A prayer composed for 1765 Regina
Prayer for a Sick Child
Lord Jesus Christ,
You took the hand of Jairus’s daughter and said to her, Arise;
You gave a widow’s only son back to his mother at the gate of Naim.
Look now on my child, whom You love more than I can.
I give You what I cannot carry: the fever and the waiting, the long night, the word the doctor has not yet said.
Give skill and gentleness to every hand that tends my child,
and give me a steady heart, to keep watch without despair.
If it is Your will, raise my child up and give my child back to me well.
Whatever comes, hold my child in Your keeping,
and keep me at the foot of Your Cross, where Your own Mother stood.
Holy Mary, Health of the Sick, pray for us.
Amen.
About this prayer
This prayer is not traditional. It was composed for 1765 Regina in 2026, because we could not find a public-domain prayer written for a mother keeping watch over a sick child. Its words lean on the Gospels, so that in praying it you are praying what the Church has always read. Say your child’s name wherever it says “my child.”
A father came to Jesus with the plea every parent knows: “My daughter is at the point of death, come, lay thy hand upon her, that she may be safe, and may live” (Mark 5:23, Douay-Rheims). When word came that it was too late, Jesus said to him, “Fear not, only believe” (Mark 5:36), and then took the girl by the hand and said, “Damsel (I say to thee) arise” (Mark 5:41).
At the gate of Naim Jesus met a funeral: “the only son of his mother; and she was a widow.” The Gospel says he was “moved with mercy towards her” and told her, “Weep not”; then he raised the young man, “and he gave him to his mother” (Luke 7:12–15, Douay-Rheims). Christ’s mercy toward a grieving mother is in the Gospel itself.
Pray boldly for healing, as Jairus did, and leave the answer with God. “If it is Your will” is not a hedge; it is how Christ himself prayed in the garden: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39, Douay-Rheims). The last lines go where Mary went: “there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother” (John 19:25). “Health of the Sick” is one of Our Lady’s titles in the Litany of Loreto.
Call your parish priest as well as the doctor. He can visit, bless your child and pray with you, and he will tell you which sacraments your child can receive; the Roman Ritual has its own blessing for sick children, so ask him for it. If your child has not been baptized and is in danger of death, ask for a priest at once. In real necessity, when no priest or deacon can come, any person may baptize, intending to do what the Church does (CCC 1256): pour water on the child’s head and say, while pouring, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Baltimore Catechism No. 1, 1885).
When to pray it
- After you have called the doctor: prayer goes with medicine, never instead of it. In an emergency, call 911 first.
- At the bedside, at night, quietly over a sleeping child.
- In the hospital waiting room, and before tests or surgery.
- With your other children, so that they learn to bring a sick brother or sister to Christ.