Prayers for Grief and Loss
Grief does not move in a line. These prayers are for the first unbearable week and for the ordinary Tuesday months later when it returns without warning.
They do not rush you toward acceptance. Christian mourning has always allowed lament, and several of these prayers do nothing but say the loss out loud in God's presence.
15 prayers
- A Prayer for a Grieving Heart
A contemporary pastoral prayer that follows the biblical pattern of lament, closing with the ancient Requiem aeternam used across the…
- Blessing of a Grave
A blessing for a grave or burial place, prayed at the committal of the dead.
- Eternal Rest (Requiem Aeternam)
The Requiem Aeternam is the oldest and shortest prayer for the dead in the Western Church, drawn from the fourth book of Esdras and used in…
- Jeremiah's Lament: His Mercies Are New Every Morning
From the middle of the book of tears comes the line the Church sings every morning: 'They are new every morning: great is thy…
- Job's Final Answer
After the whirlwind, Job stops arguing: 'I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.' Six verses of…
- Joshua's Plea After Defeat
After the rout at Ai, Joshua tears his clothes and lies before the ark until evening, asking why God brought Israel over Jordan at all. A…
- Novena for the Faithful Departed
Praying for the dead is one of the oldest documented Christian practices, attested in the catacombs and in the liturgies of both East and…
- Prayer for All Souls
The Requiem aeternam with the collect Fidelium Deus, prayed on All Souls' Day, at funerals, and at graves in November. It is the Church's…
- Prayer for the Departed (Memory Eternal)
The central prayer of the Orthodox Trisagion service for the dead and of the Panikhida, sung at funerals, memorial days, and on the…
- Prayer of Abandonment to God's Will (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), a widowed mother of five who became the first native-born American saint and founded the Sisters of…
- Psalm 137 — By the Rivers of Babylon
The exiles' lament, refusing to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. Its closing verses are among the hardest in scripture and are…
- Psalm 22 — My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
The psalm Jesus prayed from the cross. It moves from utter desolation to a vow of praise before the whole assembly, and the Church reads it…
- Psalm 23 — The Lord Is My Shepherd
The most beloved of the psalms, attributed to David, who had been a shepherd before he was a king. It is the prayer of the deathbed, the…
- The Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary
A devotion of the Servite Order dating to the thirteenth century, formalized as a chaplet by the fifteenth. It is prayed especially during…
- The De Profundis for the Dead
Psalm 130 has been the Church's psalm for the dead since the earliest Roman funeral rites, prayed at gravesides, at the tolling of the…