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Summary
- Short prayers cover a long trip, night driving, bad weather, anger in traffic, learning to drive, a new teenage driver, passengers, professional drivers, a new car, a breakdown and thanks after a near miss.
- The Orthodox Rite of Blessing for a Journey asks Christ to send an angel “as a fellow-traveller,” as with Tobias, and to go with the traveler as he went with Luke and Cleopas to Emmaus (Hapgood, 1906).
- The Russian Orthodox Trebnik of 1906 has a short rite for blessing a vehicle, with Psalm 91, a prayer asking God to set his angel over it, and a sprinkling with holy water.
- The Catholic Roman Ritual’s blessing of a vehicle recalls the Ethiopian reading Isaiah in his chariot when Philip joined him (Acts 8).
- The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia says almost nothing certain is known of St Christopher, the saint most often asked to protect drivers; the story of his carrying the Christ Child is legend.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Psalm 56:3; 91:1, 11; 107:30; 121:3; Proverbs 3:23; Acts 8:29; James 1:19). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Prayers and Thanksgivings, “For a Safe Return from a Journey,” p. 53; The Litany, p. 56. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The Rite of Blessing for a Journey, pp. 524–528. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Trebnik (1906), part 2, “Order for the Blessing of a Vehicle” (Chin osviashcheniia kolesnitsy), Church Slavonic text in the Fundamental Electronic Library. http://dic.feb-web.ru/slavonic/corpus/1/trebnik/73-osv_kolesn.htm
- Rituale Romanum, “Benedictio vehiculi seu currus,” Latin text as printed in Fr Tim Finigan, “The blessing of a chariot,” The Hermeneutic of Continuity, 17 August 2015, https://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-blessing-of-chariot.html; form for the feast of St Christopher at Christus Regnat, https://christusregnat.com/2016/07/15/benedictio-vehiculi-seu-currus/
- A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, prepared and published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1888. “Angel of God,” p. 54. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888
- Conferencia Episcopal Española, Departamento de Pastoral de la Carretera. “San Cristóbal, patrono de los conductores: Oración.” Jornada de Responsabilidad en el Tráfico 2013. https://www.diocesisdecordoba.es/media/2013/07/Oraci%C3%B3n.pdf
- Mershman, Francis. “St. Christopher.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03728a.htm
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