Traditional prayer
Prayer for My Husband
O heavenly Father! Thou hast confided my children not to myself alone, but to my husband also.
The true education of our children can only be accomplished, therefore, when we both are sincerely and earnestly intent upon fulfilling our duties toward them.
Grant then, O Lord, also to my husband the grace to see and to understand the sanctity and importance of his vocation as a father; urge him on to be zealous in fulfilling it perfectly.
Oh, that above all he might go before our children with the example of a truly Christian life!
O God, give him, therefore, Thy grace, that he may earnestly war against his faults and conquer them.
May he not forget Thee in the midst of the distractions of daily life, and perish in the many dangers that surround him!
Inspire him with lively sentiments of faith, hope, and charity; give him zeal for prayer and divine service, and for all the exercises of a Catholic Christian.
Make him a truly good father toward his children. Amen.
About this prayer
This prayer comes from The Christian Mother, a book of instruction and prayers for Catholic mothers, translated from the German of Fr. Wilhelm Cramer and published by Benziger Brothers in 1880 with the approbation of several bishops. It is a wife’s intercession for the man she married: that he see what his vocation asks of him, that he war against his faults and conquer them, that he not forget God in the distractions of ordinary days, and that he grow in faith, hope and charity.
The book’s own footnote is honest about its scope. A good wife, it says, will pray much and fervently for her husband in every need, above all when he is caught in bad habits or his soul is in greater danger; this particular prayer asks only that he fulfil his duties as a father. If you have no children, or yours are grown, the heart of it is still yours as it stands: his faith, his battle with his faults, his perseverance in prayer. Pray it, then add his name and whatever he is carrying in your own words.
Praying for him is not a private extra. If you are both baptized and validly married, your marriage is a sacrament (CCC 1601; Code of Canon Law, can. 1055 §2), and your prayer asks for him the grace that sacrament was given to carry. If he is not baptized, St. Paul’s word is for you: “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife” (1 Corinthians 7:14, Douay-Rheims), and the Church gives the Catholic spouse a particular task in such a marriage (CCC 1637). Either way, in Ephesians, before St. Paul says a word to wives or to husbands, he puts every Christian under one command: “Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ” (Ephesians 5:21, Douay-Rheims). The same chapter calls marriage “a great sacrament” because it speaks of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32).
If you want a patron for this, Pope Leo XIII wrote in 1889 that married people find in St. Joseph “a perfect example of love, of peace, and of conjugal fidelity” (Quamquam Pluries, 4). Ask the man who guarded the Holy Family to guard yours.
When to pray it
- In the morning, before the day takes him out the door.
- On your wedding anniversary, and on the feast of his patron saint.
- When he is under strain at work, tempted, discouraged, or far from the sacraments.
- Before a hard conversation: pray first, then speak.
- If you are afraid of your husband, this is not first a prayer problem. Get yourself and your children safe; call 911 in an emergency, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788). Then speak to your priest. The Church does not ask you to stay in danger: she permits spouses to live apart when living together has become impossible (CCC 1649, 2383).