A Prayer for My Son

This is what most parents are asking for: that their son be kept safe. The dangers change with age, from the playground to the highway to a city far away; the prayer does not. The Catechism says of the angels that “from infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession” (CCC 336). Ask for that care for him by name.

Mary knows this prayer from the inside. When the twelve-year-old Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, it was “after three days” that she and Joseph found him in the Temple, and she said to him, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you” (Luke 2:46, 48). Afterwards she “kept all these sayings in her heart” (Luke 2:51). Years later she stood at the foot of his cross. A mother can bring her son to Mary as one mother to another.

The Gospels keep two fathers’ prayers for their sons. One is the royal official: “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus answered, “Go your way. Your son lives” (John 4:49–50). The other is a father who had nothing left but honesty: “I believe. Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Both are prayers any father can pray. And the parable Jesus told about a lost son is really about the father, who saw him coming “while he was still far off” and “was moved with compassion, and ran, fell on his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).

The teenage years are when parents pray hardest and are listened to least. A teenage son is working out who he is apart from his parents, which is as it should be, and he is doing it under pressures his parents never faced. Scripture speaks to young men directly: “Let no man despise your youth; but be an example to those who believe, in word, in your way of life, in love, in spirit, in faith, and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word” (Psalm 119:9).

When Tobit sent his son on a long journey, he did what parents still do: he prayed at the door. “Go with this man; but God, who dwells in heaven, will prosper your journey. May his angel go with you” (Tobit 5:16). The man, it turned out, was the archangel Raphael.

An adult son makes his own decisions, and parents are not to make them for him: the Catechism asks parents not to “exert pressure on their children either in the choice of a profession or in that of a spouse”, while still giving “judicious advice” (CCC 2230). What a parent can always do is pray, and prayer for a grown son is often more about his marriage, his work, his children and his faith than about his safety.

Many Catholic parents carry this quietly: a son who no longer believes, or no longer goes to Mass, or is angry with the Church. The story the Church gives them is St. Monica’s. Her son Augustine lived for years far from the faith she had taught him. She wept, prayed and kept asking, and a bishop she begged for help sent her away with a sentence Augustine later wrote down himself: “Go your way, and God bless you, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish” (Augustine, Confessions III.12). Augustine was baptized, and became a bishop and one of the great teachers of the Church.

For a son caught in alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography or anything else that has taken hold of him. Addiction is an illness as well as a moral struggle, and loving him through it usually means prayer and hard practical steps together: a doctor, a treatment program, honest boundaries, and support for yourself. If he is in danger, may have overdosed, or may harm himself or someone else, get help now:

For a son who is ill, injured, in hospital, or waiting for results. St. Luke tells of Jesus meeting a funeral at the gate of Nain: the dead man was “the only born son of his mother, and she was a widow.” “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Don’t cry’” (Luke 7:12–13), and he gave her son back to her. Jesus’ compassion for the parent of a sick or dying son runs through the Gospels.

Parents pray about their son’s future long before he thinks about it himself: what work he will do, whether he will marry, and whom. When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac, he trusted that God “will send his angel before you” (Genesis 24:7). The Church adds that a son’s vocation is his own and God’s: parents “should respect this call and encourage their children to follow it” (CCC 2232), whether it is marriage, the priesthood or religious life.

Verses to pray with your son’s name in them, in the World English Bible, Catholic Edition.