Christian Pure

Prayers for Travel: Before a Journey, for the Road, a Flight and a Safe Return

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • Psalm 121 ends with a traveler’s promise: “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.”
  • The Aaronic blessing (Numbers 6:24–26), Laban’s “The LORD watch between me and thee” (Genesis 31:49) and Tobias’s farewell (Tobias 5:21) can be said over someone leaving.
  • Short prayers cover leaving home, the driver, a flight, the sea, fear of travel, delays, family at home, arrival and the return, with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s thanksgiving “For a Safe Return from a Journey.”
  • The Orthodox Rite of Blessing for a Journey asks Christ to send an angel “as a fellow-traveller” and recalls Tobias and the road to Emmaus.
  • Catholics ask the prayers of Saint Raphael, who guided Tobias, and Saint Christopher, whose patronage of travelers is popular devotion; the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia says almost nothing certain is known of his life.
  • Before leading exiles home, Ezra proclaimed a fast “to seek of him a right way for us” (Ezra 8:21).

Before setting out, pray: “Lord, go with me on this trip. Keep me and everyone traveling with me safe on the way, watch over the people I leave at home, and bring us all back together in peace. Amen.” Psalm 121 promises that “the LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” Psalm 121 before you set out The psalm names what a traveler fears, from a stumble on the road to the heat of the sun, and…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 28:15; 31:49; Exodus 33:14; Numbers 6:24–26; Ezra 8:21–23; Psalm 46:1; 121:1–8; 139:9–10; Mark 4:39; Luke 24:15). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
  • The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims Version. Tobias 5:14, 5:21. Project Gutenberg eBook no. 1581. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1581
  • The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. 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. 524–526. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
  • Lasance, F. X. The Catholic Girl’s Guide. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1906. “Prayer to St. Raphael, Archangel,” p. 601. https://archive.org/details/catholicgirlsgui00lasa
  • Kirsch, Johann Peter. “St. Christopher.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03728a.htm

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