Key principles behind the repository of hundreds of prayers in CHA's online prayer library are that anyone who is grounded in spirituality can lead prayer, and that prayer is a very important element in Catholic health care.
"Anyone can be responsible for leading prayer in a meeting, you don't have to be a chaplain or mission leader to do it," says Karla Keppel, CHA associate director of mission services. "We all can offer something that speaks to our inner spirituality."
Ministry providers and others can access CHA's prayer library with its expansive array of resources to help them integrate prayer into their work and lives at chausa.org/prayers.
The library has prayers for a wide variety of needs and occasions. It also includes meditations, homilies, prayer services, prayer cards and resources related to liturgical seasons and observances. CHA encourages people to make the prayers and other resources their own, tailoring them for their needs.
Depth of resources
For decades, staff in CHA's Sponsorship and Mission Services department have been creating resources and posting them in the online prayer library. That department also welcomes prayers from CHA members and partners to add to the collection. Currently there are more than 850 prayers available.
The library has undergone multiple restructurings and updates, with the latest change happening with the revamping of CHA's website in April. Now, prayers are organized by categories, including by their purpose or intended audience or connection to the liturgical year, season or observance. A new feature on CHA's website — the artificial intelligence-assisted search — is useful for finding prayers. "It helps people find prayers more directly, and it helps ensure we're offering the prayers people want," Keppel says.
Among the many prayers are ones for meetings, for patients and families, and for ministry staff members. There are prayers organized by month for special observances like World Refugee Day in late June. There are prayers organized by liturgical season, with special collections for Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. There also are collections built around the church's current Jubilee year, which is themed "Pilgrims of Hope," and around an "Inspired by the Saints" series that CHA debuted in 2022.
A new resource coming in late fall is an Advent calendar that will feature prayers, scriptural meditations and reflections collected from members of the ministry. These pieces all will connect with the theme "Finding Hope in the Darkness."
According to analytics and surveys, prayers are consistently among the most accessed resources on the CHA website.
Keppel says some of the prayer library's most active users are ministry leaders who need prayers to start off or close team meetings and huddles.
Personal spirituality
Keppel, who has master's degrees in pastoral ministry and theology and counseling psychology from Boston College, is currently one of the main authors of prayers for the site and the main coordinator of the prayer library.
She says that while the liturgical and seasonal calendars are the inspiration for many of the prayers, other sources of inspiration include current events, requests from CHA members and suggestions from CHA staff. She also finds inspiration when enjoying nature and alternatively when gathering with others in community.
Her personal theology, which is reflected in the prayers she writes, is that "ours is a God of accompaniment. God enters into the thick of good things, and bad things, sufferings and joys. So, my approach is not necessarily to say, 'God fix this,' but instead to see it as an invitation. It's saying, 'God, this is hard, I'm not sure where to head, but help me to have the wisdom to address this.'"
Keppel says that anyone who benefits from personal prayer, is in touch with their own spirituality and engages in a connection to the divine can lead and create their own prayers.
CHA has resources online, including in the prayer and formation sections of its website, on how to cultivate one's own spirituality and how to draw upon that reserve to engage other people in exploring their own spirituality. This includes drawing on those reserves to lead prayer. CHA's recently released "Inside Out" podcast series features ministry leaders describing their spirituality and how it relates to their role in Catholic health care.
Some of CHA's resources describe different ways of tapping into one's personal spirituality. For instance, there are ways to incorporate nature, art and music to enhance spiritual practice. Visio divina, contemplative prayer with imagery; lectio divina, contemplative prayer with scripture; and Taize, meditative prayer with chanting or singing, are just a few different methods with rich histories that can deepen a person's prayer life, Keppel notes.
Keppel welcomes the submission of original prayers for CHA to consider including in the prayer library. Prayers can be emailed to her at kkeppel@chausa.org.
Keppel says the library can be a great starting place for spiritual growth for individuals and teams in the ministry and beyond. "My best hope is that people would take our prayers and use them as inspiration and make them their own," she says.
This is the fourth article in a series on how CHA's mission and sponsorship department is reimagining its work.
Related articles
CHA's sponsorship and mission services department revitalizes its programming