Prayer To Win Big Money

The short version: buying a ticket is not a sin. Staking money your family needs is a different matter, and the Church is specific about where the line falls.

What the Church actually says

The Catechism addresses games of chance directly, in one paragraph:

Games of chance or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice.
They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone
of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others.
The passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement.
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2413

So the ticket itself is not the problem. The line is drawn at what the money was needed for, and at the word passion — the point where playing stops being a choice. That is a more useful test than a blanket rule, because it is one a person can honestly apply to themselves.

Prayer to Saint Cajetan

Cajetan is patron of gamblers, and also of the unemployed and those looking for work — which tells you something about how the Church understands the two as related. He founded a bank in Naples to lend to the poor so they would not have to go to usurers. It survived him and became the Bank of Naples. He is a saint for people who need money, not for people who want more of it.

Glorious Saint Cajetan,
father of the poor and friend of the unemployed,
you gave your inheritance away
and trusted God for everything that followed:
obtain for me honest work and enough to live on,
keep me from despair while I wait,
and free me from any craving that would take
what my family needs.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

A prayer before playing

If you are going to play, this is the older shape of it — gratitude first, the request held loosely, and the acknowledgement that the answer may be no.

Lord in heaven,
you have already given me more than I can count.
I ask today for relief from the weight I am carrying,
and if it pleases you to send it this way, I will be grateful.
If it does not, let me not be ruined by wanting it.
Keep my hands off what belongs to those who depend on me.
Amen.

A prayer for getting out of debt

Dear Lord,
I know that with you all things are possible.
I come to you with the debt I have and no clear way through it.
Show me the work I can do,
give me the patience to do it,
and send me people who will deal fairly with me.
Let me move forward under your guiding light.
Amen.

Best Times for This Prayer

• When a bill has arrived that cannot be paid.
• Before playing, if you are going to play anyway.
• When looking for work, which is Saint Cajetan’s more usual request.
• When you notice you are counting on a win rather than hoping for one.
• On 7 August, his feast day.

Scripture Connection

“Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” — Proverbs 30:8–9

It is an unusual prayer because it asks for a limit in both directions. The man praying it does not want to be poor, and he is equally clear that a windfall would be dangerous to him. Most people arriving at this page want the windfall and have not considered the second half. It is worth a minute.

If the wanting has become a problem

The Catechism’s phrase — “the passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement” — is the Church naming addiction in the language it had in 1992. If that describes where you are, the prayers on this page are not the ones you need first.

The Set Aside Prayer and the Third Step Prayer come from twelve-step recovery and are said by people in Gamblers Anonymous as readily as in AA. The Resentment Prayer deals with what usually sits underneath it.