Night Prayer for Family

This is a night prayer for a family to pray together, made only of prayers the Church already prays. Nothing in it is new. The opening verse and the closing blessing come from Compline, the last hour of the Divine Office; the psalm is the one the Church prays on Sunday nights; the rest are the prayers a Catholic child learns first.

Pray it at the same time every night, with the lights low, wherever the family can gather: around a bed, on the stairs, at the kitchen table. One person leads and everyone joins in. On a tired night, keep the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Angel of God and the blessing, and stop there.

The Catechism calls the family “the first place of education in prayer” and the “domestic church” where children learn to pray “as the Church” (CCC 2685). For young children in particular, it says, “daily family prayer is the first witness of the Church’s living memory.” Night prayer is the easiest place to begin, because every family already has a bedtime.

The Church has always prayed before sleep. Compline, its night prayer, looks back on the day, asks forgiveness, prays a psalm of trust, sings the Canticle of Simeon (“Now you are releasing your servant, Master, according to your word, in peace”) and asks God to keep watch over the house. The prayer on this page follows that shape in miniature, with the prayers children already know.

Nothing here works like a charm, and nothing needs to be said perfectly. A prayer is something we ask of God, not a formula that obliges him (CCC 2111). What a night prayer does is hand the family, its day and its sleep back to God, and teach the children, by doing it, that he is there in the dark too.

• Every night at the same time, before the youngest goes to bed.
• Wherever the family can gather: around a bed, on the stairs or at the kitchen table.
• With Psalm 4 and Psalm 134 on Saturday night and Psalm 91 on Sunday, as the Church’s Night Prayer has them.
• On the nights someone is away, in hospital or far from home: pray for them by name.

One person leads: a parent, a grandparent or an older child. The leader says the first line of the opening verse (“O God, come to my assistance”) and everyone answers with the second. After that, say the prayers together, a little more slowly than feels natural.

Give the children parts. A child who can read can lead the Our Father or the Angel of God; a small child can make the Sign of the Cross and say “Amen.” Let them name the people they want to pray for.

Keep the minute of silence real, even with children: one thing to thank God for, one thing to be sorry for. Then end with the blessing, and a parent may trace a small cross on each child’s forehead. Lay people may give blessings of this kind: “every baptized person is called to be a ‘blessing,’ and to bless” (CCC 1669).

For a tired night, or for children too small for ten minutes, keep only the prayers they already know: the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Angel of God and the blessing. That takes two or three minutes and keeps the same shape: begin with God, pray as Jesus taught, ask for the angels’ watch, and end with a blessing.

Grandparents can pray it the same way, at a sleepover or over the phone, or alone for the whole family, naming each one. For a night prayer to say on your own, there is the night prayer for protection.

Every prayer on this page is one the Church already prays. None was written for this page.

• The opening. The Sign of the Cross (Matthew 28:19), then the verse that opens every hour of the Divine Office, “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me” (Psalm 70:1, numbered 69:2 in the Douay-Rheims), and the Glory Be.
• The Act of Contrition, in its traditional form. Other forms are on the Act of Contrition page.
• Psalm 91, the psalm of Sunday’s Night Prayer, in the World English Bible. More about it: Psalm 91.
• The Our Father (Matthew 6:9–13) and the Hail Mary (Luke 1:28, 1:42, with the Church’s petition), in their traditional words: the Our Father.
• The Canticle of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32), the Gospel canticle of every night’s Compline, between its antiphon from the Roman Breviary, Salva nos, Domine.
• Visit this house, the closing prayer of Compline in the Roman Breviary, Visita, quaesumus, Domine, habitationem istam.
• Angel of God, the medieval prayer to one’s guardian angel, in its night form: the Guardian Angel prayer.
• St. Michael the Archangel, the prayer of Pope Leo XIII: the St. Michael prayer.
• Hail, Holy Queen, the Salve Regina, the antiphon to Our Lady that closes Compline for much of the year: Hail, Holy Queen.
• The blessing, “May the almighty Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end,” from the beginning of Compline in the Roman Breviary (Noctem quietam et finem perfectum concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens).

Scripture is quoted in the World English Bible, the public-domain translation used across this site. Where a prayer comes from the Latin of the Breviary, the English given is a plain, traditional rendering of it.