Catholic prayer for good health

Most prayers about health are prayed in waiting rooms. This page is for the other days: the ordinary mornings when we are well and want to stay well, when a checkup comes back clear and we want to say thank you, when we carry the health of a husband, a mother or a newborn in our hearts. The Church has prayed for "health of mind and body" in her liturgy for centuries, and she has given us the words. Here are the traditional Catholic prayers for good health, word for word and with their sources, followed by the saints to ask and what Scripture says.

The Church's prayer for good health

This is the prayer the Church herself puts on the priest's lips at the Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In Latin it begins Concede nos famulos tuos. The English is from the 1916 American missal The Mass Every Day of the Year:

Grant to us thy servants, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to enjoy perpetual health of mind and body, and by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary ever virgin, to be delivered from present sadness, and to enjoy eternal gladness. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

Notice what it asks for. Not health of the body alone, but of "mind and body," and not for a season but "perpetual." Then it widens: deliverance from "present sadness," which every family knows, and finally "eternal gladness," the health that never ends. Many of us already know this prayer without realizing it, because it is the closing prayer of the Litany of Loreto. The old Roman Ritual prays it over the sick as well; the 1888 Manual of Prayers gives it there as a plea that "this Thy servant may rejoice in continual health of body and mind."

Pray it in the morning for yourself and everyone under your roof. It is short enough to learn by heart in a week.

Two shorter prayers from the Missal

The Missal asks for health of mind and body in other places too. The collect of the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany is honest about how fragile we are:

O God, who knowest that, because of the frailty of our nature, we cannot be steadfast in the midst of such great perils; grant us health of mind and body, that we may by thy aid overcome what we suffer for our sins. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

And on the Friday of the second week of Lent, the priest bowed the people's heads and prayed this over them:

Lord, we beseech thee, grant to thy people health of mind and body; that cleaving ever to good works, they may deserve to be protected by thy mighty power. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God world without end. Amen.

Health, in these prayers, is never the goal by itself. It is asked for "that cleaving ever to good works" we may use it well.

A daily prayer for the health of your household

This prayer from the 1910 Raccolta (no. 16), indulgenced by Pope Leo XII in 1828, asks God to keep a whole family and its home in holiness and health. It is a good prayer for a family to say together after supper:

Loosen, O Lord, we pray Thee, in thy pity, the bonds of our sins, and by the intercession of the blessed Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, St Joseph, the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and all saints, keep us thy servants and our abodes in all holiness; cleanse us, our relations, kinsfolk, and acquaintances from all vices; adorn us with all virtues; grant us peace and health; repel our enemies visible and invisible; curb our carnal desires; give us healthful seasons; bestow thy charity upon our friends and our enemies; guard thy holy City; preserve our Sovereign Pontiff N.; defend all prelates, princes, and Christian people from all adversity. Let thy blessing be ever upon us, and grant to all the faithful departed eternal rest. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

"Healthful seasons" means good weather: rain at the right time, a mild winter, a harvest that doesn't fail. In 1828 almost every family's health depended on it. At "N." we name the Holy Father.

The simplest daily prayer for health is the one we already pray three times a day. Grace before meals asks God to bless "these Thy gifts," and every meal eaten with thanks is a small act of trust that He gives us what we need. See our page on grace before meals.

Prayer to St. Raphael for good health

St. Raphael the Archangel is the angel of health. His name means "God heals," and in the Book of Tobias he guided young Tobias on his journey and then healed his father's blindness. The Raccolta's prayer for the Christian family (no. 457), indulgenced by Leo XIII in 1889, gives each archangel one line. Raphael's is the shortest prayer for good health we know:

St Raphael, preserve us from sickness and all danger of death.

Say it when you leave the house, before a long drive, or when the flu is going around your children's school. For the longer prayer to St. Raphael and his novena, see our St. Raphael prayer page.

