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Summary
- Nine short prayers cover the night before, the exam room, memory, a hard exam, anxiety, honesty, a licensing exam, waiting for results and the result itself.
- A prayer and text messages for someone else taking a test, and a prayer before a medical test, are included.
- The 1888 Catholic Manual of Prayers gives “A Prayer before Study,” a shortened form of the Latin Creator ineffabilis attributed to Thomas Aquinas; Hapgood’s 1906 Orthodox service book has a prayer for children beginning their instruction.
- Catholic students often ask the prayers of Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663) before exams, a popular devotion; the Catholic Encyclopedia says he “was able to read but poorly.”
- Daniel 1 records Daniel and his friends questioned by King Nebuchadnezzar after three years of training and found “ten times better” than the king’s wise men.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Psalm 4:8; Proverbs 10:9; 16:3; Daniel 1:4–5, 17, 19–20; Philippians 4:6; 2 Timothy 1:7; James 1:5; 1 Peter 5:7). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- 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. “A Prayer before Study or Instructions,” pp. 171–172. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. “A Service of Prayer When Children Begin Their Instruction,” pp. 519–523. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- “Creator ineffabilis.” Wikipedia, on the Latin prayer before study attributed to Thomas Aquinas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_ineffabilis
- Mershman, Francis. “St. Joseph of Cupertino.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08520b.htm
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