Prayers of Trust
These prayers are for what you cannot control — someone else's choices, a result already decided, an outcome still weeks away.
Most are short acts of trust meant to be repeated. Trust is generally rebuilt by repetition rather than by a single resolution.
42 prayers
- A Prayer for a Peaceful Death
Praying for a holy and peaceful death — the grace of the ars moriendi tradition of the late Middle Ages — is one of the oldest requests in…
- A Prayer for Healing of Body
A contemporary prayer for physical healing rooted in the healing narratives of the Gospels and in James 5:14–15, which instructs the sick…
- 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 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 of St. John Chrysostom
Taken from the Byzantine Liturgy attributed to St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) and placed by Cranmer at the close of Morning and Evening…
- A Prayer While Awaiting Test Results
A contemporary pastoral prayer for medical waiting — biopsies, scans, diagnoses — grounded in Christ's teaching not to be anxious about…
- 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…
- Be at Peace (St. Francis de Sales)
Drawn from the spiritual letters of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, written in the early 1600s to lay people trying to live devout…
- Behold, Lord, an Empty Vessel (Martin Luther)
From Luther's writings on prayer and faith, and one of the clearest statements of the Reformation's central conviction: we come to God…
- 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…
- Eternal God, Eternal Trinity (St. Catherine of Siena)
From The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena (1378), a Doctor of the Church and mystic. It captures her characteristic paradox: the more she…
- 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…
- Habakkuk's Prayer — Yet I Will Rejoice
The closing lines of Habakkuk (3:17–19), written as Judah faced invasion. The prophet spends the book arguing with God about injustice and…
- 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…
- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (Prayer for a Happy Death)
This threefold aspiration to the Holy Family is one of the best known short prayers in Catholic devotion, indulgenced by Pope Pius VII in…
- Novena of Confidence to the Sacred Heart
Composed in the early 20th century and popularized through the Apostleship of Prayer, this brief novena is prayed for nine consecutive days…
- 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…
- Novena to the Divine Mercy
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), a Polish religious sister, recorded in her Diary the nine daily intentions Our Lord asked her to…
- Novena to the Infant Jesus of Prague
Centered on a sixteenth-century wax statue of the Child Jesus venerated in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague since 1628. The…
- Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Devotion to the Sacred Heart spread widely after the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial (1673–1675) and was given…
- O Blood and Water (St. Faustina)
Recorded in the Diary of St. Faustina Kowalska (1930s). It became a foundation of the Divine Mercy devotion and is prayed daily by many…
- Prayer for Humility (St. Philip Neri)
St. Philip Neri, the sixteenth-century 'Apostle of Rome', prayed some version of this every morning; his biographers record the words as…
- Prayer for Mercy on the Whole World (St. Faustina)
From the Diary of St. Faustina Kowalska, and printed as the concluding prayer of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Faustina's Polish text was…
- Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love (St. John of the Cross)
From the Sayings of Light and Love, written by St. John of the Cross for the nuns under his direction. It is the boldest statement of…
- Prayer of Nicholas of Cusa
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), cardinal and philosopher, sent the monks of Tegernsee a painted icon whose eyes seemed to follow every…
- Prayer of St. Ioannikios
Four lines by St. Ioannikios the Great (752–846), a soldier who became a hermit on Mount Olympus. The prayer is sung at Orthodox Compline…
- Prayer of St. Padre Pio After Holy Communion
St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968) prayed this after Mass, and his spiritual children copied it from his notes; it is the fullest form of…
- 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 of Trust (Richard Baxter)
Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor of Kidderminster, wrote these lines during a long illness in 1663. They became one of the best-loved…
- Prayer to Jesus (St. Anselm of Canterbury)
Adapted from St. Anselm of Canterbury's Prayers and Meditations, written for lay people in the eleventh century so that they could pray…
- Prayer to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots
The devotion comes from a Baroque painting, Mary Untier of Knots, made around 1700 by Johann Georg Schmidtner for the church of St. Peter…
- Prayer to St. Anthony for Something Lost
St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231), a Franciscan and Doctor of the Church, gained his reputation as the finder of lost things after a runaway…
- 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…
- Psalm 1 — Blessed Is the Man
The psalter opens with a wisdom psalm contrasting two ways of living: the life rooted like a tree by rivers of water, and the life blown…
- Psalm 146 — Praise the Lord, O My Soul
The first of the closing Hallelujah psalms, warning against putting trust in princes and naming God as the helper of the oppressed, the…
- Psalm 16 — Preserve Me, O God
A psalm of confidence in which the believer takes God as his portion and cup. St. Peter quotes it at Pentecost as a prophecy of the…
- Psalm 62 — My Soul, Wait Thou Only Upon God
A psalm of stillness and unhurried trust, insisting that God alone is rock and refuge while power and riches are a breath on the scales.…
- 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 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…
- 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…