Prayers for Guidance

A short prayer for guidance can be said in the middle of the decision itself: in the meeting, before the phone call, at the fork in the road. Each of these is either Scripture or a line the Church has prayed for centuries.

Guidance tells you which way to go. Wisdom lets you see it for yourself. Scripture promises the second to anyone who asks: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5). The Church counts wisdom and counsel among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is why the prayer for both is addressed to him.

The best-loved prayer for direction in English was written at sea. In June 1833 a young Anglican priest, John Henry Newman, ill and desperate to get home from Italy, was becalmed for a week in the Straits of Bonifacio on an orange boat bound for Marseilles, and wrote a poem he called “The Pillar of the Cloud.” He was received into the Catholic Church in 1845, and Pope Francis canonized him in 2019: St. John Henry Newman. The title comes from the Exodus: “The LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.” Here is the first stanza, as he wrote it (hymnals usually print “amid the encircling gloom”):

For a real decision (a job, a move, a marriage, a vocation, a hard conversation) the Church offers more than a prayer. St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, describes three “times” in which a good choice can be made (§175–177): when God moves the will so clearly that there is no room for doubt, as with St. Paul and St. Matthew; when enough light comes from the experience of consolation and desolation in prayer; and, most often, in a “time of quiet,” when a person weighs the choice calmly with reason, asking which option better serves God and their salvation.

For that quiet time he gives three tests that anyone can use (§185–187), in Elder Mullan’s 1914 translation:

• The stranger. Imagine “a man whom I have never seen nor known” facing the same choice, and ask what you would advise him. Then take your own advice.
• The deathbed. Consider, “as if I were at the point of death,” which choice you would then wish you had made.
• The Day of Judgment. Ask how you would want to have decided when you stand before God, and decide that way now.

Write the options down, with the reasons for and against each. Ask the advice of people who know you and love God: “Where there is no counsel, plans fail; but in a multitude of counselors they are established.” (Proverbs 15:22). Then pray:

People often ask how to know whether a sense of direction comes from God or from themselves. St. Ignatius wrote two sets of “rules for the discernment of spirits” (Spiritual Exercises §313–336), written to be used with an experienced spiritual guide. The first set turns on two words he defines carefully.

Consolation (§316) is not simply feeling good. Ignatius calls consolation “every increase of hope, faith and charity, and all interior joy which calls and attracts to heavenly things,” quieting the soul and “giving it peace in its Creator and Lord.” Desolation (§317) is the opposite: “darkness of soul, disturbance in it,” restlessness, a pull toward low things, and a mood “without hope, without love,” as if one were “separated from his Creator and Lord.”

From this comes his most practical rule, the fifth (§318): “In time of desolation never to make a change.” When you are anxious, discouraged or far from God, keep to the decision you made before the darkness came. Do not quit the job, end the relationship or abandon the vocation in the worst week. Decide in a time of peace, and test the decision in the next one.

Scripture gives the same counsel in other words: “don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1), and be transformed “by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). Guidance from God tends to bring peace, even when the path is hard. A pull that leaves you restless, secretive or proud deserves a second look.

Before any sign or feeling, Catholics look to conscience. The Catechism calls it the place where a person “discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey,” his “most secret core and his sanctuary,” where “he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (CCC 1776). Conscience “judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil” (CCC 1777).

But a conscience has to be formed, and the Catechism says how: “the Word of God is the light for our path, we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice,” assisted “by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church” (CCC 1785). The psalmist says it in a line: “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.”

When a decision is genuinely unclear, the Catechism is realistic. A person “is sometimes confronted by situations that make moral judgments less assured and decision difficult,” but “must always seriously seek what is right and good and discern the will of God” (CCC 1787), with the virtue of prudence, “the advice of competent people, and … the help of the Holy Spirit and his gifts” (CCC 1788). And some rules hold in every case: “One may never do evil so that good may result from it,” and the Golden Rule (CCC 1789). No guidance that asks you to do something wrong comes from God.

Prudence, the Catechism adds, is “right reason in action” and “immediately guides the judgment of conscience” (CCC 1806). Praying for guidance is not a substitute for thinking; it is asking God to guide the thinking.

Sometimes the way is clear and the problem is the strength to take it: the hard conversation you know you must have, the habit you know you must break, the path that is right and costly. Isaiah promises both at once: “the LORD will guide you continually, satisfy your soul in dry places, and make your bones strong.”

The oldest Catholic prayer for guidance and protection together is one most people learned as children: the Guardian Angel prayer, which asks the angel to be at our side “to light and guard, to rule and guide.” It is prayed in full, with its history, on the Guardian Angel prayer page. A prayer that asks God for both:

The morning is when the day’s decisions are still ahead. Psalm 143 asks for guidance at exactly that hour: “Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you.” (Psalm 143:8).

Often the person who needs guidance is not you: a child choosing a college, a friend in a bad relationship, a parent facing a medical decision. You cannot make the choice for them. You can pray for them, and it is often wiser than advice.

St. Ignatius closes the Spiritual Exercises with a prayer of surrender (§234), which many people pray once a decision is made and the outcome is out of their hands. In Mullan’s 1914 translation: