Catholic prayer for the sick

When someone we love is sick, prayer is often the first thing we can do and, some days, the only thing. The Church has prayed at sickbeds since the apostles. Her prayers for the sick are old, tender and direct: they ask God plainly for healing, and they ask for strength and peace if healing does not come. Below are the prayers the Church gave her priests for visiting the sick, a prayer to the patron of the sick, the sacrament Christ left for the seriously ill, and the saints who spent their lives at the bedside.

The Church's prayer for a sick person

For centuries, when a priest visited the sick, he followed the Roman Ritual, the Church's book of blessings and rites. Its prayers for the sick were printed in English for American Catholics in the 1889 Manual of Prayers, published by order of the bishops of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. Lay people can pray them too. Say the person's name at the N., and change "he" and "his" as needed.

Almighty and Eternal God, the everlasting Health of them that believe: hear us for Thy sick servant, N., for whom we implore the aid of Thy pitying mercy, that, with his bodily health restored, he may give thanks to Thee in Thy church. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

"The everlasting Health of them that believe." The prayer calls God himself our health. It asks for the body to be restored, and it asks for something more: that the sick person may come back to church and give thanks.

More prayers from the visitation of the sick

The same rite has several short prayers. These two are especially loved:

O God, the one only remedy for human infirmity, show forth upon this Thy sick servant the power of Thine aid, that, strengthened by the might of Thy tender mercy, he may be found worthy to be restored whole unto Thy holy Church.

Look Thou down, O Lord, we beseech Thee, upon Thy servant, grievously stricken with bodily infirmity; and refresh the soul which Thou hast created, that, being bettered by Thy chastisements, he may without ceasing feel himself saved by Thy healing. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Short prayers to say at the bedside

The rite begins with a string of short verses and answers, most of them from the psalms. You can say them with the sick person, one of you taking each line:

V. Save thy servant, R. O my God, who putteth his trust in Thee. V. Send him help, O Lord, from Thy holy place, R. And defend him out of Sion. V. Be unto him, O Lord, a tower of strength, R. From the face of the enemy. V. The Lord bring strength unto him R. Upon his bed of pain. V. O Lord, hear my prayer, R. And let my cry come unto Thee.

The rite then has the priest read the Gospels of Christ's healings and pray Psalm 90, the great psalm of protection (see our prayer for protection), before laying his hand on the sick person's head with the words of Mark 16:18: "They shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover."

The shortest prayer for the sick: "He whom thou lovest is sick"

When Lazarus fell ill in Bethany, his sisters Martha and Mary sent Jesus a message of a single sentence. In the Douay-Rheims:

Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. (John 11:3)

They didn't tell him what to do. They told him who was sick and reminded him that he loved him. It is a perfect prayer for a hospital waiting room, or for the middle of the night when you have no words left. Say it with the person's name: "Lord, behold, Maria, whom thou lovest, is sick."

A prayer to St. Camillus for the sick

St. Camillus de Lellis (1550–1614) was a soldier and gambler who, after his conversion, gave his life to nursing the sick in the hospitals of Rome and founded the Ministers of the Sick, the Camillians. This prayer to him was indulgenced by Pope Leo XIII in 1894 and is printed in the 1910 English Raccolta, number 348:

Glorious St Camillus, special protector of poor sick people, who for forty years, with a charity truly heroic, didst devote thyself to alleviating their spiritual and corporal miseries; be pleased to succour them still more generously, now that thou art happy in Heaven and that they have been confided by the Church to thy powerful protection. Obtain for them from God either that they may be healed of the evils from which they are suffering, or that by patience and Christian resignation they may be sanctified and strengthened in the hour of their death; and obtain also for us the grace to live and die, after thy example, in the practice of divine love. Amen.

The Raccolta adds an Our Father and a Hail Mary. The prayer is honest, as the Church's prayers for the sick always are. It asks for healing first, and it also asks, if God's will is otherwise, for the grace to suffer well and die in peace.

A prayer to Our Lady, Health of the Sick

The Litany of Loreto calls Mary Salus infirmorum, "Health of the sick." This short collect, printed in the 1910 Raccolta (number 192), asks God to protect us through her intercession from sickness of body and soul:

Defend, O Lord, we beseech Thee, us thy servants, through the intercession of the Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, from all infirmity both of body and soul; and mercifully protect from the snares of enemies those who, with their whole heart, prostrate themselves before Thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Many families add a decade of the rosary for the sick person each night. Our Lady of Lourdes, where the sick have come by the hundreds of thousands since 1858, is the Marian title most often invoked for them; see Our Lady of Lourdes.

The Anointing of the Sick

Christ left his Church a sacrament for the seriously ill. St. James describes it in the Douay-Rheims:

Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. (James 5:14-15)

For many years the sacrament was called Extreme Unction, and many families waited until the very end to call the priest. That is not what the Church asks. The Catechism is clear: the Anointing of the Sick "is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death," and the right time "has certainly already arrived" when a person "begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age." It can be given before a serious operation, and again if the illness gets worse.

The Catechism lists what the sacrament gives: union with the passion of Christ; "the strengthening, peace, and courage to endure in a Christian manner the sufferings of illness or old age"; the forgiveness of sins if the sick person could not go to confession; "the restoration of health, if it is conducive to the salvation of his soul"; and preparation for eternal life. Only a priest can give it.

How to arrange it

1. Call the parish office, or ask the hospital for the Catholic chaplain. Don't wait until the last hours.
2. If you can, prepare a small table with a crucifix, two candles and a glass of water.
3. If the person is able, the priest will offer confession first, then the anointing, and often Holy Communion.
4. Ask the parish to bring Holy Communion regularly to anyone who is homebound.

The saints of the sick

Pope Leo XIII named St. Camillus and St. John of God patrons of the sick and of hospitals in 1886. They pray for the sick with many others:

• St. John of God founded a hospital for the poor in Granada and the Brothers Hospitallers. See also our patron saints of nurses.
• St. Camillus de Lellis, whose brothers wear the red cross, nursed the sick of Rome for forty years.
• St. Raphael the Archangel, whose name means "God heals." Pray the St. Raphael prayer.
• Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette, who was herself sick for much of her short life.
• St. Peregrine, for those with cancer; see the St. Peregrine prayer and patron saint of cancer.
• Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the twin physicians who are named in the Roman Canon of the Mass.
• St. José Gregorio Hernández, the Venezuelan doctor of the poor, and St. André Bessette, the Montreal brother to whom thousands of the sick came for prayer.

More are on our patron saint of healing page.

How to pray for someone who is sick

• Pray by name, every day. Use one prayer from this page and stay with it, or make a novena: nine days of the same prayer.
• Ask others to pray. Put the person on your parish prayer list and ask for a Mass to be offered for them.
• Visit, or call. Visiting the sick is one of the corporal works of mercy. Your presence is a prayer.
• Pray with them, not only for them. If they are able, pray the short verses above together, or a decade of the rosary.
• Pray for the caregivers too. Doctors, nurses and family members carry heavy loads. See our prayer for strength.

Jesus did not turn away anyone who was brought to him sick. St. Luke says that at sunset in Capernaum, "all they that had any sick with divers diseases, brought them to him. But he laying his hands on every one of them, healed them" (Luke 4:40). We bring ours to him in the same way.

Related prayers

• Prayer for healing, for your own healing of body and soul.
• Prayer for surgery, before an operation.
• Prayer for strength and prayer for anxiety, for patients and those who love them.
• Prayer for grief and prayers for the dead, when the illness ends in death.

St. Camillus, St. John of God, and Mary, Health of the sick, pray for them. Amen.