Prayer · Sleep & Peace
Bedtime Prayer: A Short Prayer Before Sleep for Adults and Children
A short prayer for tonight, built on “Now I lay me down to sleep”: what each line means, how to pray before bed, and praying with children
A bedtime prayer is a short prayer said before sleep, thanking God for the day and entrusting the night to him.
Lord, now as I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Guide me safely through the night
and wake me with the morning light.
Bless all those I love this night.
Grant us rest and bring us peace.
In peace I will lie down and sleep
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
Psalm four, eight.
Amen.
The best-known is “Now I lay me down to sleep,” taught to children since the 1700s. Catholics often add an examination of conscience and the Guardian Angel prayer.
Go deeper
What this bedtime prayer says, line by line
3 min readIt is a small prayer with a whole evening in it: handing yourself over, asking for the night and the morning, blessing the people you love, and resting on a line from the Psalms.
It is a small prayer with a whole evening in it: handing yourself over, asking for the night and the morning, blessing the people you love, and resting on a line from the Psalms. It is short enough for a four-year-old to learn and true enough for the end of a hard day.
“Lord, now as I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” The old couplet asks for more than a quiet night. The body lies down; the soul, the whole self, is put into God’s keeping. This is the oldest movement of Christian night prayer, and Jesus made it on the cross: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46, Douay-Rheims). He was praying a psalm, and the Church still prays that line every night at Compline: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth” (Psalm 30:6, Douay-Rheims; Psalm 31:5 in most modern Bibles).
“Guide me safely through the night and wake me with the morning light.” A request, not a guarantee. We ask God for the night the way we ask him for our daily bread: trusting him, without telling him how to answer. And we ask for the morning, which is a gift each day, not something we are owed. The Psalmist joins the two ends of the night: “If I have remembered thee upon my bed, I will meditate on thee in the morning” (Psalm 62:7, Douay-Rheims).
“Bless all those I love this night. Grant us rest and bring us peace.” Here the prayer turns from “me” to “us.” Name them, one by one: a husband, a child, a mother far away, a friend in the hospital, a coworker who is struggling. Name the ones you have lost too, and commend them to God with the Eternal Rest. If you are grieving and night is the hardest hour, saying their name to God is already a prayer. Rest and peace are both gifts. We cannot make ourselves fall asleep, and we cannot make peace by force of will; we can ask for them.
“In peace I will lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” The last line is King David’s, from Psalm 4, one of the psalms of the Church’s night prayer. David prayed it in trouble (“when I was in distress, thou hast enlarged me,” verse 2), and still he lies down and sleeps, because the One who keeps him is awake. The prayer says the line in the words of a modern translation, the New International Version, and then names it aloud, “Psalm four, eight,” the way most Bibles number it today. The Douay-Rheims, translated from the Latin Bible, counts it as verses 9 and 10: “In peace in the selfsame I will sleep, and I will rest: For thou, O Lord, singularly hast settled me in hope.”
The safety the psalm speaks of is not a promise that nothing can go wrong in the night. It is the safety of a child who sleeps because someone is watching. The prayer does not keep us; God does, and the prayer is how we put ourselves into his hands.
“Now I lay me down to sleep”: where the children’s bedtime prayer comes from
2 min readThe couplet that opens this prayer is the best-known bedtime prayer in English.
The couplet that opens this prayer is the best-known bedtime prayer in English. An early form is in The Protestant Monastery, a book of household devotions published in 1698 by the English writer and clergyman George Wheler: “Here I lay me down to sleep. To thee, O Lord, I give my Soul to keep.” By the middle of the next century the familiar form was printed in The New England Primer, the little book from which generations of American children learned their letters. The 1750 edition has it on page 23 (spelling modernized here):
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
if I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
“If I should die before I wake.” For generations children said this line every night. Today it can frighten a child at the very moment you want them calm, which is why many families pray a gentler second half, asking for the night and the morning instead. The prayer at the top of this page is one of those versions.
The old line is not morbid, though, and adults may want to keep it. The Church has always remembered death at nightfall: Compline closes by asking God for a quiet night and a perfect end, and the Catechism says plainly that “The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death” (CCC 1014). We ask the same thing in every Hail Mary: “now and at the hour of our death.” Said in faith, “if I should die before I wake” is not a fear but a handing over: whatever happens tonight, my soul is in your keeping.
So choose the version that lets the people in your house sleep. With small children, the gentler ending is wise. Older children and adults can be offered the old one, along with what it means.
Is it a Catholic prayer? It was born among English and American Protestants, and it belongs to no liturgy. Catholics pray it freely, because it is addressed to God and asks for what every Christian asks at night. Catholic families usually add their own: the Sign of the Cross, a Hail Mary and the prayer to the Guardian Angel.
