Funeral Prayer Cards

What goes on the card

A funeral prayer card is a stiff card about the size of a playing card stood on its end. It is designed to survive: people put them in a wallet, tuck them into a Bible, or stick them to a refrigerator door, and they are still there years later. The whole design job is one photograph, a name, two dates and a short piece of text.

If the word prayer does not fit your family, the same object without the religious framing is called a memorial card. Same size, same printing, different name.

Back-of-card wording you can copy

Each of these is a complete card back, with the name and date lines in place. The names and dates are invented, so change them line by line and the wording is yours. Every text quoted here is in the public domain.

For the Memorare, the Peace Prayer, the prayer to St. Joseph, and which holy image suits which person, see Catholic funeral prayer cards.

Those lines come from a sermon Holland preached in 1910, not from a poem, which is why you will see them printed with different line breaks everywhere. Break them wherever they fit your card. The words above are his own, as the sermon was printed in 1919, shortened where the dots are; most versions in circulation reword them slightly.

If none of these sound like the person, there are sixty more short options, Catholic, Protestant and secular, on funeral prayer card verses, and longer readings on funeral poems if you want something for the service as well.

A note on modern poems and song lyrics

Two of the most requested card texts are still under copyright, and printing 200 copies of a copyrighted poem is technically a reproduction. In practice nobody has ever been troubled over a funeral card, but it is worth knowing that you can print the title and the author instead, and read the poem aloud at the service. That is what most churches do.

Sizes and formats

Unless someone tells you otherwise, a funeral prayer card means 2.5 by 4.25 inches. Everything else is a deliberate choice.

For the exact print setup, meaning bleed, trim marks, how many fit on a sheet and what a shop needs from you, see prayer card size.

Choosing the photo

Pick the photograph where they look like themselves, not the most formal one. The card is small, so a face that fills the frame reads better than a full-length shot on a beach. Head and shoulders, eyes visible, and no one else in the picture unless you plan to crop.

If the only copy is a print in a frame

A flatbed scan at 600 dpi is best. If there is no scanner in the house, take the photo out of the frame, lay it flat near a window away from direct sun, and photograph it straight down with your phone so the edges stay square. Do not use flash, because it bounces off the print. A phone photo of a photo is usually good enough at 2.5 inches wide, which surprises most families.

Old, faded or damaged photos

Printing a faded color photo in black and white almost always looks better than trying to correct the color. A soft or grainy image also hides better on a small card than it would blown up on a program cover. If you have one good photograph and one usable one, put the good one on the card, where people will keep it.

Use the same photo everywhere

Program cover, prayer card, memorial table, slideshow opening. Using one photograph across all of them makes the set look considered, and it removes a decision from a week that has too many.

How many to order

Prayer cards go faster than programs. People take one for themselves and one for a sister who could not travel, and the family wants a stack afterward to send with thank-you notes.

If you are unsure between two numbers, take the higher one. A reprint means a second setup charge, a second trip, and cards that arrive a week after everyone has gone home. The extras are useful for a long time: families send them with thank-you notes, keep one with the estate paperwork, and hand them to relatives who turn up months later.

Printing and finishing

There are three routes, and one of them may already be paid for.

The funeral home

Most funeral homes print prayer cards, and many include a set in the service package. Ask before you order anywhere else, because families regularly pay twice for the same thing in the same week. Ask two more questions while you have them: how many are included, and how late you can send the photo and the wording.

A print shop or online printer

Any local print shop can produce prayer cards, usually same day or next day. What you want to ask for: 2.5 by 4.25 inches, full color both sides, 14 pt or 100 lb cover stock, and gloss lamination if you want the traditional holy-card feel. Rounded corners are a small extra and make the card noticeably nicer to hold. Send a PDF with the images embedded rather than a Word file.

At home

Workable with heavy card stock, a printer that will feed it, and a straight-edge trimmer rather than scissors. Print a single test sheet and hold it up to a lamp: front-to-back alignment is where home printing goes wrong. Full instructions are on how to make funeral prayer cards, and the paper and folding advice on funeral program printing applies to cards too.

When they need to be ready

The real deadline is the visitation, not the funeral. In most American services the visitation is the evening before, which means the cards have to be finished and collected a full day earlier than families expect. If you are printing at a shop, ask for the cut-off time and work backward from it.

If the cards will not be ready, hand out the program and let the cards come later. Nobody counts them at the door. You can mail them with the thank-you notes two weeks afterward, and some families find that a kinder moment for them to arrive anyway.

You are allowed to do less than you think

There is no part of a funeral service that depends on a prayer card. Not the liturgy, not the burial, not anyone’s memory of the day. If this week has been too much, skip the cards, or print a plain one with a name, two dates and one line. A card with four honest sentences on it is kept longer than a crowded one, and no one has ever left a funeral thinking the card should have been fancier.

If you do want the set to match, that is the one thing worth handing off. Reposa asks for the photograph, the name and dates, and the words you have chosen, then produces the prayer cards and the funeral program from the same file, in the same typeface, ready to send to a printer. You build it free and only pay if you download it.