Can I offer my LOTH prayers for our sick priest?

[JerryS]

I’m a lay person, and I try to pray most hours of the divine office each day. Our priest collapsed with a brain tumor and is unconscious in intensive care. It occurred to me as I prayed evening prayer today, that Father can’t fulfill his duty to pray the office. I wondered whether I could off my prayer up on his behalf. It seemed like a special way I could help him, praying his office for him while he’s incapacitated. This went through my mind as I prayed this evening, and the petitions in the psalms and prayers asking for assistance and healing from God really resonated when I contemplated praying as him in his infirmity.

Is this a good thing to do, or should I avoid it?

Thanks,
Jerry

 

[karow]

I’m a lay person, and I try to pray most hours of the divine office each day. Our priest collapsed with a brain tumor and is unconscious in intensive care. It occurred to me as I prayed evening prayer today, that Father can’t fulfill his duty to pray the office. I wondered whether I could off my prayer up on his behalf. It seemed like a special way I could help him, praying his office for him while he’s incapacitated. This went through my mind as I prayed this evening, and the petitions in the psalms and prayers asking for assistance and healing from God really resonated when I contemplated praying as him in his infirmity.

Is this a good thing to do, or should I avoid it?

Thanks,
Jerry

I don’t know if one can take the place of someone else in prayer, like you want to pray in place your priest. But I am pretty sure that being unconscious relieves one of prayer obligations in any event.

What you could do is to continue to offer your LOTH prayers for your priest’s health and recovery.

God bless.

 

[Stavros]

First of all, I will include your priests in my prayers.

Secondly, I offer up everything I do in some way shape or form. During my morning offering, I offer my works, prayers, joys and sufferings to the sanctification of priests. Then, when I fix my intentions at the mass offering, I offer that as well to priests. When I pray the rosary each day, I always have a main intention (usually the conversion of souls, especially those deceived by the lies of the Mormon church), but then I dedicate the fourth decade to the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and the fifth decade I offer for, you guessed it, the priests.

In other words, to answer your question, while I don’t believe you can pray on his behalf or in his name without his express consent, absolutely you can fix your intention for the LOTH to be for the healing of your priest. And if you want to pray a special devotion for his healing, and for the sanctity of all priests, here’s one of my favorite, from little Thérèse.

**Prayer for priests
**Prayed daily by St. Thérèse

O Almighty Eternal God, Look upon the face of Thy Christ, and for the love of Him, Who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on Thy priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the Bishop’s hands. Keep them close to Thee, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.

O Jesus, I pray to Thee, for Thy faithful and fervent priests; for Thy unfaithful and tepid priests; for Thy priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for Thy tempted priests, for Thy lonely and desolate priests; for Thy young priests; for Thy aged priests; for Thy sick priests; for Thy dying priests; for the souls of Thy priests in purgatory.

But above all, I commend to Thee the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Thy Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me or helped and encouraged me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way, particularly [name a particular priest of your choosing here]. O Jesus, keep them all close to Thy heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.