Education for Justice’s transformative social justice prayers address key global and social justice issues, including racial justice, environmental stewardship, and human dignity, connecting faith to actionable change. Grounded in Catholic Social Teaching, these prayers are ideal for individuals, educators, parishes, and faith communities seeking to integrate justice into worship.

Sample Prayer
A Prayer for Racial Justice by Christopher Smith, S.J.
God our Father, Your church was born in a great miracle of unity. All of the people of the many nations, tribes, and places of Earth, who were gathered in Jerusalem, were divided by the plurality of their different languages, customs, and experiences, when suddenly you brought coherence to their cacophony. At once, every woman and man understood one another: the gift and sign of your Holy Spirit, which had descended in tongues of fire that Pentecost day.

Although some wanted to restrict their fellowship, your spirit consistently widened the bounds of community. First to include Samaritans, then extending to include gentiles of every nation.

Propelled by your spirit, your apostles spread the good news to all of the world: that the kingdom of God is for all of us, belongs to all of us, and will only come about if we all make it so.

Sadly, our history is one of resistance to your spirit’s call of inclusion, and this resistance continues to the present. We have polluted your church with racial, sociological, and political ideologies, at times. The disease of division and derision in the Church has caused great harm to our brothers and sisters of the different parts of the Body of Christ. For this, we ask you for mercy and healing. We ask you for help as we go forward, because the way to reconciliation is untrod and the path to healing is unknown.

Lord, pour out your spirit upon us today: the Spirit of union that brought understanding amidst difference to the first Christians on Pentecost. Help us to include, respect, and love one another. Give us the grace to listen. May our words and actions this day widen the boundaries of the Church a little more, that all may know that they have a place at your table because all are your beloved children. Amen.
This prayer was written for the 2021 Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice