St. Andrew’s parish ministers with handmade prayer shawls

An Eagle River parish reached a milestone of 1,000 prayer shawls created by a faithful group of 20-plus women over the past 11 years.  

Dolores Coates of St. Andrew parish in Eagle River keeps a book of the Prayer Shawl Ministry. It is not a ledger, but rather a record of first names, no last names, no notes on who received a prayer shawl. In 11 years, the book has been filled with a thousand entries: a thousand shawls, knit or crocheted, stitch by stitch, blessed and wrapped in ribbon. Many are placed into a bin in the coat room at St. Andrew’s to wait for whoever needs one next, and many have traveled the globe.

“There’s no one thing about prayer shawls,” Dolores says. “It’s a matter of people wanting to share their love.”

Most go by word-of-mouth to people in the hardest seasons of their lives — a death in the family, a diagnosis no one wanted to hear, a trauma with no good name for it. Others mark joy: an engagement, a wedding, a birth, a birthday. The group doesn’t always know when they finish a shawl and lay it in the bin which kind of day it’s headed toward. Sometimes a shawl is created for a specific seminarian about to be ordained, a sister, a priest, a bishop. Sometimes it’s simply taken up by a parishioner, and the story follows later in a letter, or a quiet word passed back to the group. These notes tell how it feels to be wrapped in something made by people praying as they worked.

A priest blesses each shawl before it is given out.

“Many from the Catholic Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau or those who visited here from throughout the country have received a prayer shawl,” Coates said. For those in religious life, the group stitches the St. Paul Cross, with another large cross worked into the opposite side. This pattern is reserved for priests, sisters, bishops, and seminarians before ordination.

How far back does the Catholic practice of prayer shawls go? There isn’t much written on it as a Catholic practice, but the popular relics date back to Jewish times in the Bible. Today, many faiths practice the custom of prayer while creating the garments and giving them away to those in a time of need.

Eleven years ago, Coates had a friend residing outside Chicago whose parish held a prayer shawl ministry. Whenever she visited, she’d sit and knit with them.

“Two years of that, and the pull got harder to ignore.  The Holy Spirit encouraged me,” Coates says of the decision to start a group of her own at St. Andrew’s. She spoke with other women in the parish. They decided to start a prayer shawl ministry after receiving the go-ahead from Father Tom Brundage, who was pastor at that time.

Once a month, the women of the Prayer Shawl Ministry meet to work on their shawls.

“The monthly meetings open with prayerful intentions, including those who have received or will receive a prayer shawl, and we pray for all these intentions.  Then it is time to talk, to share what’s happening in their own lives. Nobody expects to finish a shawl at the meeting itself,” she said. “After that we work at home alone.”

There’s no single approved pattern. A shawl can be a rectangle or a triangle, knit or crocheted, so long as it goes around the shoulders. Patterns come from books, from the internet, from members who’ve made up their own. The yarn comes the same way — from stashes people already have, from donations. The group doesn’t ask for money. But when they set the shawls out on display, people sometimes donate cash, and that goes straight back into yarn. Each shawl is offered freely with no request for money.

“The good Lord provides,” Coates says.

Only once has the shawl supply run low. Then, just as quickly, it filled back up. The group tries to always keep at least a dozen shawls on hand.

When the pandemic closed the church where they used to meet, the group didn’t stop. It moved to Zoom.

“I opened my garage as a drop-off point for yarn and to provide a shawl to those who request one. The ministry kept moving,” Coates said.

St. Andrew’s isn’t the only group doing this work. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish leads a group and on occasion, the St. Andrew’s group provided shawls when they needed some. 

“I have my own prayer shawl, made by a member in our ministry in my favorite colors,” Coates said. “It’s something I put on when I’m not feeling well.”

To request a prayer shawl, write to: parishsecretary@aksaintandrews.org