What is on this page is her prayer, two prayers for a wife in this position, and — because leaving it out would be a kind of lie — what the Church actually permits you to do.
Historical Context
Rita’s story does not end in resignation, which is why it is worth knowing. Paolo was stabbed to death by one of his many enemies; her two sons intended to avenge him; she prayed that they would die rather than become murderers, and they did die, of illness, reconciled. Then she spent forty years an Augustinian nun in Cascia. She is not the patron of putting up with things. She is the patron of situations that have no good options left.
Prayer to Saint Rita for a Marriage in Trouble
Holy Saint Rita of Cascia,
you knew a husband’s anger and a husband’s betrayal,
and you did not become bitter in it.
Look on my marriage, which is in pieces.
Ask God for what I cannot see how to ask for:
truth in my husband, courage in me,
and safety for my children.
Advocate of impossible causes,
take this one, which everyone tells me is finished.
Amen.
A Prayer for a Husband Who Has Been Unfaithful
Lord, my husband has broken his word to me.
You know exactly what he did; I will not detail it to you.
Bring him to the truth — all of it, not the version he has settled on.
Break whatever it is in him that made this possible.
If he is to come back, let him come back honest,
and not because it became inconvenient.
I am not able to forgive him today.
Do not let that harden into something permanent.
Amen.
A Prayer for Myself
Father, I did not deserve this,
and I have spent weeks trying to work out how I caused it.
Take that out of me.
Give me a clear head for the decisions in front of me.
Give me one person I can tell the truth to.
Keep me from using the children as messengers
or as evidence.
Let me sleep tonight.
And whatever happens to this marriage,
do not let me lose myself in it.
Amen.
What the Church Actually Says
This matters, because pages like this one usually counsel endurance and stop, and a woman who is frightened deserves better than piety with the facts left out.
He has wronged you, and the Church says so in those terms. “Adultery is an injustice. He who commits adultery fails in his commitment. He does injury to the sign of the covenant which the marriage bond is, transgresses the rights of the other spouse” (CCC 2381). You are not an obstacle to his happiness. You are the injured party, and you have rights.
You are not required to stay under the same roof. Canon law puts forgiveness first — it “earnestly recommends” that a spouse be moved by charity and the good of the family to forgive — and then says plainly that the innocent spouse “has the right to sever conjugal living” (canon 1152). If there is grave mental or physical danger to you or to the children, that right does not wait on anyone’s permission; canon 1153 allows you to leave on your own authority where there is danger in delay.
Separation does not end the marriage or put you outside the Church. “The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law,” and where a civil divorce is the only way to secure legal rights, the care of the children or the protection of inheritance, “it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense” (CCC 2383). You may still receive Communion.
None of that is advice to leave. It is the fact that the door is not locked, which is a different thing, and which you are entitled to know before you decide anything.
Best Times for This Prayer
- On 22 May, St Rita’s feast.
- The night you find out, when there is nothing to do but get through it.
- Before a conversation you are dreading.
- Before seeing a priest, a counsellor or a solicitor.
- When you are about to say something in front of the children that you will regret.
- Each day of the two weeks, if you are working the Resentment Prayer.
Scripture Connection
“It is not an enemy who taunts me — then I could bear it… But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to hold sweet converse together; within God’s house we walked in fellowship.” — Psalm 55:12–14
Scripture has a psalm for being betrayed by the person closest to you, and it does not ask you to be calm about it. The psalmist’s point is the one nobody says out loud: an enemy doing this would be survivable. What makes it unbearable is who did it. That verse is in the Church’s own prayer book, which means the feeling is not a failure of faith.
Related prayers
If drink is part of it, the Prayer for an Alcoholic Husband is built on St Monica, whose husband Patricius was unfaithful and bad-tempered before his late conversion — the other saint who knows this from the inside.
When you reach the point of wanting to be free of the resentment rather than right about it, the Resentment Prayer is a fourteen-day practice that asks nothing of your feelings beforehand. For protection of the household, see the Prayer for Protection, and the Memorare is the one to say when you have run out of words entirely.
