That is the tradition this prayer sits in. Friendship is not a lesser kind of love in Catholic thought; there is a whole medieval treatise on it, and a passage of Scripture that Protestant Bibles do not contain.
Historical Context
Aelred was abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire and wrote De Spiritali Amicitia around 1160, borrowing Cicero’s form and giving it a Christian shape. His claim, put briefly, is that friendship is not a distraction from the love of God but a school for it — that you learn to love God partly by loving a particular person well, and that God is present in the friendship itself rather than despite it.
A Prayer for a Friend in Trouble
Lord, my friend is in trouble
and there is very little I can do about it.
You know what it is; I will not brief you.
Go where I cannot go — into the part of this
they have not told me about.
Send practical help, and send it soon.
Give me the sense to keep turning up
rather than waiting to be useful.
And if there is something I should be doing, make it obvious.
Amen.
Sirach on Friendship
This is in the Catholic Bible and not in most Protestant ones, which means it is one of the places where a Catholic praying for a friend has something extra to reach for.
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter:
he that has found one has found a treasure.
There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend,
and no scales can measure his excellence.
A faithful friend is an elixir of life;
and those who fear the Lord will find him.
— Sirach 6:14–16
The word the older translations use is shelter — a thing you get inside, not a thing you admire. It is worth holding when the friendship has become one-directional for a while, which it does when someone is ill or grieving. You are the shelter for now.
A Prayer for a Friend Who Is Ill
Father, I am praying for my friend, who is not family
and so has nobody obliged to do this.
That is exactly why I am doing it.
Ease the pain. Give the treatment room to work.
Give them one good day this week that they were not expecting.
Let me be the one who visits on the dull Tuesday
and not only in the crisis.
St Raphael, medicine of God, pray for them.
Amen.
A Prayer for a Friendship That Has Gone Wrong
Aelred is unsentimental about this: he holds that some friendships should end, and that pretending otherwise does nobody good. But most of the ones that end did not need to.
Lord, I have lost a friend, and not to death.
I have rehearsed my side of it so often
that I can no longer remember theirs.
Show me the part that was mine.
If it can be repaired, make one of us reach out,
and let me not mind which.
If it cannot, let me stop carrying it.
Bless them where they are, without me.
Amen.
A Prayer for a Friend Who Has Died
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
They were not my blood and nobody expects me at the funeral
in the front row.
I am grieving anyway.
Thank you for giving them to me at all.
Finish in them whatever is unfinished,
and keep a place where we can pick it up.
Amen.
If your friend was Catholic, you can have a Mass offered for them — telephone any parish and ask. It is the most substantial thing available, and being a friend rather than family is no bar to requesting it.
Best Times for This Prayer
- On 2 January, the feast of Basil and Gregory, for the friends you have kept.
- On 12 January, St Aelred’s feast.
- When a friend is ill, out of work, or in a marriage that is failing.
- When you can tell something is wrong and they have not said what.
- After a falling-out, before you retell your version again.
- When a friend has died and you are not sure you are entitled to grieve this much.
Scripture Connection
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” — John 15:15
The distinction Christ draws is about information. A servant is told what to do; a friend is told what is going on. Which sets a standard for the prayers on this page: praying for a friend in need is not mainly about arranging outcomes for them. It is about being someone they can tell the truth to — and being willing to hear it on a night when it is inconvenient.
Related prayers
If the friend is unwell, the Saint Raphael Prayer is the one for healing, and St John of God for hospitals. If they are struggling in their mind, see the Prayer for Depression and St Dymphna.
If drink is the trouble, the Set Aside Prayer is where a great many people in recovery begin. And where the friendship has curdled into a grievance you have already examined more than once, the Resentment Prayer is a fortnight’s practice for exactly that.
