Patronal Prayers
The Catholic Thing, 25 October 2025
Cardinal Newman’s prayer, "Mission of My Life", is resonant with the young whose future is open before them, yet could be prayed with great comfort and sincerity even around a deathbed.
For devotees of Cardinal Newman, the coming week was already highly anticipated, with his formal declaration as a Doctor of the Church on the solemn feast of All Saints. Then this week, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV would also name him the co-patron saint of Catholic education, along with St. Thomas Aquinas.
A happy thing, as few have given as much thought to the philosophy of education as St. John Henry, particularly regarding his (ill-fated) project in Dublin to found a Catholic university. Though the combination of Aquinas and Newman – or the combination of Aquinas and anyone? – is formidable, I confess I never think of them as teachers, per se.
Scholars, certainly. And seekers of truth, more students themselves even than teachers of others. Both were creatures of the university – and professors do research and teach, with many accepting the latter as the price of doing the former. It’s not unusual for the most accomplished scholars to teach very little, if at all. In the event, both patrons taught more through their writing rather than their lectures or tutorials.
The Aquinas-Newman dyad is a happy one for another reason, in that over many years on campus their prayers were the ones I most recommended to students, fitting for their stage of life. Both wrote prayers and hymns. St. Thomas gave us the hymns for Corpus Christi, and I consider no occasion unsuitable for Praise to the Holiest in the Height (here), Newman’s hymn from The Dream of Gerontius.
The prayers I recommended to students were Aquinas’ Prayer before Study and Newman’s Mission of My Life. Not only young students can profit by praying them.
The Thomistic prayer before study appears here and there in different forms. The estimable Dominican friars of the St. Joseph Province use this version:
Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding.
Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally.
Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm.
Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The version I first learned when I was an undergraduate appears in the Raccolta, and expands the initial salutation:
Infinite Creator, who in the riches of Thy wisdom didst appoint three hierarchies of Angels and didst set them in wondrous order over the highest heavens, and who didst apportion the elements of the world most wisely…
It reminds us why Thomas is the Angelic Doctor, and a reminder too that intelligences have a lofty place in God’s providence. I could never remember what the three hierarchies of angels were, but no matter, it was pleasing to think that they were watching over me.
The Raccolta’s English translation speaks of “copious eloquence,” but the Dominican version above goes with “thoroughness and charm.” I prefer the latter, as the world needs more wholesome and holy charm. Students, it seems to me, would learn better from charming teachers, even though neither Aquinas nor Newman are often thought of as charming. Newman, though, does propose in his “definition of a gentleman” a kind of charm as desirable.
Education depends upon good teachers, but the goal of education is to effect some good in the students. Thus, Aquinas and Newman are exemplary models, for their achievements in the life of the mind, the search for truth, effected in them genuine goodness, the witness of holiness.
The Prayer before Study was never as popular as Newman’s Mission of My Life, which many memorized. Study, after all, can be hard. A mission is exciting.
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