Intercession
Asking on behalf of someone else.
Prayer for someone else: the sick, the grieving, leaders, enemies, the world. Congregations organize it through prayer lists and the intercessions of Sunday worship. Catholic and Orthodox Christians also ask Mary and the saints to add their prayers, a request for intercession that most Protestants do not make, praying to God alone.
Intercession is asking for another person. It is the mode most visible from outside the tradition, because it is what people mean when they say they will pray for you, and it is what prayer lists and prayer chains exist to organise.
It is also the mode most often practised by people who are otherwise not praying at all. Requests to pray for someone ill come to clergy from people with no other contact with a church, and the request is usually sincere.
In liturgical traditions it has a fixed slot in the service; in others it is the substance of the prayer meeting.
Does it have a text?
A mode rather than a text, and its wording is usually composed for the person being prayed for. Several fixed prayers here sit in this mode, including the Collect for Aid against All Perils and the Prayer of St Chrysostom, both from the 1662 prayer book.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Christian
- Praise and adoration — Prayer that addresses God for who God is rather than asking for anything.
- Confession — Naming what has gone wrong, privately or in a congregation.
- Thanksgiving — Prayer that names what has been received.
- Petition — Asking for oneself.
- Set and free prayer — The long argument between prayer that is written down and prayer that is not.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.