Traditional prayer
A Mother’s Prayer
O Father of mankind, who hast given unto me these my children, and committed them to my charge to bring them up for Thee, and to prepare them for everlasting life:
assist me with Thy heavenly grace, that I may be able to fulfil this most sacred duty and stewardship.
Teach me both what to give and what to withhold; when to reprove and when to forbear;
make me to be gentle, yet firm; considerate and watchful;
and deliver me equally from the weakness of indulgence, and the excess of severity;
and grant that, both by word and example, I may be careful to lead them in the ways of wisdom and true piety,
so that at last I may, with them, be admitted to the unspeakable joys of our true home in heaven, in the company of the blessed Angels and Saints.
About this prayer
The bishops of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore ordered a common prayer book for American Catholics, and the Archbishop of Baltimore approved A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity (copyright 1888). This prayer stands among its occasional prayers, under the heading “Prayers of Parents, for themselves and for their Children.” It is written for any parent, and there is nothing in it a mother needs to change.
It does not ask for easier children. It asks for a wiser mother: to know “what to give and what to withhold; when to reprove and when to forbear.” And it names the two ways every mother fails, sometimes on the same afternoon: “the weakness of indulgence, and the excess of severity.” Asking to be delivered from both is the beginning of being free of them.
It also tells the truth about whose children they are. They are “given” and “committed... to my charge to bring them up for Thee”: a stewardship, not a possession. And it sets the goal beyond their success, at a home where mother and children are “admitted” together. Mothers by adoption, stepmothers, and mothers raising children alone can pray every word of it.
The 1888 book prints the prayer without a closing “Amen.” Add your own.
When to pray it
- In the morning, before the children wake.
- After you have lost your temper: pray it with an Act of Contrition, then begin again.
- Before a hard decision about a child: a school, a punishment, a permission.
- At the start of a school year, and on each child’s birthday.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.