Prayer Blankets Provide Comfort and Support to Alexian Brothers Medical Center Patients
Women at churches in Chicago ’s northwest suburbs are extending the power of prayer through handmade blankets donated to patients and their families at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village.
The “prayer blankets” come in many shapes, sizes and colors, but their message is the same: A faith community is praying for you, whether you are experiencing great difficulty or great joy.
ABMC chaplain Phyllis Harman has presented the blankets to comfort adult patients who are dying or are struggling with a serious illness and need additional support. She also has given them to sick children and the parents of newborns.
“They’re not just for sad times, but for times of celebration, too,” says Harman, who initiated the program with three area churches in February 2008. It has grown to include ten churches of multiple denominations, and Harman hopes to enlist four more churches by the end of the year.
More than 100 blankets have been created since the program began, and ABMC has distributed about half of them. Most blankets are made by one person, although sometimes one person starts a blanket and another finishes it. In some cases, women make the blankets at home; in other cases, they gather at their church and work as a group. In all cases, the women pray as they knit or crochet the blankets, which usually are blessed before they are donated to ABMC. “We call them ‘sacramentals’ because they are reminders of God’s love and presence, so they become sacramental, like a rosary or holy water,” Harman says.
When she presents a prayer blanket to a patient, she usually puts the blanket around the patient’s shoulders or on his or her lap, prays with the patient, and blesses the patient and the blanket with holy water. Recipients typically react with awe and appreciation when they learn that a stranger went to the trouble of making the blanket and praying for them, Harman says. “Most of the time, their reaction is tears, because they are just overwhelmed with someone else’s generosity and kindness,” she says.
The prayer-blanket program is a perfect confluence of the Alexian Brothers’ values of compassion, dignity of the person, partnership, holism and care of the poor, Harman says. “As a faith-based hospital, we believe that God has this wonderful gift for us of love,” she says. “It doesn’t just show up in the clouds. It’s a tangible gift from others. The women who make the blankets are aware of this, and they do it out of a sense of compassion and dignity of the person.”
Made possible by the spirit of partnership, the prayer blankets also are a holistic gift, because they emanate from the mind, body and spirit of each blanket maker and because they can provide physical warmth, psychological comfort and spiritual solace, Harman says. Although recipients might not be poor in a financial sense, they often are spiritually poor because of illness, “and getting something they can hold on to offers the potential of coming out of their sadness and insecurities,” she says.
For Harman, the prayer blankets are a reminder that “all of life is connected, and all people are connected,” she says. Prayer, she adds, makes these connections possible, revealing God among us. “It’s just awesome,” she says.
