Veterans Day Prayers for 2026

A good Veterans Day prayer is short enough to open a meeting, a school assembly or a family meal, and it does three things: it thanks God for those who served, it remembers those who did not come home, and it asks for peace. One person reads it, and everyone answers “Amen.” Begin with the Sign of the Cross, and let the room go quiet first.

Most of us know a veteran by name: a grandfather who never talked about Korea, a mother who served two tours, a neighbor, a coworker, a son home from his last deployment. This prayer is for them, one at a time; say the name where the prayer has (name). It thanks God for their service, asks healing for the wounds that show and the ones that do not, and remembers the husbands, wives and children who served at home.

Some veterans carry wounds no one can see, and a day like this one can bring them back. If you are a veteran who has had thoughts of ending your life, or you are afraid for a veteran you love, please tell someone you trust first; this prayer will still be here.

Veterans Day thanks those who have served, but on November 11 many soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen are still serving: deployed overseas, at sea, on a base far from home, or about to leave. Their families serve too, through deployments, moves and an empty chair at the table. This prayer is for both, and a spouse, a parent or a child can pray it.

Veterans Day honors everyone who served, the living and the dead, and it falls in the same month as All Souls’ Day, when Catholics pray for the dead. Scripture gives the pattern. After a battle, Judas Maccabeus took up a collection and sent it to Jerusalem so that sacrifice could be offered for his fallen soldiers, and Scripture says: “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46, Douay-Rheims). Begin with the Church’s own prayer for the dead, the Eternal Rest, then pray for them by name.

November 11 is also the feast of St. Martin of Tours, and few saints suit the day better. Martin was a veteran’s son. His father had risen from the ranks to be a military tribune, and an imperial edict sent the sons of veterans into the army, so at fifteen Martin was made to take the military oath. His first biographer, Sulpicius Severus, tells the story that made him famous. In a winter so cold that people were dying of it, Martin met a poor man without clothes at the gate of Amiens, in Gaul. He had nothing left but his soldier’s cloak, so he cut it in two with his sword and gave the man half. That night he saw Christ in a dream, wearing the half he had given away, and heard him say: “Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

Martin was baptized, left the army to serve God alone, and became a disciple of St. Hilary of Poitiers, a monk at Ligugé and, about 371, bishop of Tours. He died at Candes, most probably in 397. He is one of the patron saints of soldiers.

Psalm 91 is often called the soldier’s psalm: soldiers have carried it into battle since the First World War, and camouflage bandanas printed with it have been sent to U.S. troops overseas. It is a psalm of trust: whoever takes shelter in God is not abandoned by him, whatever happens around them. In the Douay-Rheims Bible, which follows the numbering of the Latin Vulgate, it is Psalm 90. These verses are a prayer for anyone in uniform, and for anyone waiting for them to come home.

Peace has been part of this day from the start. In 1926 Congress declared it fitting that the anniversary of the armistice be commemorated “with thanksgiving and prayer,” and the 1938 law that made November 11 a legal holiday dedicated it “to the cause of world peace.” The Church prays the same way, urging everyone to prayer and to action so that God may “free us from the ancient bondage of war” (CCC 2307). The prophet Isaiah saw the day when “they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war” (Isaiah 2:4, Douay-Rheims).

Veterans Day is a national holiday, not a feast of the Church, and it is not a holy day of obligation. The U.S. bishops’ liturgical calendar inscribes only two civic holidays, Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day, and notes that for the others the Roman Missal offers appropriate Masses. On November 11 the Church keeps the memorial of St. Martin of Tours, unless the day falls on a Sunday. A parish can still mark Veterans Day: a Mass offered for veterans living and dead, a petition in the Prayer of the Faithful, the names of parishioners who served read aloud. A family can ask the parish to offer a Mass for a veteran by name. The Lectionary has readings for Masses “For the Country or a City” and “For Peace and Justice”; whether to use them on a memorial is the priest’s pastoral judgment.

What the Church asks of everyone is gratitude to those who serve and prayer for peace. The Catechism calls those who serve in the armed forces “servants of the security and freedom of nations,” and says that if they carry out their duty honorably they contribute to the common good and to peace (CCC 2310).

The day began as Armistice Day. The fighting of the First World War stopped at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day in November 1919, a 1938 law made November 11 a legal holiday, and in 1954 Congress renamed it Veterans Day, to honor American veterans of all wars. In 2026 it falls on a Wednesday.