Prayers for the Sick
Illness stretches time. These prayers are shaped for that: before surgery, through a long admission, during a chronic condition that has no clear end, and in slow recovery.
Several can be prayed aloud over someone who is too unwell to pray for themselves. That is an old and good practice — you carry the words when they cannot.
18 prayers
- A Prayer Before Surgery
A contemporary prayer before an operation, closing with Christ's own words from the cross (Luke 23:46), which the Church has prayed at…
- A Prayer for a Sick Child
A contemporary parents' prayer at a child's sickbed, echoing the pleas of Jairus and the Canaanite woman in the Gospels — both parents who…
- A Prayer for Healing of Body
A contemporary prayer for physical healing rooted in the healing narratives of the Gospels and in James 5:14–15, which instructs the sick…
- A Prayer for the Sick
This is the classic prayer for the sick from the Book of Common Prayer's Ministration to the Sick, in use since 1549 and shaped by much…
- A Prayer in Chronic Illness
A contemporary pastoral prayer for long-term illness, disability, and pain, closing with God's answer to Paul's unhealed "thorn in the…
- A Prayer While Awaiting Test Results
A contemporary pastoral prayer for medical waiting — biopsies, scans, diagnoses — grounded in Christ's teaching not to be anxious about…
- Act of Spiritual Communion (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
Composed by St. Alphonsus Liguori in the eighteenth century for people unable to attend Mass. It was recovered globally during the COVID-19…
- Blessing of a Sick Person
A blessing prayed at the bedside of the sick, asking healing, comfort, and peace.
- Hezekiah's Prayer in Sickness
The writing of Hezekiah after his recovery: 'I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.' Used as an Old Testament…
- John Henry Newman — Support Us All the Day Long
Adapted from a sermon by St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and now found in Anglican, Catholic, and Methodist prayer books. It is prayed at…
- Keep Watch, Dear Lord
An ancient Compline collect attributed to St. Augustine and carried into the Book of Common Prayer. It is the classic prayer for insomnia…
- Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes
In 1858 the Blessed Virgin appeared eighteen times to the fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes,…
- Novena to St. Peregrine for the Sick
St. Peregrine Laziosi (1265–1345) was a Servite friar of Forlì, Italy. When his leg became so diseased that amputation was ordered, he…
- Prayer of Trust (Richard Baxter)
Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor of Kidderminster, wrote these lines during a long illness in 1663. They became one of the best-loved…
- Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes
In 1858 the Virgin appeared eighteen times to fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, France,…
- Prayer to St. Peregrine for the Sick
St. Peregrine Laziosi (c. 1265-1345), a Servite friar of Forlì in Italy, developed a cancer of the leg that was to be amputated; after a…
- Psalm 71 — Cast Me Not Off in the Time of Old Age
The prayer of a believer growing old, asking not to be abandoned when strength fails and promising to declare God's power to the next…
- Stella Caeli Extirpavit
A medieval Franciscan antiphon traditionally prayed during epidemics and associated with the Poor Clares of Coimbra during the plague of…