How to pray before bed: a simple pattern for adults
2 min readA bedtime prayer does not need to be long.
A bedtime prayer does not need to be long. The Church has kept the same short pattern for centuries, and it fits into the five minutes between turning off the light and falling asleep. The Catechism names “morning and evening prayer” among the daily rhythms that keep a life of prayer going (CCC 2698).
1. Thank him. Before anything else, look for what was good today, even small things: a phone call, a meal, an hour without pain. Name two or three of them to God.
2. Look back. Go through the day with him, briefly and without hurry. Where did I love well? Where did I fail? If looking back stirs up anxiety or old guilt, keep it short and leave the rest to his mercy. This is the examination of conscience; there is a step-by-step form in the evening examination of conscience.
3. Say sorry. Tell God plainly what you regret and ask for his mercy, in the Act of Contrition or in your own words. If something serious weighs on you, do not lie awake in fear: sorrow that comes from loving God above all, with “the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible,” already obtains his forgiveness (CCC 1452). Then go to confession soon. If you are married, this is also the moment to make peace with each other: “Let not the sun go down upon your anger” (Ephesians 4:26, Douay-Rheims).
4. Hand it over. Give God what is left: the worry, the unfinished work, the people you cannot help tonight. Then pray the bedtime prayer, or an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and let that be the last word of the day.
This is Compline in miniature. The Church’s night prayer, prayed every evening by monks and nuns, by priests and by many lay people, has the same shape: an examination of the day, psalms of trust, the Song of Simeon, and a last word to Mary. If you want the fuller form, it is on Compline, the Church’s night prayer. A bedtime prayer is the short door into it.
Bedtime prayers for kids: how to pray with your children at night
3 min read“The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer,” the Catechism says (CCC 2685), and for most children that school is the edge of the bed.
“The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer,” the Catechism says (CCC 2685), and for most children that school is the edge of the bed. A few minutes, the same every night, does more than a long prayer once a week.
Toddlers. Trace a small cross on their forehead and say one line for them, with their name: “Jesus, bless Lucy tonight.” Before long they will say it with you.
Ages 4 to 7. Help them learn this bedtime prayer by heart, one couplet a week. Then let them fill in the blessing: who should God bless tonight? Let the list be as long as they like.
Ages 8 to 12. Add two questions about the day: When were you happy today? Is there anything you want to tell God you are sorry for? Let them answer to God, not to you, and do not use the moment to correct them.
Teenagers. Ask, do not insist. Often what lasts is a knock on the door, a quiet “Can I pray with you?” or a blessing on your way out. When they say no, pray for them in your own room.
When a child is afraid of the dark. Do not laugh the fear away, and do not feed it. Sit on the bed, make the Sign of the Cross together, and give them one line they can say alone after you leave: “Jesus, stay with me.” Then tell them what the Church teaches: God has given them a guardian angel, and Jesus is with them in the dark just as in the light.
Most Catholic children also learn the prayer to their guardian angel at bedtime. The Church teaches that “From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession” (CCC 336). The prayer is short enough for a small child, and its words and history are on the Guardian Angel prayer. More prayers to teach children, and to pray for them, are on Catholic prayers for children.
Jesus wanted the children near him: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such” (Matthew 19:14, Douay-Rheims). A parent praying at the bedside is doing just that.
A blessing before the light goes off. Many Catholic parents end with a small cross traced on the child’s forehead with the thumb: “God bless you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” It takes three seconds, and many grown children still remember it.
When you cannot sleep: praying in the night
2 min readSometimes the prayer is said, the light is off, and sleep does not come.
Sometimes the prayer is said, the light is off, and sleep does not come. The mind replays the day or runs ahead to tomorrow. Do not fight it, and do not grade your prayer. Lying awake can become a quiet kind of prayer.
Pray slowly. Take one short line and repeat it with your breath: “Jesus, I trust in you,” or the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Or pray a decade of the Rosary on your fingers.
Give the worries a place. If a task keeps coming back, write it on a note by the bed and tell God you will take it up in the morning. Then leave it there.
Remember who is awake. “Behold he shall neither slumber nor sleep, that keepeth Israel” (Psalm 120:4, Douay-Rheims). You do not have to stand guard over your life tonight. Jesus’s invitation was made for nights like this one: “Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matthew 11:28, Douay-Rheims).
A prayer of our own, for the hours when sleep will not come:
Lord, I cannot sleep,
and you are awake with me.
Take what I keep turning over in my mind:
the things I said, the things I fear,
the people I cannot help tonight.
Hold them for me until morning.
Give me rest, if it is your will,
and your peace, if rest does not come.
