The Gospel has a scene for exactly this. Mary, newly pregnant, travels to the hill country to stay with Elizabeth, who is related to her by family rather than by choice. Neither has picked the other. They greet each other, and what comes out of the meeting is the Magnificat.
Historical Context
Luke is careful to say that Elizabeth is Mary’s kinswoman — a relative, not a friend she selected. And the encounter is not sentimental. Elizabeth is old, Mary is young and in an impossible situation, and the thing that passes between them is recognition: each sees what God is doing in the other before either has explained herself. That is a very high bar for an in-law relationship, and it is the right one to pray toward.
A Prayer for My Sister-in-Law
Lord, you gave me this woman as family without asking me,
and gave me to her the same way.
Bless her in her own right, and not only as my brother’s wife —
in her work, in her health, in the things she hopes for
that I know nothing about.
Where we are easy with one another, keep us so.
Where we are not, give me the grace to go first.
Let me speak well of her when she is not in the room.
Our Lady of the Visitation, who went to her kinswoman
before anyone had explained anything,
pray for us both.
Amen.
When the Relationship Is Strained
Many people searching for this prayer are not looking for a blessing. They are looking for help with someone who is difficult, or with whom something was said years ago that has never been repaired. It is worth praying honestly about that rather than around it.
Father, I do not find this easy, and you know it.
I will not pretend to you that I do.
Take out of me what I am nursing —
the comparison, the remembered slight, the account I keep.
Let me want good things for her: her health, her happiness, her success,
the same things I want for myself.
If I cannot mean it yet, let me say it anyway
until I do.
And keep this out of the children’s hearing.
Amen.
That last instruction is not devotional decoration. Family coldness is learned by watching, and the one thing entirely within your control is what your children see.
A Prayer for the Whole Household
Holy Family of Nazareth,
you were a household of in-laws too —
Joseph, who came into another family’s story,
and did not make himself its centre.
Give our family his quiet.
Let us be a house where difficult people are still fed,
and where nobody is talked about in the kitchen.
Amen.
Best Times for This Prayer
- Before Christmas, Easter, or any gathering you are dreading.
- When a new sister-in-law joins the family, at the wedding or before it.
- When she is ill, or her marriage is in trouble.
- On 31 May, the feast of the Visitation.
- After an argument, before you rehearse your side of it again.
- When you realise you have been comparing your life to hers.
Scripture Connection
“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” — Luke 1:39–40
The verb is the one that matters: Mary went. Nobody asked her to, the journey was some ninety miles on foot, and she was the one with more reason to stay home. The Visitation is an in-law relationship repaired in advance by the person who had least obligation to do it.
There is a second, smaller scene worth knowing. In Mark’s Gospel, the first person Jesus heals of an illness is Peter’s mother-in-law, in Peter’s own house, and she gets up and serves the company. The Gospel takes it for granted that an in-law lives under the roof and is prayed for as family.
Related prayers
For the other side of the same family, see the Prayer for a Mother-in-Law. For a blood sister rather than an in-law, St Scholastica is the patron of sisters — traditionally the twin of St Benedict.
If what stands between you is a grudge you have already examined more than once, the Resentment Prayer is a fortnight-long practice for precisely that, and it asks nothing of your feelings before you start.