Lean on the Lord: Catholic Prayers for When You're Facing a Terminal Illness

A compassionate Catholic prayer book for anyone facing terminal illness, serious suffering, or end-of-life care.

When illness, uncertainty, or the fear of death enters your life or the life of someone you love, prayer can become a source of peace, strength, and hope. Lean on the Lord: Catholic Prayers for When You’re Facing a Terminal Illness is a comforting Catholic prayer resource created for patients, caregivers, family members, hospice workers, chaplains, and anyone accompanying a loved one through serious illness or the dying process.

Written by palliative care physician Natalie King, MD—author of the award-winning Intensive Caring—this resource is shaped by years of accompanying patients and families through the emotional and spiritual realties of dying. With pastoral sensitivity and clinical insight, Dr. King provides prayers that speak to fear, grief, uncertainty, and the desire for God’s presence.

This Catholic prayer book includes

• Catholic prayers for terminal illness, suffering, and dying;
• comforting prayers for caregivers, spouses, family members, and loved ones;
• devotions for facing fear, anxiety, grief, loneliness, and emotional exhaustion;
• scripture passages and reflections for finding peace in suffering;
• traditional Catholic prayers for the dying and for the hour of death;
• meditations on the Rosary, novenas, and prayers from the saints; and
• spiritual support for hospice care, palliative care, and end-of-life accompaniment.

Featuring prayers from the saints, novenas, meditations on the Rosary, and beloved biblical passages, this collection is thoughtfully organized around key moments in the terminal illness and dying process, making it easy to find the right prayer at the right time.

Ideal for Catholic patients, families, parish ministries, hospice workers, chaplains, priests, nurses, and caregivers, Lean on the Lord is both a personal prayer book and a practical ministry resource. It can also be used alongside Dr. King’s book Intensive Caring: A Practical Handbook for Catholics about Serious Illness and End-of-Life Care.

In moments when words are difficult to find, let this little Catholic prayer book be a safe haven where you and loved ones can meet God’s boundless mercy, tender love, and everlasting peace.