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Summary
- Ten short prayers cover a husband’s first symptoms, tests, refusing to see a doctor, surgery, a long illness, pain and sleep, worry, a dangerous job, the wife caring for him and recovery.
- From Hapgood’s 1906 Orthodox service book come the Holy Unction prayer “O holy Father, Physician of souls and bodies,” a hymn to the Mother of God and a verse to Saint Panteleimon.
- The Russian “о здравии” (for health) refers to giving a priest a living person’s Christian name to be prayed for at the Liturgy, as Hapgood describes.
- The 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s “For a Sick Person” is printed with “him,” and the 1888 Catholic Manual of Prayers has a prayer for husband and wife asking for “health and strength, if it be Thy will.”
- James 5:14–16 tells the sick to call the elders to pray; the Catechism says the Anointing of the Sick is fitting before a serious operation.
- Prayer goes alongside medical care; wives facing violence at home are given crisis and domestic abuse lines.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Psalm 4:8; 30:2; 46:1; 121:8; Ecclesiastes 4:9–10; Isaiah 38:1–5; Romans 12:12; James 5:14–16; 1 Peter 5:7). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 38:1, 9, Douay-Rheims Bible, Project Gutenberg eBook no. 1581. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1581
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The Divine Liturgy (Office of Oblation), p. 74; The Office of Holy Unction, pp. 344, 346; Appendix B, note 4, p. 597. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Prayers, “For a Sick Person,” p. 45. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, prepared and published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1888. “A Wife’s Prayer,” pp. 451–452; “A Prayer to be said by Husband or Wife,” p. 452. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888
- Löffler, Klemens. “St. Pantaleon.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447a.htm
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraphs 1514–1516. https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_two/section_two/chapter_two/article_5/ii_who_receives_and_who_administers_this_sacrament.html
- GOV.UK. “Domestic abuse: how to get help.” https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-help
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