Prayers of Surrender
Surrender prayers hand something over deliberately: a worry, a person, an outcome, a plan you were attached to.
The tradition here is deep, and several of these come from saints who prayed them daily for years. Repetition is expected — you will hand the same thing over more than once.
37 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 Discerning My Vocation
A contemporary prayer of discernment shaped by Ignatian spirituality, particularly the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises…
- A Prayer for Freedom from Addiction
A contemporary pastoral prayer drawing on the recovery tradition that grew out of the Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous, and on the…
- 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…
- A Prayer of Renunciation and Recommitment
A plain-language prayer of renunciation, in the pattern that Christians across traditions use when they wish to close the doors that have…
- Act of Consecration to Mary
The consecration associated with St. Louis de Montfort's “True Devotion to Mary” (early eighteenth century). Its theology is explicitly…
- 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…
- Acts of Rejection
A litany of renunciation, pairing each rejected vice with the opposing virtue. It follows the classical Christian doctrine of agere contra…
- Anima Christi
A 14th-century prayer that predates St. Ignatius of Loyola but which he placed at the front of the Spiritual Exercises, making it forever…
- 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…
- Commission of the Care of Soul and Body
A prayer of entrustment, given in the deliverance tradition for those who feel unable to keep watch over themselves — in illness,…
- Consecration to the Divine Mercy
Taken from the Diary of St. Faustina Kowalska (entry 1570), written in Poland in the 1930s and published after the Second World War. Pope…
- Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Acts of consecration to Mary's Immaculate Heart grew from nineteenth-century devotion and received new worldwide prominence after Fátima.…
- I Am Yours, Born for You (St. Teresa of Ávila)
Teresa's poem Vuestra soy, para vos nací, written in her own hand and set to music in Spanish convents. Its refrain, '¿Qué mandáis hacer de…
- Jacob's Prayer at Peniel
On the night before meeting the brother he cheated, Jacob prays that he is 'not worthy of the least of all the mercies', then wrestles…
- Job's Final Answer
After the whirlwind, Job stops arguing: 'I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.' Six verses of…
- Litany of Humility (Cardinal Merry del Val)
Composed by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930), Secretary of State to Pope St. Pius X, who prayed it every day after Mass. It was…
- Mary's Fiat: Be It Unto Me According to Thy Word
The shortest and most consequential prayer of consent in scripture. Read at the Annunciation and prayed daily at the Angelus, it is the…
- Morning Offering of the Apostleship of Prayer
The Apostleship of Prayer, founded by French Jesuits in 1844 and now called the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, gave Catholics this…
- Moses: Show Me Thy Glory
Moses asks to see the glory of God and is hidden in the cleft of the rock while the Lord passes by. Gregory of Nyssa built his whole…
- 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…
- Offering of the Day (St. Francis de Sales)
An offering from the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Salesian tradition, meant to be prayed at the start of a day already known to…
- Prayer of Abandonment (Charles de Foucauld)
Charles de Foucauld was a French soldier and explorer who converted dramatically in 1886 and spent the rest of his life as a hermit among…
- Prayer of Abandonment to God's Will (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), a widowed mother of five who became the first native-born American saint and founded the Sisters 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 the Optina Elders
Composed at the Optina Monastery in Russia, a center of the Russian spiritual revival of the nineteenth century whose elders counseled…
- Prayer to Overcome Evil Passions and to Become a Saint
A prayer that turns the whole logic of deliverance toward its proper end. The Christian tradition has always taught that the passions are…
- Psalm 40 — He Brought Me Up Also Out of an Horrible Pit
A psalm of rescue and of glad obedience — 'Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me' — quoted in Hebrews of Christ's…
- Restless Until It Rests in You (St. Augustine)
The opening paragraph of the Confessions, and the sentence that has defined Christian anthropology ever since: we are made for God and…
- Severing Ties, Bonds and Attachments
A broader companion to the prayer against occult ties, this text addresses the ordinary attachments — resentment, fear, addiction,…
- Surrender Novena (Day One)
Received by Fr. Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), the Neapolitan priest whom Padre Pio told his own visitors to consult. Each of the nine…
- Suscipe Me, Domine (Prayer of Monastic Profession)
The verse from Psalm 119 sung three times by a monk or nun lying prostrate at solemn profession, prescribed in chapter 58 of the Rule of…
- The Serenity Prayer
Written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s and adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, this short prayer has probably done more practical…
- 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…
- The Universal Prayer of Pope Clement XI
Composed by Pope Clement XI (reigned 1700-1721) and long known simply as the Universal Prayer because it gathers into one text nearly every…
- The Wesley Covenant Prayer
Used by John Wesley in the Methodist Covenant Renewal Service, first held in 1755 and traditionally observed on the first Sunday of the new…