Prayer to St. Lucy for healthy eyes

The saints have their particular charges, and St. Lucy, whose name comes from the Latin for light, has long been asked to protect our eyesight. This is one of the prayers to her in the 1910 Raccolta (no. 377), indulgenced by Leo XIII in 1886:

Full of confidence in thy powerful intercession, O glorious martyr St Lucy, we beseech thee to intercede with thy divine spouse Jesus, that it may please Him to keep ever healthy the light of our bodily eyes, giving us at the same time the grace to make good use of them, so that on the day of the general resurrection they may become radiant with that heavenly light which will fit them to behold the ineffable beauties of the country of the blessed. Amen.

It is a lovely pattern for any prayer for health: keep this part of me well, help me use it well, and let it one day see God.

The saints to ask for good health

We ask the saints to pray for us as we would ask a friend. They bring our needs to God, who gives every good gift:

• Our Lady, Health of the Sick. Her title in the Litany of Loreto is Salus infirmorum. The icon above, the Salus Populi Romani, has been carried through Rome in times of plague; tradition holds that St. Gregory the Great led such a procession in 590.
• St. Raphael the Archangel, the "medicine of God."
• Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the twin physicians who, tradition holds, treated the sick without charge.
• St. Luke, the evangelist St. Paul called "the most dear physician," patron of doctors.
• St. Blaise for the throat; his feast on February 3 brings the blessing of throats with two crossed candles.
• St. Lucy for the eyes, St. Apollonia for the teeth, St. Agatha for breast health.
• St. Dymphna for mental health, which the Church's prayers never leave out ("health of mind and body").
• St. Roch in times of contagion, and St. Gerard Majella for mothers expecting a child.

For every saint the Church asks for the sick, see the patron saint of healing.

The story in that painting is traditional, told in the Golden Legend, and Fra Angelico painted it for the high altar of San Marco in Florence, the convent of the Medici, whose patrons the two physicians were.

What Scripture says about good health

The Bible doesn't treat health as a small thing. Sirach, the Book of Ecclesiasticus, says it plainly (Ecclesiasticus 30:14, 16, Douay-Rheims):

Better is a poor man who is sound, and strong of constitution, than a rich man who is weak and afflicted with evils.

There is no riches above the riches of the health of the body: and there is no pleasure above the joy of the heart.

And St. John opens his third letter with a prayer for a friend's health that we can pray word for word for anyone we love (3 John 1:2):

Dearly beloved, concerning all things I make it my prayer that thou mayest proceed prosperously, and fare well as thy soul doth prosperously.

He asks that Gaius may "fare well" in body "as thy soul doth prosperously." That is the Catholic order: the soul's health first, and the body's along with it.

Caring for our health is part of the prayer

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2288) teaches: "Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good." It also warns, in the next paragraph, against making a cult of the body. Prayer for health and care for health go together, the way St. Paul joins them (1 Corinthians 6:19–20): our members are "the temple of the Holy Ghost," and so we "glorify and bear God in your body."

In practice that means ordinary things done for God's sake:

1. Keep Sunday as a day of rest. God built rest into the week before any doctor recommended it.
2. Eat with gratitude and moderation. The Church's fasting days teach the body to obey, not to suffer for its own sake.
3. Sleep. "When he shall give sleep to his beloved," says Psalm 126. Our night prayers end the day in peace.
4. See the doctor without fear or delay. Sirach tells us to respect the physician, because "the most High hath created him" (Ecclesiasticus 38:1).
5. Go to confession. Guilt and resentment weigh on the body too, and grace lifts them.
6. Thank God when you are well. A clean checkup deserves a prayer as much as a bad diagnosis does.

Praying for the health of someone else

When the person is someone else, we pray the same prayers and put in their name. Parents can trace a small cross on their children's foreheads at bedtime with holy water, an old custom in many Catholic homes; see holy water. Have a Mass offered for a family member's health. For the elderly, ask a priest to visit; the Anointing of the Sick may be given to those whose strength is failing with age, even without a particular illness.

If health has already been lost, turn to our prayer for healing, our prayer for the sick and our prayer for recovery. Let us pray today, while we are well, with the words of the Missal: "grant to thy people health of mind and body." For more, browse all our Catholic prayers.