Closing Prayer

Last week I wrote about ice breaker activities as a way to start a weekly meeting. Below is an unpublished blog about closing your weekly women's group.


How do you close your meetings? Do you remember to take a few moments to pray together and officially “close” your meetings? I have to confess that there have been times in some of my chapel groups that we have gotten so caught up in our faith study discussion that we barely have time to clean up and go pick up kiddos from watch care. Just like in the Mass when we are given a final blessing by the priest we should also take the time make sure our women are “blessed” before they head out the door.

Over the years, I’ve participated in several chapel groups and have experienced different closing prayers.
In my first group ever back in Schweinfurt, Germany one of our ladies instituted Secret Prayer Sisters. Each person would write a special intention that they would like prayer for on a small piece of paper and then drop it in a basket. No names are needed. And then the basket was passed around and each person would take a note and remember to pray for that anonymous request for the week. I would usually keep my request on my bathroom mirror to remind myself to honor that daily request for prayer.

Another group I know closes out their weekly meetings by coming together in a circle and holding hands. They go around the circle and each woman can say out loud their prayer request. If you do not wish to share a request, you simply squeeze the hand of the person next to you and the “squeeze” moves the group prayer forward.

Another chapel group I've been a part of prays Journal Intercessions. We have a pretty notebook that we pass around during the meeting and each person writes their prayer requests in it. When it is time to end our meeting, one person reads aloud each request followed by “We pray to the Lord” and the rest of us respond “Lord, hear our prayer”. Depending on which one of our ladies is leading the closing prayer, we will usually end with a spontaneous-led prayer, or a Hail Mary or a prayer for each of our sisters in Christ.

If spontaneous prayer does not come naturally to you or your ladies, our Catholic faith has a treasure trove of prayers ready to go. We’ve ended our meetings with the Litany to the Saints, the Memorare, the Our Lady of Good Counsel prayer, or special prayer for a Saintly intervention.

Do you have a special way that you close your meetings? Please share in the comments.