Catholic Prayer
Catholic prayers for family: the Our Father, the Hail Mary and Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Joseph, plus prayers for a household in conflict, an estranged relative and mealtimes.
Prayers of the Church
Begin with the prayers the Church has prayed for centuries. Below them you will find more prayers for family, written for the situations people bring to us.
Best for: Any moment, alone or together — the prayer Jesus Himself gave us
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Source: Taught by Jesus — Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4
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: 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 .
The phrase the Church uses for a Christian family is ecclesia domestica — the domestic church. It is not a compliment or a metaphor for a well-behaved household. The Catechism means it structurally: the family is "the first school of Christian life", where people learn "endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous — even repeated — forgiveness" (CCC 1657).
Note the phrase "even repeated". The Church's own description of family life assumes it will need forgiving over and over. That is a more realistic starting point than most devotional writing about families, and it is worth holding onto if your household does not feel remotely holy at the moment.
These seven prayers cover the family as it actually is — including when it is fractured.
The general prayer, for daily use.
Lord, I bring You everyone under this roof and everyone who belongs to us beyond it. You know each of them completely — what they are carrying, what they are hiding, where they are struggling in ways I have not noticed. Protect them today. Keep them from harm they can see and from harm they cannot. Where there is tension between us, soften it. Where there is distance, close it. Make this house a place people are glad to come back to. And make me easier to live with than I was yesterday. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." — Joshua 24:15
For a household where the arguments have become the normal weather.
Father, we are not doing well. We speak carefully or we do not speak at all, and there is a conversation we keep almost having. Come into this. Soften whoever needs softening, and start with me, since I am the one praying. Show me my part in what has gone wrong, and let me see it without immediately explaining it away. Give us one honest conversation that does not end badly. Protect the children, who hear more than we think they do. Make Your peace possible here again, even if it takes longer than I want. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." — Romans 12:18
For the relative who is not speaking to you, or to whom you are not speaking.
Lord, there is someone in my family I have lost. Not to death — to silence. You know how it started and You know how much of it is mine. I have rehearsed the conversation a hundred times and never had it. Soften both of us. If there is a first step that is mine to take, show me clearly and give me the nerve to take it without needing to be right. If they are not ready, keep me from forcing it. And in the meantime, keep me from letting the silence harden into something permanent that neither of us intended. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him." — Luke 15:20
When money is the thing making everyone short-tempered.
God, the money is not covering what we need it to, and it is changing how we treat each other. Provide for us — not everything we want, but what we actually need. Show us what to cut without resentment. Keep me from taking the fear out on the people I love. Keep us from the shame that stops families asking for help. And where there is help available that we are too proud to take, take the pride away. Let us get through this without losing each other in it. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "Give us this day our daily bread." — Matthew 6:11
The traditional devotion, for placing your household under their protection.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you lived as a family in a small house, with ordinary work and real difficulty — a birth far from home, a flight into exile, years of quiet labour. You know what family life actually costs. Bless our home. Make it a place of patience, honesty and welcome. Teach us to forgive quickly and to say the things that need saying. Keep us close to one another and to God, in this life and in the one to come. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them." — Luke 2:51
Short, for saying aloud together.
Bless us, O Lord, and these Your gifts, which we are about to receive from Your bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
And a longer version when there is something to name:
Lord, thank You for this food and for everyone at this table. Be with those who could not be here. Let this be a meal where we listen to each other. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season." — Psalm 145:15
For those to whom this topic is painful rather than warm.
Lord, family is not a simple word for me. There is grief in it, or absence, or a version of it I wanted and did not get. You know exactly which. Do not let me go bitter at other people's families. Where I have lost someone, let the memory become a comfort rather than a wound. Where I am waiting, sustain the hope without letting it consume me. And remind me that the Church is meant to be a family too, and that I belong in it regardless. Amen.
Scripture anchor: "God settles the solitary in a home." — Psalm 68:6
Three things are worth separating from the sentimental picture.
The family is a school, not an achievement. The Catechism frames it as the place where virtues are learned — which means the failures are part of the curriculum, not evidence that the family has gone wrong.
Forgiveness is expected to be repeated. "Even repeated" is in the official text. A household where the same apology has to be made for the fifth time is not failing; it is doing the thing.
Praying together matters more than praying well. The Church's recommendation is regular, simple, shared prayer — grace at meals, a decade of the Rosary, a short evening prayer. Ambitious devotional schemes collapse in households with children and shift work. Small and consistent survives.
If your household does not pray together, starting feels strange. What works:
The Prayer to the Holy Family (Prayer 5 above) is the traditional devotion for placing a household under their protection, and many Catholics pray it on the Feast of the Holy Family, the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas. For daily use, something shorter is more likely to survive — grace at meals, or Prayer 1.
Most commonly: grace before meals, a night prayer with younger children, and for some households a decade of the Rosary. The Church recommends consistency over ambition. A family that prays two minutes every day is doing better than one that attempts twenty minutes and abandons it by February.
It is the Church's term for the Christian family — the idea that the household is the first place people encounter faith, learn to forgive, and practise love. It carries a real claim: what happens at your kitchen table is part of the Church's life, not separate from it.
The Holy Family — Jesus, Mary and Joseph — is invoked for families as a whole. St. Joseph is the patron of families and of fathers specifically, St. Monica for mothers praying for wayward children, and St. Rita of Cascia for difficult marriages and family situations.
Pray for them rather than at them, and keep the relationship intact — a maintained relationship does more over twenty years than an argument does in an evening. St. Monica prayed for her son Augustine for seventeen years before his conversion, and the Church holds her up precisely because the wait was that long.
No. The Catechism explicitly anticipates "generous — even repeated — forgiveness" as part of family life. Conflict that gets repaired is normal. What is worth attending to is conflict that stops being repaired: contempt, silence that hardens, or anything frightening. Those warrant help from a priest or a counsellor, not more effort at praying it away.
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