Praying..

[praisethestorm9]

Ok, although I have been raised a Catholic I have recently made the decision to immerse myself in my faith. I have really been struggling with the concept of praying for my “enemies” I was wondering what ways do you this? Am I sinning if I THINK ill of others?
Are there any prayers you can think of I could say or should I think of my own special intentions?

 

[Trishie]

It’'s wonderful that you have decided this. I thank God for offering His welcome to you in this desire.

I worried about that once, and spoke to a priest about the negative responses one can feel in response to bad treatment of self or others. He said, “You can’t help being intelligent”, meaning that naturally we have unkind feeling or thoughts because we automatically respond to a person’s ill treatment of us or of others . We feel it as hurtful, and where there is injustice, natural feelings of anger follow. I have also been told by priests that feelings are human and not intrinsically evil unless we choose to harbour them, and unless we choose to return harm to others.

Praying for our ‘enemies’ is a manifestation of forgiveness. Not only does that charity honour God, but the prayers we offer may ultimately help in the blessing and salvation of our ‘enemies’. I can give you prayers, but you can speak as naturally and honestly to God, to Jesus any time you like.

 

[Trishie]

You asked for prayers but I suppose my prayers are more meditations than prayers sometimes.
Judge you, my brother?

God, eternity waits for those who live the gospel to truly share in Your delight in each person. With You, we will rejoice in everyone who accepts Christ’s invitation to follow Him with prayer, penance and generosity!

How profound is the giving required by that person, and this! What happiness, what anguish is known there! What temptation is encountered! What sensitivities enfeeble or enrich and sanctify that life! How great is Your glory in the strange or ordinary facts and struggles of their existence! Yet, how can we know?

We err in applying rules of private interpretation to another’s intention or act, except as feeble measure for our compassion and charity. Only by one’s private consciousness—unless enlightened by Your Spirit of love—can each see what lies in another’s soul.

Each person is a unique expression of Your love, an individual world, some great, and some miniature, separate in existence and consciousness, yet united in You. Yet how quickly do we judge each other! We offer You our hurt and theirs in prayer for healing and forgiveness.

Let us not belittle or betray, in thought, or by gossip—the seemingly sinful, the apparently misled or foolish, the ugly, the crippled in mind or spirit. Let us celebrate their preciousness in You. Let us no longer sin against Your sacred love and creation in anyone by our judgements however seemingly justified.

Let Your Holy Spirit know and love each other person through us, with sensitivity to their emerging needs. Give us compassion for each other, however perplexed or inaccurate our perception, so that we revere each other—and ourselves—as individuals sacred to You.

Through Your Spirit, we can offer appreciation, justice and love to each other as we wait humbly on the full vision of Your meaning, purpose, and love of each person, in the final translation that follows death. Let us serve and intercede for each other person as loved child of God, in glad, trusting welcome.

 

[Trishie]

Prayer for understanding of others

Jesus, please open us to receive each other with love, so that we no longer betray God’s Love that re-creates us in each moment of life. Reveal to us our sins against charity, and heal us of fears and prejudices that lead to judgement of others.

How easily even the generous Christian reduces others to categories, judging them with unconscious pride and lack of empathy! How carelessly, with convincing appraisal and bias, we dismiss others in their seeming sin, error or foolishness. How often we misjudge them in their difficulties and achievements, and underestimate their intrinsic worth as persons!

Jesus, please forgive us that we presume to deal uncharitably with anyone! Each person is Your own creation lovingly spoken out of Yourself in the private language of love chosen for each alone! No matter how different from one’s own character or journey, the path and meaning of each person is treasured mystery hidden within You!

Let us share in Your love for others, rejoicing in Your image within them whether evident or not. Let us reverence our dissimilarity and their individuality. Let us be respectful and discreet in our helpfulness.

Have mercy on our prayer and goodwill for them, so that we may love them with Your Love. Jesus, I am so sorry for the times I fail to love others wisely and respectfully.

 

[Trishie]

Judgement of others

We cannot know others’ motivations or all the influences affecting them, so we have doubtless misjudged others more frequently than we realise.

Jesus, please alert us when we are tempted to judge other people. Our judgements may be based on another’s opinion, on flimsy evidence or on past observations, without full knowledge of someone’s situation and nature. Give us grace to avoid unkind or scandalous gossip. Even if others appear to blatantly sin, we cannot judge them according to Your vision. Please give us grace to extend impartiality and compassion to all others, friend, foe or stranger.

Enlighten those who see a few incidents or an isolated occurrence or appearance, even from years’ past, and then presume to make a permanent judgement like “he always does this.” “She always is like that.” “He is that sort of person.” How unjust to judge others in this way! Even if former perceptions happen to be accurate, who can judge that any person has not advanced in wisdom or grace!

If we defend victims of misjudgement, some accusers reconsider their opinion, while others cling to prejudice. Some people believe that their subjective view of people, reality, and events is the only valid one; therefore, we cannot expect them to be open to contrary evidence or testimony. They honestly believe that their judgements are correct. They seem not to be fully responsible for the injustice of their viewpoints.

We cannot judge even these people for perhaps they suffer from personal insecurity or desire for ascendancy over others, due to immaturity or low self-esteem. Their lack of respect and compassion may be hurtful to someone we love or respect, but let us respond with Christian maturity, without besmirching their reputations. Please expand their mental and emotional maturity so that with just and empathetic understanding of others, they—and we—may make reparation for the reputation and welfare of anyone who has been maligned or misjudged.

We trust in Your love to pardon us and to greatly bless anyone we have sinned against by judgement or unkindness. Jesus, help us truly to love our sisters and brothers, whether or not we understand them. October 1999

 

[Trishie]

Some forgiveness thoughts

Forgiveness
Dear God, You do not merely suggest that we love and forgive each other. You command it. Yet sometimes it is difficult to love and forgive.

