Did this prayer by Thomas Aquinas help JD Vance in the debate?

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. | Matt Rourke

Ohio Sen. JD Vance is being praised today for his performance in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, in which he came across as confident, well-prepared and at ease, in contrast to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was visibly nervous.

On Wednesday, however, Vance admitted on social media that he was nervous, too, saying on the social media platform X that, on a scale of 1-10, his nervousness was 11.

But Vance went on to say that before the debate, a priest had given him a prayer that he found meaningful.

The prayer includes the line: “Refine my speech and pour forth upon my lips the goodness of Your blessing.”

Vance didn’t mention the genesis of the prayer, but it is attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the Italian priest, theologian and Catholic saint known for his work “Summa Theologica,” which contains his famous five proofs of the existence of God.

It is known as a “prayer before studying” and, among other things, the prayer calls on God to grant “keenness of mind, capacity to remember, skill in learning, subtlety to interpret, and eloquence in speech.”

Vance did not say in his post whether he believes the prayer helped with his performance, but he said he was sharing it “in the hopes that someone will find it as meaningful as I did.”

It was the second Catholic prayer shared on social media in the past week by the GOP ticket. On Sept. 29, former President Donald Trump, without explanation, posted on X a Catholic prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.

The prayer asks God to “cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” In some Catholic parishes, the prayer — composed by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 — is said at the end of Mass.

It’s unclear why Trump, who is not Catholic, would even be familiar with the prayer, let alone post it on X. But maybe his running mate, a former atheist who was baptized in the Catholic Church in 2019, is having an influence on the former president.

Vance told Rod Dreher in 2019, “The hope of the Christian faith is not rooted in any short-term conquest of the material world, but in the fact that it is true, and over the long term, with various fits and starts, things will work out.”