Catholic Prayer
Catholic prayers for children: the Hail Mary, the Memorare and Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Joseph, plus prayers for protection, a teenager, a sick child and a child who left the faith.
Prayers of the Church
Begin with the prayers the Church has prayed for centuries. Below them you will find more prayers for children, written for the situations people bring to us.
Best for: Asking Mary to pray with you, especially when you have no words of your own
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Source: Luke 1:28 and 1:42; the closing petition was added in the late Middle Ages
Best for: Desperate moments, when you need help and do not know where else to turn
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
Source: Traditionally attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century); spread by Fr. Claude Bernard in 17th-century Paris
Best for: Protection of your family and home
To you, O blessed Joseph, do we come in our tribulation, and having implored the help of your thrice-holy Spouse, we confidently invoke your patronage also. Through that charity which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by His Blood, and with your power and strength to aid us in our necessities.
O most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; O most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; O our most mighty protector, be kind to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with the power of darkness. As once you rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God’s Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity. Shield, too, each one of us by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your aid, we may be able to live piously, to die in holiness, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven. Amen.
Source: Pope Leo XIII, encyclical Quamquam pluries (1889)
More prayers Catholics have prayed for centuries: traditional Catholic prayers .
Parents pray for their children differently from the way they pray for anything else. The petition does not resolve. A prayer about a job or an illness has an outcome; a prayer about your child runs for decades and changes shape as they do.
The Church's model for this is St. Monica, who prayed for her son Augustine for seventeen years while he lived in a way that grieved her, and who is held up as a patron precisely because the wait was that long. The tradition does not promise a quick answer. It promises that the praying is not wasted.
These seven prayers cover the stages most parents pass through — and the one that hurts most, when a child walks away.
Short enough for the school run or the doorway.
Lord, go with name today. Guard their body from harm and their mind from what would damage it. Put good people in their path and give them the sense to recognise them. Where they are kind, strengthen it. Where they are struggling and have not told me, be present in it. Bring them home safely, and let this house be somewhere they want to come back to. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways." — Psalm 91:11
For the grief parents rarely say out loud.
Father, my child does not believe, or does not practise, and I do not know which grieves me more. I have said everything I can say, and I have probably said some of it badly. I am handing this over, because holding it has only made me anxious and made them defensive. You love them more than I do — that is hard to believe and I believe it anyway. Keep the door open on both sides. Keep me from turning every conversation into this one. Put people in their life who carry faith well. And if there is a long wait ahead, give me Monica's patience rather than my own. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." — Proverbs 22:6
For the years when you can see the trouble and cannot reach it.
Lord, my child is not alright and will not talk to me about it. I can see it and I cannot get in. Protect them in the decisions they are making without me. Keep them from the ones that cannot be undone. Send them a friend who is good for them, or an adult who is not their parent and whom they will actually listen to. Give me the restraint to stop pressing and the attention to notice when the door opens. Let them know that whatever they tell me, they are not going to lose me. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." — Ephesians 6:4
God, this child is sick and I would take it from them if I could. Heal name. I am asking plainly, without qualification, because that is what a parent does. Give them comfort in the night hours, when it is worst. Give the doctors insight and the nurses patience. Give me the steadiness to be the calm one in the room even when I am not calm. And hold me too — I am running on nothing. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 19:14
The stage nobody warns you about: full love, no authority.
Lord, my child is grown and their life is their own. I still want to fix things and I no longer have the standing to. Teach me the difference between being available and being intrusive, because I keep getting it wrong. Bless their work, their relationships and the home they are making. Where they have chosen differently from how I would have chosen, keep me from making them defend it. Let me be someone they call — not out of duty, but because they want to. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife." — Genesis 2:24
Short, for saying together.
Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.
Followed, if you want something personal:
Thank You, God, for today. Thank You for one good thing from the day. Bless Mum and Dad, and names. Help me to be kind tomorrow. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." — Psalm 4:8
For miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of a child at any age.
Lord, I am the parent of a child I cannot hold. You know their name even if no one else ever said it aloud. Keep them. I trust them to Your mercy because there is nowhere else to put them, and because You are the one who called children to Yourself and was angry when anyone tried to stop them. Carry me through the days that ambush me — the date, the song, the stranger's question. Let me grieve this properly rather than around the edges. And let me believe that I will see them. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." — 2 Samuel 12:23
At baptism, parents accept responsibility for raising the child in the faith. The Catechism puts it strongly: parents are "the first heralds of the faith" and their home should be a place "where faith, hope and charity are learned" (CCC 1666).
Three things follow that are worth stating plainly, because guilt in this area is widespread and often misplaced.
The obligation is to raise them in the faith, not to guarantee they keep it. Free will is real, and it is real in your children. A parent who did the work and whose adult child left has not failed at a duty; they have encountered another person's freedom. Augustine had Monica.
What is caught exceeds what is taught. Children absorb whether their parents actually believe it far more reliably than they absorb catechesis. A parent who prays visibly, goes to confession, and apologises when wrong is teaching more than any programme.
Coercion in adolescence usually costs more than it gains. The Church asks for formation, not for compliance extracted at the cost of the relationship. Many parents who forced Mass attendance through the teenage years describe it as the thing that ended the conversation for a decade.
The Guardian Angel prayer ("Angel of God, my guardian dear") is the traditional prayer taught to and for children, and it is short enough for a child to learn and pray themselves. For a parent praying alone, Prayer 1 above works for daily use. Many parents also pray a decade of the Rosary for their children.
St. Monica is the patron for parents praying for a wayward or fallen-away child, having prayed seventeen years for St. Augustine. St. Nicholas and St. Gerard Majella are invoked for children generally, St. Dymphna for a child with mental illness, and St. John Bosco for young people and teenagers.
Pray for them rather than at them, and protect the relationship above all. Monica's example is the Church's own answer to this question, and the relevant detail is that she stayed in her son's life for the whole seventeen years. Ask a Mass to be offered for them. Avoid making faith the subject of every conversation — that reliably ends the conversations.
The Church asks parents to form their children in the faith, which includes bringing them to Mass. How to handle sustained resistance in a particular teenager is a judgement call, and it is worth discussing with your parish priest, who has seen many versions of it. What is widely reported by parents is that compulsion held past a certain point often costs the relationship, and the relationship is what carries faith forward later.
Yes. The Church entrusts such children to the mercy of God, and the Catechism explicitly encourages hope for children who died without baptism (CCC 1261). Many parishes will offer a Mass, and some hold an annual memorial for parents in this situation. Naming the child, if you have not, is something many grieving parents find matters.
As long as it takes. St. Monica's seventeen years are recorded because the Church wants parents to know that a long silence is not a refusal. Attach the intention to a fixed habit rather than to how you feel about it on a given day — that is what makes it survive years rather than weeks.
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