I ask grace to pray for anyone who hurts loved ones or me through misunderstanding, frailty, or malice. I ask grace not to judge anyone for real or imagined injustice or injury.

You know all judgments that I have made in my life since infancy, even those so habitual that I hardly notice. They may contribute to unloving or mistrustful attitude, and thus prevent me from living a life of love, grace and joy.

Every time anyone hurts or angers me, let Your grace remind me to acknowledge my real feelings. The matter may be trivial, but if ignored, my feelings may fester into resentment. Grant me forgiveness that rejects negative feelings and leads to compassion and reconciliation. Heal my lack of love for myself, for any other, and for You. Let me view my flaws and others’ with humility and patience.

Our God, I forgive and bless anyone who hurts or neglects my loved ones or me. Restore and bless anyone I have offended or neglected. Give them grace to accept my repentance. Procure reconciliation where I am afraid to risk the other’s bitterness or rejection.

Holy Spirit please go to each person I have ever hurt, flooding him or her with God’s abundant gifts of love and healing. Allow us to experience Your love, and help us to accept Your will, Your timing and Your ways. I trust all relationships and situations into Your love. 2001

 

[Trishie]

Blessing and forgiveness

I forgive you, anyone who ever hurts or judges me. Will you forgive me? Will you forgive my faults that annoy you? Will you forgive what I am or what you judge me to be? Will you forgive my kindly meant mistakes?

In spirit, I kneel to ask forgiveness for good intentions gone awry. Perhaps you will not forgive or perhaps you will never inform me if you do forgive, yet I mean only kindness to others and to you. If I lose your friendship, I still love and pray for you and those with you.

Some day, through Your mercy I will enter heaven and will never again make mistakes that cause others hurt. I take comfort that those who cannot forgive or understand my motives must do so then. Until then your judgements of me — as the person, you deem me or the wrong you believe of me—remain until God who loves us can speak some kindness and perhaps even some truth in your heart for me.

“I bless you. I bless your thoughts and feelings. I bless your family, I bless your ventures, and I bless your life.”

The power of those words is God’s not mine. I only bless you in God’s name, for He loves you profoundly.
I forgive you, where there are things to forgive even if you never acknowledge them and or do not value me even enough to see them. How can I blame you? I place you in God’s care and ask His threefold blessing for you. 1999-05

 

[Trishie]

Understanding

My dear, I love you,
but the reasons matter not.
One cannot argue with the fact of love
which is entirely of the stuff of God.

Yet, my dear, we sometimes seem estranged!
my thought and heart have failed to closely match your own
and we leave each other alien for a while–
even wounded for life–
though both are imaged in love of the same eternal God!

The wonder perhaps is that we meet at all
for each created being is possessed of logic,
of identity unique within itself
which only appears reflected in others’ lives and thoughts
for none can know or judge but by a private consciousness.

Each soul remains hidden within divine Love’s mysteries
manifest in wondrous individual expression.
It is a whole world, formed and blessed,
and burdened with heavy crosses, perhaps?
a world in value, goodness and giving apparently slight?
yet perhaps its’ all–the sum of what God grants it for His own secret delight!

After death many surprises await,
of treasure buried in simple human hearts
concealed perhaps in ugly shapes, foolish deeds and ordinary lives
and in lives that others might choose to brush aside or to crush
as crippled, useless, unbalanced, peculiar, unwanted, subhuman…

He miniaturises His special created delights sometimes–
persons negligible even to themselves.
And it pleases Him that our least ones He shall exalt
before the vast and great and good.
From Him alone comes union and mutual understanding of souls, minds and hearts.

True comprehension waits upon
the fullness of eternal communion, begun in Eucharist.
Until then I only know, like you, the truths as I allow Him
to speak them in my limited, biased self.
I cannot know and love you, dear, nor you myself,
unless God grants this gift.

This does not mean that I do not love you.
Just that I love the best that I can.
Forgive me all the rest. And I, you too.

 

[praisethestorm9]

Thanks!

 

[MarieVeronica]

Wow! Trishie gave some awesome pearls of wisdom, for all of us! I thank you, too… Trishie!

Chelsea… a couple of things that have always helped me in the area of praying for and loving my “enemies”. First and foremost… the words of Our Lord… as He hung, dying on the Cross…

“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” (Luke 24:34)

If we are to follow Our Lord, in His Footsteps… then, forgiveness of enemies is certainly a part of this.

I have also gotten great comfort and understanding from a passage in “The Diary of St. Faustina”…

(1628) During Holy Mass, I saw Jesus stretched out on the Cross, and He said to me, ‘My pupil, have great love for those who cause you suffering. Do good to those who hate you.’ I answered, ‘O my Master, You see very well that I feel no love for them, and that troubles me.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is not always in your power to control your feelings. You will recognize that you have love if, after having experienced annoyance and contradiction, you do not lose your peace, but pray for those who have made you suffer and wish them well.’

Hope this helps. God bless.

 

[John_Russell_Jr]

Ok, although I have been raised a Catholic I have recently made the decision to immerse myself in my faith. I have really been struggling with the concept of praying for my “enemies” I was wondering what ways do you this? Am I sinning if I THINK ill of others?
Are there any prayers you can think of I could say or should I think of my own special intentions?

It’s very hard to pray for enemies, particularly when they’ve done great harm to us our our loved ones. It’s very important to do it because we all get resentments towards others and these eat away at us and are like a cancer on the soul. The best way to cure this cancer is to pray and pray for them. It’s for our own good and it helps them. Hope this helps.