Almighty God, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, You have entrusted to me these children as a sacred gift. They are Yours before they are mine, bought by the Blood of Your Son and destined for eternal life with You.
Make me a good parent: patient, just, and loving. Teach me to correct without bitterness and to love without indulgence, and above all to lead them by the example of my own life. Let me care first for their souls, giving them the faith, the sacraments, and the knowledge of Your love.
Guard them from every evil of body and soul. Keep them in Your grace; and if ever they should wander, let me, like the father of the prodigal, never cease to watch the road for their return, and by my prayers bring them home to You.
Grant that not one of those You have given me may be lost, but that we may all stand together before You on the last day. St. Monica, who wept and prayed for her son, pray for us. Amen.
This is a prayer for parents — perhaps the heaviest and holiest work God gives to men and women. It begins by placing fatherhood and motherhood where they belong: God is the one "of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named" (Ephesians 3:15), and every child is His before it is the parent’s, "bought with a great price" (1 Corinthians 6:20) and made for heaven. Parents are stewards of souls that are not finally their own.
The Church teaches that parents are the first and primary educators of their children in the faith — not the school, not even the parish, but the mother and father, chiefly by the example of their own lives. So the prayer asks not first for clever or successful children but for the grace to be a good parent: to "correct without bitterness" (cf. Ephesians 6:4, "provoke not your children to anger") and to "love without indulgence," caring first for their souls.
Its most tender petition is for the child who wanders. Here the model is the father in Our Lord’s parable, who "saw him afar off" and ran to meet the returning prodigal (Luke 15:20) — and, above him, St. Monica, who prayed and wept for years for her wayward son until he became St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church. Her perseverance is the pattern: a parent must never stop watching the road. The prayer’s deepest cry echoes Our Lord’s own: "Of them whom thou hast given me, I have not lost any one" (John 18:9) — that on the last day, not one of the children entrusted to us may be missing.
Almighty God, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, You have entrusted to me these children as a sacred gift. They are Yours before they are mine, bought by the Blood of Your Son and destined for eternal life with You.
Make me a good parent: patient, just, and loving. Teach me to correct without bitterness and to love without indulgence, and above all to lead them by the example of my own life. Let me care first for their souls, giving them the faith, the sacraments, and the knowledge of Your love.
Guard them from every evil of body and soul. Keep them in Your grace; and if ever they should wander, let me, like the father of the prodigal, never cease to watch the road for their return, and by my prayers bring them home to You.
Grant that not one of those You have given me may be lost, but that we may all stand together before You on the last day. St. Monica, who wept and prayed for her son, pray for us. Amen.
Almighty God, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, You have entrusted to me these children as a sacred gift. They are Yours before they are mine, bought by the Blood of Your Son and destined for eternal life with You.
Make me a good parent: patient, just, and loving. Teach me to correct without bitterness and to love without indulgence, and above all to lead them by the example of my own life. Let me care first for their souls, giving them the faith, the sacraments, and the knowledge of Your love.
Guard them from every evil of body and soul. Keep them in Your grace; and if ever they should wander, let me, like the father of the prodigal, never cease to watch the road for their return, and by my prayers bring them home to You.
Grant that not one of those You have given me may be lost, but that we may all stand together before You on the last day. St. Monica, who wept and prayed for her son, pray for us. Amen.