Catholic Prayer for Surgery

The night before an operation is long. Whether the surgery is routine or serious, it asks us to hand our body to people we hardly know and to go to sleep trusting that we will wake. That is exactly the moment for prayer. Here is a Catholic prayer for surgery from the Church's own books, more traditional prayers before surgery and for someone having surgery, a prayer of thanksgiving for afterward, and the saints of the sick who will pray with us.

A prayer for surgery

This is the Church's prayer for the sick, the collect said at Mass "for the sick" in the old Roman Missal. The translation is the one printed in The Manual of the Bona Mors Confraternity (New York, 1896):

Almighty, everlasting God, the eternal salvation of those that believe; hear us in behalf of Thy servants who are sick, for whom we implore the aid of Thy mercy, that, being restored to health, they may render thanks to Thee in Thy Church. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

It asks for two things in one breath: health, and the chance to come back and give thanks. When we pray it before an operation, we can make it personal by naming the one who is going in: "hear us in behalf of Thy servant N."

More Catholic prayers before surgery

The Suscipe of St. Ignatius: a prayer of surrender

Going under anesthesia means giving up control completely. St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote this prayer of total surrender at the end of his Spiritual Exercises. The New Raccolta (1903) gives this translation and records that Leo XIII indulgenced it on May 26, 1883:

Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. Thou hast given me all that I am and all that I possess; I surrender it all to Thee that Thou mayest dispose of it according to Thy will. Give me only Thy love and Thy grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will have no more to desire.

Many patients pray it in the pre-op room, after the nurses have finished and the waiting begins.

A prayer to Sts. Cosmas and Damian

Sts. Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers, physicians who took no fees, martyred in Syria around the year 300. The Church has long asked their help against danger to the body. This is the collect of their feast, September 27, from the Roman Breviary translated by the Marquess of Bute (1908):

Grant, we beseech Thee, O Almighty God, that we who keep the birthday of Thine holy Martyrs Cosmas and Damian may at their prayers be delivered from all dangers that presently hang over us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

"Birthday" here means the day of their death, their birth into heaven. Tradition holds that the brothers once appeared to the sleeping deacon Justinian in their church at Rome and replaced his diseased leg; this is a traditional miracle story from the Golden Legend, not a formally approved one, but it is why surgeons have kept them as patrons for seven centuries.

St. Teresa's bookmark, for fear

When the fear is worse than the pain, the short poem St. Teresa of Ávila kept in her breviary says what we need to hear. This is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation, "Santa Teresa's Book-Mark":

Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee; All things are passing; God never changeth; Patient endurance Attaineth to all things; Who God possesseth In nothing is wanting; Alone God sufficeth.

The last prayer before the anesthesia

The last words many Catholics say before they go under are the shortest. Our Lord prayed the first from the cross (Luke 23:46), taking it from Psalm 30:6 in the Douay-Rheims:

Into thy hands I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth.

The second is the old invocation of the Holy Family, which The New Raccolta prints after its prayers for a happy death:

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! assist me in my last agony. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! may I breathe out my soul in peace with you.

Don't be put off by "last agony." Nobody expects to die on the table, and the prayer doesn't assume we will. It simply hands every hour, including the last, to the three people who stood by Jesus in His own life.

Prayer for someone having surgery

When someone we love is in the operating room, we can do little except wait. We can pray. The Roman Ritual has a prayer the priest says over the sick after anointing, and it fits these hours well. The Bona Mors manual gives it like this:

Look down, we beseech Thee, O Lord, upon Thy servant N., languishing through bodily ailment, and refresh the soul which Thou hast created, that, being bettered by Thy chastisements, he may feel himself saved by Thy healing. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Ritual's next prayer asks God to free the sick person from sickness and to "raise him up by Thy right hand, strengthen him by Thy might, defend him by Thy power, and restore him to Thy Holy Church." Families in a waiting room can pray these quietly together, and then a decade of the Rosary for each hour of the operation. Let us also pray for the surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses by name if we know them. Their skill comes from God, as Scripture says below.

Prayer after surgery, in thanksgiving

The prayer for the sick asked that the patient might "render thanks to Thee in Thy Church." When the news is good, keep that promise. Psalm 102 in the Douay-Rheims is the Church's great psalm of thanks for healing:

Bless the Lord, O my soul: and let all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and never forget all he hath done for thee. Who forgiveth all thy iniquities: who healeth all thy diseases. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction: who crowneth thee with mercy and compassion.

When the news is hard, we still pray. Recovery can be slow, and some operations bring a diagnosis no one wanted. The St. Peregrine prayer and our pages on the patron saints of cancer and healing are there for that road.

The saints to ask before surgery

• St. Luke, the evangelist, whom St. Paul calls "the most dear physician" (Colossians 4:14). He is the patron of physicians and surgeons, and his feast is October 18.
• Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the twin doctors, patrons of surgeons and pharmacists. They are named in the Roman Canon of the Mass.
• St. Raphael the Archangel, whose name means "God heals." He cured the elder Tobias of blindness in the Book of Tobit (Tobias). His prayer is on our St. Raphael prayer page.
• St. Peregrine, the Servite friar who, tradition holds, was healed of a cancerous wound on his leg the night before it was to be amputated. Many patients facing a hard operation ask his prayers.
• St. Pantaleon, the physician martyr of Nicomedia, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
• St. José Gregorio Hernández, the Venezuelan "doctor of the poor," canonized in 2025, and St. Gianna Molla, a pediatrician and mother: two modern physicians to ask for the doctors and the patient alike.
• St. Camillus de Lellis and St. John of God, patrons of hospitals, nurses and the sick.

St. Luke, pray for the surgeons. Sts. Cosmas and Damian, pray for the one on the table. St. Raphael, bring him safely home.

The sacraments before surgery

The best preparation for surgery is not a prayer we say but a sacrament we receive. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1515) is direct: "It is fitting to receive the Anointing of the Sick just prior to a serious operation." It isn't only for the dying. Call the parish office a few days ahead, or ask the hospital for the Catholic chaplain. Go to confession if you can (our examination of conscience can help), and receive Holy Communion. If you can't get to Mass, the priest can bring Communion to you, or you can make a spiritual communion.

Many patients also bring a small sacramental: a rosary, a St. Benedict or Miraculous Medal, a scapular. Hospitals usually ask that jewelry come off before the operation, but a nurse will often tape a medal to a wrist or tuck a holy card under the pillow if you ask. These aren't charms. They are signs of our trust in God and in the prayers of His Church.

Scripture for surgery: honor the physician

The Book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) has the Bible's fullest word about doctors, and it is a good passage to read the night before. From chapter 38, in the Douay-Rheims:

Honour the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the most High hath created him. For all healing is from God, and he shall receive gifts of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised. The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them. My son, in thy sickness neglect not thyself, but pray to the Lord, and he shall heal thee. For the Lord created him: and let him not depart from thee, for his works are necessary.

Faith and medicine aren't rivals. We pray, and we go to the hospital; we trust God, and we sign the consent forms. Sirach even says the physicians themselves "shall beseech the Lord, that he would prosper what they give for ease and remedy."

Let us pray, then, for every patient on an operating table today, and for every surgeon scrubbing in: Lord, guide their hands, and keep us all in Your care. For more prayers for the sick, see our pages on the Anima Christi, the Memorare and the patron saints of doctors and nurses.