30 Best Easter Prayers to Celebrate the Holy Day
Rejoice with these Easter blessings that will lift your spirit.
For many, Easter is a special holiday that goes much deeper than its popular traditions. Of course, filling pastel-colored Easter baskets with jelly beans, making Easter crafts for kids, and tracking the Easter Bunny are all festive activities associated with Easter — but there’s so much more to the religious holiday.
To begin with, it’s a time for Christians to honor and commemorate the day that symbolizes Jesus Christ’s resurrection. It’s also an opportunity to recite and share Easter prayers to celebrate the holy day. We’ve compiled some of the best Easter prayers to help usher in a season of renewal and rebirth while reflecting on Christ’s word and promise to the world.
Since the holiday marks the end of Lent — a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and sacrifice — reading Easter prayers is a great way to tap into the historical context and significance of the sacred Sunday. Plus, these Easter-inspired sentiments and blessings can be easily shared with family and friends to help get them in the spirit too.
Write them inside an Easter card, post as Easter Instagram captions, or get creative and use them to complement your Easter table decorations. No matter how you share them, Easter blessings (and Easter Bible verses) are bound to resonate and touch the hearts of everyone who reads or hears them.
While it’s fun to hunt for colorful eggs and eat sugar-coated marshmallow chicks and other Easter candy, for Christians, it’s important to acknowledge and stay connected to Easter’s roots and rich history. These Easter prayers are a good place to start.
Easter Prayer for Community
“Loving God, bless all those gathered here today as we come together in friendship and fellowship. Thank you for the blessings of our individual and collective God-given gifts. Place in our hearts the desire to make a difference to our families, to our community, to our country, and to the many cultures and peoples worldwide. Give us balance in times of distraction and uncertainty.
Help us move towards our goals with determination and always with an abundant sense of humor. Thank you for food in a world where many know only hunger; For our faith in a world where many know fear; For friends in a world where many know only loneliness.
Please bless this food we are about to share, those who prepared it, those who serve it, and those who have worked to make today the special occasion that it is. For all of this, we give you thanks.”
— Izola White
Prayer for the Easter Meal
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, maker of heaven and earth and Father of all your people: we give you glory for your goodness and for your loving care for us.
Bless this food [this bread], and grant that all who eat it may be strong in body and grow in your love. Blessed are you, Lord our God, for ever and ever.”
— Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Book of Blessings
Dear and Beloved Stranger
“Dear and beloved stranger, Please eat this food with us that we may all be nourished. Please share this walk with us that we may all know nature's peace. Please rest in this warm house that we may come to know each other. Please sleep under these soft blankets that we may all know safety. Please pray this prayer that all our names of God may guide us on.”
— Christina Baldwin
Short Easter Table Prayer
“Be present at our table, Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. Thy people bless, and grant that we may feast in paradise with thee. Amen.”
— John Wesley
This Message of the Resurrection
"Our Father, we ask that You would help us to take this message of the resurrection to the world, that You would help us to always preach Christ when we preach because the resurrection has shown us that He is the meaning to the Scriptures. We pray that the resurrection would remind us that the truth is the truth whether we like it or not. But most of all, help us to remember that the resurrection shows us that Jesus is the King that our hearts have longed for."
— Tim Keller
The Beauty of the Spring
“God, give us eyes to see the beauty of the Spring and to behold Your majesty in every living thing. And may we see in lacy leaves and every budding flower the Hand that rules the universe, with gentleness and power. And may this Easter grandeur, that Spring lavishly imparts, awaken faded flowers of faith lying dormant in our hearts. And give us ears to hear, dear God, the Springtime song of birds with messages more meaningful than man’s often empty words, telling harried human beings who are lost in dark despair — ‘Be like us and do not worry for God has you in His care.’ Amen.”
— Helen Steiner Rice
Easter Morning Prayer
“This morning, let us pray that we’re worthy of His many blessings, that this nation is worthy of His many blessings. Let us promise to keep in our hearts, in our souls, in our minds, on this day, and on every day, the life and lessons of Christ, our Lord."
— Barack Obama
Short Easter Prayer
“God, thank you, for sending Jesus and making a way in the middle, just for me. Today, I give you my life. I turn from everything that's not like you, and I turn to you. God, heal me, deliver me, change me from the inside out. I accept the resurrection is now an interruption, and I give you my life, in Jesus name, Amen.”
— Michael Todd
Father, What Grace
“Father, what grace — grace that has made us who we are in Your eyes through the blood of Your Son. Father, what grace — to make us Your elect exiles who are born again to a living hope, hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Take us, we pray, all the way home in that hope by Your grace for the glory of Christ. Amen.”
— Kathleen Nielson
The Real Meaning of Easter
"Dear Lord, help me to tell of Your wondrous power and mighty acts to those generations that come after me. May I not let the season pass by without pondering the real meaning of Easter. In Jesus' name, Amen."
