Catholic prayer for mothers

Every one of us has a mother to pray for, here or in eternity, and every mother has children to pray for. The Church has prayers for all of it. Below are the traditional ones, all in the public domain and printed word for word with their sources: the Church's old blessing of a new mother, a mother's prayer for her children, prayers for your own mother while she lives and after she dies, the collects of St. Monica and St. Anne, and Our Lady's own hymn. Then the saints we ask to pray for mothers.

A prayer for mothers

For centuries, a mother's first outing after giving birth was to church, to thank God and receive a blessing. The old Roman Ritual called it the blessing of a woman after childbirth, and English-speaking Catholics called it "churching." The mother knelt at the church door with a lighted candle, the priest sprinkled her with holy water and led her in, and then he prayed this prayer over her. This is the translation in the 1888 Manual of Prayers published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore:

Almighty, Everlasting God, who, through the Delivery of the Blessed Virgin Mary, hast turned the pains of the faithful at childbirth into joy: look mercifully on this Thy handmaid, who cometh in gladness to Thy temple to offer up her thanks: and grant that after this life, through the merits and intercession of the same Blessed Mary, she may be found worthy to attain, together with her offspring, unto the joys of everlasting happiness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The rite ends with the priest's blessing, which any mother can hear as spoken to her:

The peace and blessing of God Almighty, the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon thee, and remain with thee always. Amen.

Look at what the Church asks for a mother: not only health, but heaven, and heaven "together with her offspring." That is the whole of a Christian mother's hope in one line.

A mother's prayer for her children

The 1888 Manual gives "A Parent's Prayer." A mother prays it as written, choosing "mother" at the bracket.

Almighty God, the Father and Maker of us all, who of Thy blessing and goodness hast vouchsafed to make me a father [or mother] of children: be pleased to accept my hearty thanksgiving and devout praise for the same; grant me Thy heavenly grace and assistance so to train up my children in Thy faith, fear, and love that as they advance in years they may grow in grace and may hereafter be found in the number of Thine elect. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And for the days when a mother has done all she can and must hand her children to God, Bishop Richard Challoner's Garden of the Soul has this "Prayer of Parents for their Children" (1872 edition):

O heavenly Father, I commend my children unto thee. Be thou their God and Father; and mercifully supply whatever is wanting in me, through frailty or negligence. Strengthen them to overcome the corruptions of the world, to resist the solicitations of evil, whether from within or without; and deliver them from the secret snares of the enemy. Pour thy grace into their hearts, and confirm and multiply in them the gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may daily grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; and so, faithfully serving thee here, may come to rejoice before thee hereafter; through the merits of the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest ever and ever. Amen.

"Supply whatever is wanting in me" is a sentence every mother understands.

A prayer for my mother

The surest place to put your mother is in the hands of the Mother of God. The Sub tuum praesidium is one of the oldest prayers to Our Lady, prayed in Greek long before the Hail Mary took its present form. The Key of Heaven (Baltimore, 1901) gives it this way:

We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessities: but deliver us from all dangers, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.

Say it with your mother's name in your heart, then a Hail Mary. When she is sick or worried, the Memorare is the prayer of a child who is sure of being heard.

Prayers to St. Monica and St. Anne

The Church's own prayers for these two mothers are the collects of their feast days. These are the English translations in The Mass Every Day of the Year (New York, 1916), from the Roman Missal of the time.

For St. Monica, the mother who wept and prayed for years for her son Augustine:

O God, the consoler of the afflicted, and the salvation of those who hope in thee, who mercifully accepted the pious tears of the blessed Monica for the conversion of her son, grant us by the intercession of both to deplore our sins and to obtain the grace of thy pardon. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

Monica's story is every praying mother's story. When she begged a bishop in tears to talk her son out of his errors, he told her, as Augustine records in Book III of the Confessions: "Go your way, and God bless you, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." Augustine came home to the faith years later, was baptized by St. Ambrose, and became a saint and Doctor of the Church.

For St. Anne, the mother of Our Lady and grandmother of Jesus:

O God who didst bestow graces on blessed Anne that she might deserve to become mother of the Mother of thy only begotten Son, graciously grant that as we celebrate her feast we may be helped by her patronage. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

Scripture says nothing of Anne; her name and story come from the second-century Protoevangelium of James. Devotion to her as the patron of mothers and grandmothers is ancient in East and West, from Constantinople to Quebec.

A prayer for a deceased mother

When our mother has died, we keep praying for her. This is the prayer "For Father and Mother" among the prayers for the dead in the Garden of the Soul (1872); for a mother alone, say "the soul of my mother."

O God, who hast commanded us to honour our father and mother, have compassion, in thy mercy, on the souls of my father and mother; forgive them their sins, and grant that I may see them in the joy of eternal brightness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

St. Monica asked only one thing of her sons as she lay dying at Ostia: "remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be." Having a Mass offered for a mother on her anniversary, her birthday or Mother's Day is the oldest way of doing what she asked. More prayers for a mother who has died, and for the grief that comes with it, are on our prayer for grief and prayers for the dead pages.

Our Lady, mother of us all

From the cross, Jesus gave his own mother to us. In the Douay-Rheims (John 19:26-27): "When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother." Every mother who prays to Mary is praying to a mother who lost her Son and still kept faith.

The old vespers hymn Ave maris stella has the line mothers and children have prayed to her for a thousand years, Monstra te esse matrem. In Edward Caswall's translation (Lyra Catholica, 1849):

Show thyself a Mother; Offer Him our sighs, Who for us Incarnate Did not thee despise.

Scripture for mothers

Proverbs 31 praises the "valiant woman." In the Douay-Rheims (31:10-12, 28-30):

Who shall find a valiant woman? far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her. The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils. She will render him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. ...Her children rose up, and called her blessed: her husband, and he praised her. Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

And in the Gospel of Luke (7:12-15), Our Lord meets a widow carrying her only son to his grave at Naim: "being moved with mercy towards her, he said to her: Weep not." He raised the young man "and gave him to his mother." Christ's heart goes out to a grieving mother first.

The saints we ask to pray for mothers

Our full list is on the patron saints of mothers page, and mothers expecting a child will find their patrons on the patron saints of pregnancy page.

• The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our mother.
• St. Anne, for mothers, grandmothers and those hoping for a child.
• St. Monica, for mothers whose children have wandered from the faith.
• St. Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian pediatrician and mother of four who died in 1962, a week after her last child's birth, and was canonized by St. John Paul II on May 16, 2004.
• St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widow who raised five children and buried two daughters.
• Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, for mothers and fathers together; Zélie raised five daughters, one of them St. Thérèse.
• St. Gerard Majella, the patron of expectant mothers.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, St. Anne and St. Monica, pray for our mothers, for every mother holding a newborn tonight, and for every mother still waiting for a child to come home.