A Catholic New Year Prayer, with the Te Deum

Pray on New Year’s Eve before the meal or a little before midnight, while the house is still calm, rather than in the last seconds of the countdown. Ten minutes is enough. Turn the television off, light a candle on the table or by the Nativity scene if it is still up, and begin with the Sign of the Cross. Keep a minute of silence for the year, then pray the New Year prayer. At the pause, each person names one thing to thank God for; give the youngest children a turn too. Then say aloud the names of those who died this year. If it is the first New Year without someone you love, there are also prayers for grief for the days after.

After the prayer comes the Te Deum. Pray it in two choirs, one side of the table taking a line and the other side answering. With small children you can stop at “in glory everlasting,” or pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary instead. Parents can end the evening by tracing a small cross on each child’s forehead and asking God to bless them through the year.

On New Year’s Day, begin at Mass; later, at breakfast or at the main meal, pray the New Year prayer again and add the Veni Creator, the hymn that asks the Holy Spirit to guide the year that has just begun.

If you are on your own tonight. Pray the same words, saying “I” where they say “we.” You are less alone than the room suggests: on this night the Te Deum is sung in cathedrals and parishes around the world, and in Rome the Pope leads it at the end of First Vespers of the solemnity in St. Peter’s Basilica.

When the Church wants to thank God for something great, she sings the Te Deum, a hymn named for its first two Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, “We praise Thee, O God.” It praises the Father with the angels, apostles, prophets and martyrs, confesses Christ, born of the Virgin, risen and coming as Judge, and closes with petitions drawn largely from the Psalms. In the Liturgy of the Hours it follows the readings of the Office of Readings on Sundays outside Lent, in the octaves of Christmas and Easter, and on solemnities and feasts (General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, 68). On the last night of the year, parishes sing it to thank God for the twelve months behind them.

The English below is the one printed in the Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, the prayer book ordered by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore and approved by Cardinal Gibbons in 1889. Its words are kept as printed. Each verse is set on two lines, broken where the book marks the half-verse for chanting.

The Latin text below follows the booklets the Holy See prints for the First Vespers and Te Deum of December 31 in St. Peter’s, accents included, since they guide the singing. A parish choir can sing the Latin while the people follow the English above.

On January 1 the Church opens the year by calling on the Holy Spirit with the Veni Creator Spiritus, “Come, Creator Spirit,” the same hymn she sings at Pentecost. Pray it after the New Year prayer at breakfast, or before the main meal of the day. The English is the one printed in the 1910 Raccolta, the English edition of the Church’s collection of indulgenced prayers.

A plenary indulgence is attached to each of these two days by the Enchiridion of Indulgences (fourth edition, 1999, grant 26 §1). On December 31 it is granted to the faithful who devoutly take part, in a church or oratory, in the solemn singing or recitation of the Te Deum, to thank God for the blessings received over the whole year. On January 1 it is granted for taking part, in a church or oratory, in the solemn singing or recitation of the Veni Creator, to ask God’s help for the whole year to come; the same grant covers the Veni Creator on Pentecost.

The usual conditions apply: sacramental confession, Holy Communion and a prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions, for which one Our Father and one Hail Mary are enough, together with freedom from all attachment to sin, even venial sin (norm 20). They can be fulfilled several days before or after, though Communion and the prayer for the Pope are best on the day itself. Only one plenary indulgence can be gained in a day (norm 18), and the Te Deum on the 31st and the Veni Creator on the 1st are two indulgences: one confession can serve for both, but each needs its own Communion and prayer for the Pope (norm 20). If something is lacking, the indulgence is partial (norm 20), and any indulgence may be gained for yourself or offered for the dead (norm 3).

January 1 is the eighth day of Christmas, the Octave Day of the Nativity, and the Church keeps it as the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. The title is first about her Son. Her Child is God’s own eternal Son, and so the Church calls her by the Greek title Theotokos, “God-bearer” (CCC 495), which the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 (CCC 466). Our page on Mary, Mother of God tells the history of the title and answers the questions people ask about it.

The Gospel at Mass is Luke 2:16–21, and in the Douay-Rheims it holds the verse a whole year can be built on: “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Two verses later the Child receives his name: “his name was called JESUS” (Luke 2:21). The first reading is the blessing God gave Aaron and his sons to pray over Israel, which parents can pray over their children on this morning: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord shew his face to thee, and have mercy on thee. The Lord turn his countenance to thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24–26).

The day is also the World Day of Peace. Paul VI proposed it for New Year’s Day 1968 and asked that it be kept each year from then on, without changing the feast, since the calendar keeps New Year’s Day for the divine motherhood of Mary and the Holy Name of Jesus. January 1, 2027, is the sixtieth. That is why the New Year prayer asks for peace in the home and in the world.

Before the year closes, give it ten quiet minutes with God. Five questions are enough, taken one at a time:

1. What am I grateful for? Name three things, as specifically as you can: a person, an answered prayer, an ordinary good day.
2. Where did I see God at work? Often it shows more clearly in the hard months than in the easy ones.
3. What do I regret? Tell God plainly, without putting the whole year on trial. If there is serious sin, bring it to confession during the Christmas season.
4. Whom do I need to forgive, or ask to forgive me? One name is a good beginning.
5. What do I want to give God next year? One habit of prayer you will keep, rather than a list of resolutions.

St. Paul puts all five into one line: “In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Then pray the New Year prayer slowly, and let the Te Deum say the rest.