They are praying today in Santa Fe, Tex. They often are, but after Friday, the need feels bottomless. Even before the gunman stopped shooting, even before the headlines reported tragedy, even before they knew it was 10 dead at the high school in the middle of town, a plea hurried out from person to person, screen to screen.

“Please pray,” began one text message sent to a mothers’ prayer list. “My niece is not accounted for. Was in art when shooting took place.”

“URGENT PRAYER REQUEST!!” read another. “I don’t have details but was just informed that there is an active shooting going on at Santa Fe high school.”

Their requests were heeded. “Prayers lifted for the Santa Fe schools right now,” someone wrote.

There have been prayers sent from Nigeria and from Grapevine, Tex., from Virginia and São Paulo. Vice President Mike Pence offered prayers from the White House. They are words that, however sincere, have come to seem routine — even cynically so, to some Americans who see in them an evasion of the gun-control debate — when American communities find themselves plunged into grief.

But in Santa Fe, where football players appeal to the Lord before Friday night games, where church on Sunday is all but a given, where the school district once went all the way to the Supreme Court to preserve the right to sponsor prayer, these expressions of faith are not mere words, but salves.

On Friday, inside the high school, the students turned to prayers for protection. As gunfire roared through the hallways, several students hid in a classroom, forming a prayer circle.

“We could hear everything, gun shots, screams, bullets ricocheting,” said Grace Johnson, 18, the school band chaplain. “I asked if anyone wanted to pray. That even if they didn’t believe in God, that maybe being comforted by friends would help. So we prayed for the safety of our class that got separated, our peers and most importantly we prayed that something would change in the heart of the shooter.”

If Rindy Hitchcock’s daughter had not texted at 7:37 a.m. to alert her that something was wrong at school, she would have known moments later from the prayer requests that began buzzing on her phone and continued through the day. Ms. Hitchcock, scrambling to account for her three children at the school, was grateful for the prayers offered to her and the opportunity to pray for others.

“For my family, prayer is a great source of strength and comfort,” she said. “A peace washes over you when you know you don’t have the strength and someone can intercede for you.”

At Saltgrass Cowboy Church, where Ms. Hitchcock serves as secretary, anyone can submit a request for prayer that is relayed to dozens of other congregants. Sometimes there are multiple requests a day. Someone’s grandfather is getting an operation. A child is sick.

In February, a few days after a loud noise thought to be gunshots put Santa Fe High on lockdown for an hour, members of the Saltgrass church gathered in the school parking lot to offer prayers, drawing several students and a few dozen adults even at 6 a.m.