Mouser, so, I considered json, but I hate dealing with all those quotation marks. XML, I decided was clumsy. I ended up trying my hand at a sqlite. I was reading that it has a performance superiority over json or xml, and I want to easily add more items. Plus, I can use a type:text and store literal carriage returns. In json or xml I'd have to always keep typing escape characters.
So, in C#, I just query the sqlite db into a datatable and then I can regex replace \r\n with <br/>.
And, as you said, I can store all the prayers in plain old text in the db and be able to use it for other applications, too, if I want.
Finally, I went with a .db because if I get up into having 500 prayers in the database, it will be much more manageable than a giant json file.
Thanks for your tips, though, even though I already decided what to do before you posted...