Healing prayers

Christian prayer for healing goes back to the New Testament, where the Epistle of James (5:14-15) instructs the elders of the Church to pray over those who are ill and to anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. The tradition has continued in every Christian century since. The prayers gathered here include the Anglican Book of Common Prayer's Visitation of the Sick, the Communion of the Sick, prayers for anointing drawn from the biblical pattern, the protection psalms (Psalm 23, Psalm 91), and prayers for illness, recovery, and grief from across the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant traditions. They do not promise healing. They ask for it, and for the grace to endure if it does not come.

Anglican

A Prayer at the Communion of the Sick (BCP) 1662 AD A Prayer for the Sick (BCP) 1662 AD

Ecumenical

A Prayer for a Sick Person 1662 A Prayer for Anointing of the Sick 1st century AD (biblical pattern) A Prayer in Sorrow Contemporary traditional form A Prayer of Thanksgiving for a Recovery 1662 Psalm 23 pre-6th century BC Psalm 91 Ancient Israelite The Serenity Prayer c. 1943