A Prayer for Families

and for those without

Today I want to share with you this prayer by Christina Rossetti. She reminds us to pray for those whose family life isn’t ideal and may be a source of grief.

Give, I pray to all children grace reverently to love their parents, and lovingly to obey them. Teach us all that filial duty never ends or lessens; and bless all parents in their children, and all children in their parents. O you in whom the fatherless find mercy, make all orphans, I ask you, loving and dutiful unto you, their true Father. May your will be their law, your house their home, your love their inheritance. And I earnestly ask you, comfort those who have lost their children, giving mothers grace to be comforted thought they are not; and grant us all faith to yield our dearest treasures unto you with joy and thanksgiving, that where with you our treasure is, there our hearts may be also. Thus may we look for and hasten unto the day of union with you, and of reunion.