— Karen Ehman
Prayer for Easter Morning
"Jesus, this morning, we celebrate the history-altering event of Your resurrection. After dying on the cross for each and every one of us, You were raised to life so that we might be raised to life."
— Sharon Hodde Miller
A Prayer of Sincere Thanksgiving
"To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: I offer a prayer of sincere thanksgiving for Your blood sacrifice. Thank You for being obedient to Your Father and going to the cross for me. May I never forget that You gave Your life for me, so that one day I might live with You in eternity. Because Your blood has redeemed us, we are now new creations in Christ, and by His blood we are freed from sin to serve the living God, to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever. In Jesus’ Name, Amen."
— Dawn Neely
It Is Good News
"Father, I thank You for the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, it is good news, it is good news. We just take a moment right now to just thank You. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You not only died on the cross for our sins, but You rose again from the dead so that we could have a victorious, overcoming, Christian life here on earth as it is in heaven. Father, let everyone walk in the power of that resurrection truth. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen."
— Christine Caine
Thank You for the Stunning Wisdom
"Lord, we thank You for the stunning wisdom that we find in Your Word. We wouldn't know how to think were it not for the wisdom on its pages. But we thank You most of all for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the center of the wisdom of Scripture. We thank You that He is, in this moment, in us and for us and with us, and that gives us a right here, right now, hope."
— Paul Tripp
A New Creation
"Thank You, Lord, that in Your life and death and glorious resurrection, the great enemy has been defeated—sin, death and evil. You have launched a new creation and we can be a part of it."
— Dr. Derwin L. Gray
Lord, I Thank You
"Lord, I thank You for Your sacrifice on the cross and I thank You for Your resurrection from the tomb, and God, I pray that this truth becomes alive in every person's heart today, that people stand up and respond to Your truth, saying, 'Jesus, I thank You for what You did. God, I lay down my old self, I step into my new self—resurrect me today.'"
— Sadie Robertson Huff
Easter Prayer for Kids
"God made you and God made me, He made the world for us to see. God loves you and long ago, He sent his Son to tell us so. Jesus showed us many things, To love and share and dance and sing. To learn and pray, to help and care, He promised he’d always be there. He died but then came back to life, let’s celebrate for he’s alive! Amen."
— Unknown
Easter Prayer for Family and Friends
"Lord, as we gather together as family and friends; we invite you once again into our lives. May the hope of your resurrection color our days.
May the promise of your spirit working in us light up our lives. May the love you revealed to us shape our giving. May the truth in your word guide our journeys and may the joy of your kingdom fill our homes.
As we gather together underneath the banner of your life, we thank you for all the wonderful food that we can now enjoy and celebrate your glorious resurrection.
Thank you Lord. Amen."
— Unknown
A Daily Celebration Over Fear
"As the world sings triumphant cries to heaven over death that you conquered, help us, Lord, tomorrow as well, when the dresses are put away and the candy is all eaten and on with life we go let us not forget.
The celebration of your resurrection over death is a celebration of life that should continue well beyond the sunrise service and the music, rehearsed for days prior; it is beyond the sign of spring, beyond the lily, beyond new lambs grazing in open fields.
Resurrection is a daily celebration over fear; man's greatest and most powerful enemy. Fear of tomorrow, fear of our yesterdays, fear of what shall become of our young our old our unborn. Resurrection is replacing fear with physical action.
This alone, the most touching and profound of your signs that fear is dead and belief in you brings, not just hope but life.
What better living parable could You have brought? All fear death. All. Even in the garden, You took on our fear if for only moments, it was as real as our fears can be real and You knew then that this single enemy must be destroyed.
And, You sacrificed your life, leaving those who had been comfort, and follower; You left them behind, to conquer fear.I shall cling to this now, and the tomorrows given me. Peace and thanksgiving lifted unto you. Amen."
— Unknown
The Resurrection of Your Son
"Lord, the resurrection of Your Son has given us new life and renewed hope.
Help us to live as new people in pursuit of the Christian ideal.
Grant us wisdom to know what we must do, the will to want to do it, the courage to undertake it, the perseverance to continue to do it, and the strength to complete it."
— New Saint Joseph People's Prayer Book
Corinne Sullivan is an Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers a variety of beats, including lifestyle, entertainment, relationships, shopping, and more. She can tell you everything you need to know about the love lives of A-listers, the coziest bedsheets, and the sex toys actually worth your $$$. She is also the author of the 2018 novel Indecent. Follow her on Instagram for cute pics of her pup and bébé.
Karla Pope is a longtime writer, editor and blogger with nearly two decades of editorial experience. She’s written for a variety of outlets including Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, People, Parade, BET.com. WebMD and more. Her coverage includes entertainment, beauty, lifestyle, parenting and fashion content. If she's not exploring New York City with her two young children, you can find her curled up on the couch watching a documentary and eating gummy bears.
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