I put my spirit into your hands.
Amen.
For a longer prayer in those hours there is a prayer for when sleep won’t come.
A bedtime prayer to pray together, and other prayers for the night
2 min readSome families pray together in the living room before the children go to bed; some couples pray side by side with the light already off.
Some families pray together in the living room before the children go to bed; some couples pray side by side with the light already off. Either way, one person can lead and everyone answers “Amen.” For a fuller order a family can pray together, see night prayer for the family. A shorter prayer of our own, for the whole household:
Lord, thank you for this day
and for each person in this house.
Forgive us where we were unkind,
and help us forgive one another before we sleep.
Bless those we love who are far away tonight,
and all who are sick, alone or working through the night.
Watch over our rest, and wake us to serve you tomorrow.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
Holy angels, our guardians, pray for us.
Amen.
Other prayers for the end of the day. The Church’s Gospel canticle for the night is the Song of Simeon: “Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace” (Luke 2:29, Douay-Rheims). The night prayer attributed to St. Augustine remembers everyone who is awake and suffering while we sleep.
A bedtime prayer for protection. The bedtime prayer at the top of this page already asks God to keep you safe through the night. If you are afraid of the dark, troubled by nightmares or feel under spiritual attack, you are not facing it alone: make the Sign of the Cross, bless yourself with holy water if you have it, and say the name of Jesus. The Catechism is plain that “the power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite” (CCC 395), and the One who keeps you does not sleep. For longer prayers that ask his protection over your home, your children and your sleep, there is the night prayer for protection and the guide to prayers for sleep protection.
This bedtime prayer is also in the AngelGuard app, read aloud in under a minute, so you can pray it with a calm voice beside you or play it for a child at lights-out. In Spanish, the family night prayer is la oración de la noche; in Portuguese, a oração para dormir.
Questions
What is a good bedtime prayer?
A good bedtime prayer is short enough to say every night and honest about the day. This one asks God to keep your soul, to guide you through the night and wake you in the morning, and to bless everyone you love, and it ends with a line from Psalm 4. Many people add a moment of thanks and a quick look back over the day.
What is a short bedtime prayer for kids?
The best-known is “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” followed by a gentler ending such as “Guide me safely through the night and wake me with the morning light.” Let the child add the names of the people they want God to bless, and finish with the Sign of the Cross.
What is the full “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer?
The traditional form, printed in The New England Primer by 1750, is: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Many families now replace the last two lines with a request for the night and the morning.
Should children say “If I should die before I wake”?
There is nothing wrong with the line: the Church asks us to remember the hour of our death, as every Hail Mary does. But it can frighten a young child at bedtime. With small children, a gentler ending is wise; older children can learn the old line along with what it means: whatever happens, they put their soul into God’s keeping.
What is a Catholic prayer before bed?
Catholics end the day with a short examination of conscience, an act of contrition, and a prayer that hands the night to God, often with an Our Father, a Hail Mary and the Guardian Angel prayer. The Church’s own night prayer is Compline, the last hour of the Liturgy of the Hours.
What is a nighttime prayer?
Any prayer said at the end of the day, before sleep. It usually thanks God for the day, asks forgiveness for what went wrong, and entrusts the night and the people you love to him. The Church’s formal nighttime prayer is Compline; a bedtime prayer like this one is a short, everyday prayer in the same spirit.
What does Psalm 4:8 mean?
It is David’s evening act of trust: he lies down and sleeps in peace because God watches over him, even though he is surrounded by trouble. In the Douay-Rheims it is numbered verses 9 and 10: “In peace in the selfsame I will sleep, and I will rest: For thou, O Lord, singularly hast settled me in hope.”
What can my child pray when they are scared at night?
Something short they can say alone in the dark, such as “Jesus, I trust in you,” or the Guardian Angel prayer. Sit with them, pray it together, and leave a small light on if it helps. If night fears go on for weeks or keep them from sleeping, mention it to your pediatrician.
Can I pray lying in bed?
Yes. Kneeling is a good habit when you can, but God hears a prayer said lying down, half asleep, or in the middle of the night. “If I have remembered thee upon my bed, I will meditate on thee in the morning” (Psalm 62:7, Douay-Rheims).
Is there a bedtime prayer for protection?
Yes. This bedtime prayer already asks God to guide you safely through the night, but you can also ask his protection directly, over your home, your children and your sleep. Many Catholics pray Psalm 91 (Psalm 90 in the Douay-Rheims), a night prayer for protection, or the Guardian Angel prayer before they sleep.
A prayer from AngelGuard · After the traditional “Now I lay me down to sleep”
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used with permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. “New International Version” and “NIV” are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc.
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