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Summary
- Twelve short prayers, each two to four sentences, cover healing, pain, the doctors and nurses, weak days, worry, a long illness, sleep, bad news, loneliness, caregivers, the sick person’s own prayer and thanks for recovery.
- One-line prayers and two King James verses (Psalm 41:3; Romans 15:13) can be sent to a sick friend by text.
- Traditional prayers are quoted from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (“For a Sick Person,” “A Prayer for Healing,” “For a Sick Child”), the 1888 Catholic Manual of Prayers and Hapgood’s 1906 Orthodox service book.
- James 5:14–16 tells the sick to call the elders of the church to pray over them; Catholics ask a priest for the Anointing of the Sick and Orthodox Christians for Holy Unction.
- Churches differ on what to expect: the Assemblies of God teaches that deliverance from sickness “is the privilege of all believers,” while the Orthodox Church in America says physical healing is not always God’s will; Paul left Trophimus “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20).
- Prayer goes alongside medical care and never replaces it.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Deuteronomy 31:6; Psalm 4:8; 41:3; 103:2–3; 145:18; Jeremiah 17:14; Matthew 25:36; Romans 12:12; 15:13; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 12:7–9; Galatians 6:2; Philippians 4:7, 13; 2 Timothy 4:20; James 5:14–16). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Prayers, “In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality,” “For a Sick Person” and “For a Sick Child,” p. 45; Visitation of the Sick, Collect “O God, the strength of the weak,” p. 312, and “A Prayer for Healing,” p. 315; “Unction of the Sick,” p. 320. 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. “Prayer in the Beginning of Sickness,” pp. 459–460; The Visitation of the Sick, p. 496. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888/page/496/mode/1up
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The Office of Holy Unction, p. 346. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- 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
- Orthodox Church in America. “Holy Unction.” The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship. https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-sacraments/holy-unction
- Assemblies of God (USA). “Statement of Fundamental Truths,” 12, “Divine Healing.” https://ag.org/Beliefs/Statement-of-Fundamental-Truths
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