes at the climax of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, written between 1522 and…