Who is my enemy?

[atassina]

enemy: a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

How can I pray for my enemy if I think I do not have any enemies? I really don’t know anybody who actually hates me or is purposefully antagonistic against me. I know irritating and offensive people (St. Faustina’s Diary 1768), but I don’t think of these people as my enemies.

Sure I know enough people with personal shortcomings and difficult personalities-- just like me. But they really are not my enemies. I figure this is part of the human condition which is a result of original sin. Perhaps I need to pray for those who have cause me sorrow or offended me.

Do you have any real enemies?

 

[aragonjohn1]

enemy: a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

How can I pray for my enemy if I think I do not have any enemies? I really don’t know anybody who actually hates me or is purposefully antagonistic against me. I know irritating and offensive people (St. Faustina’s Diary 1768), but I don’t think of these people as my enemies.

Sure I know enough people with personal shortcomings and difficult personalities-- just like me. But they really are not my enemies. I figure this is part of the human condition which is a result of original sin. Perhaps I need to pray for those who have cause me sorrow or offended me.

Do you have any real enemies?

not a person as an enemy, no.

God bless

 

[Brendan_64]

enemy: a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

How can I pray for my enemy if I think I do not have any enemies? I really don’t know anybody who actually hates me or is purposefully antagonistic against me. I know irritating and offensive people (St. Faustina’s Diary 1768), but I don’t think of these people as my enemies.

Sure I know enough people with personal shortcomings and difficult personalities-- just like me. But they really are not my enemies. I figure this is part of the human condition which is a result of original sin. Perhaps I need to pray for those who have cause me sorrow or offended me.

Do you have any real enemies?

There are those who are the enemies of our Faith. There are those who despise and undermine Christainity. They try to push Christianity to the margins and there are those who introduce anti-Christian laws. There are people in our world who persecute and kill Christians, often in huge numbers.

These are real enemies and they exist. If they attack our Faith and our fellow Christians, they attack Christ and do the work of Satan. These are our enemies, we should pray for these people.

There is a war for souls going on all around us, we are involved in that war, we certainly do have enemies in that war.

 

[ClearWater]

If you have an enemy one day, you’ll generally come to know it!

I’ve had enemies.

 

[Contarini]

enemy: a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

How can I pray for my enemy if I think I do not have any enemies? I really don’t know anybody who actually hates me or is purposefully antagonistic against me. I know irritating and offensive people (St. Faustina’s Diary 1768), but I don’t think of these people as my enemies.

Sure I know enough people with personal shortcomings and difficult personalities-- just like me. But they really are not my enemies. I figure this is part of the human condition which is a result of original sin. Perhaps I need to pray for those who have cause me sorrow or offended me.

Do you have any real enemies?

I didn’t use to. But I lost my job and I think that some people involved in that process treated me rather badly, including one person whom I had thought of as a friend. I struggle with feelings of resentment and anger, and so “pray for your enemies” has a meaning for me now that it didn’t use to have. I wish it still didn’t. But of course that has just made the teaching on love of enemies far more real and important to me.

If you don’t have personal enemies, you can pray for people you know about in the world who are doing bad things. Aren’t there people whom you think of as enemies of truth and goodness?

I find that when you pray for people, you can’t entirely demonize them.

 

[Boy_Wonder]

Our biggest enemy is our own will. Pray that it be vanquished and replaced with God’s will for us.

You may be fortunate not to have been harmed severely by another or to be subject to the malicious scrutiny of someone else. However, I’m sure there are people you don’t particularly like or who aren’t pleasant. It does them and you immense spiritual good to pray for them. I find it’s best to pray in an open-ended way, asking God to bless, help, or be merciful to such people rather than asking for specific things or that they “be shown the errors of their ways”.

You have a good heart to be wondering about this.

 

[dmwessel]

enemy: a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.

How can I pray for my enemy if I think I do not have any enemies? I really don’t know anybody who actually hates me or is purposefully antagonistic against me. I know irritating and offensive people (St. Faustina’s Diary 1768), but I don’t think of these people as my enemies.

Sure I know enough people with personal shortcomings and difficult personalities-- just like me. But they really are not my enemies. I figure this is part of the human condition which is a result of original sin. Perhaps I need to pray for those who have cause me sorrow or offended me.

Do you have any real enemies?

I think it’s someone that is not your neighbor! Matt. 25:35-41

 

[ClearWater]

I think it’s someone that is not your neighbor! Matt. 25:35-41

Or, maybe someone who is!

‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.’ G.K. Chesterton lol

 

[ClearWater]

Outside of that, there are different opinions on this. The Church says that our enemies are the flesh, devil, and world, aren’t they?

“No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm." St. Francis of Assisi.

 

[TimothyH]

Our enemies rarely attack us with swords nowadays.

Instead they come at us invisibly - over the internet, on the (m)TV and in the hallways of high schools and colleges. Beer and cigarette adds, contraceptives on the shelf at Walmart, super-sized Big Mac meals, pre-approved credit cards and the Summer Sales Event at your local Lexus dealer telling you that you need a new $50,000 RX460 with heated leather seats so that you can carry a laptop to the office.

-Tim-

 

[ClearWater]

Our enemies are those who would harm us given the opportunity, in countries that hate countries we are from or hate our faith, etc. There are those who for reasons of envy, jealousy, etc. would deliberately make others’ lives miserable.

They may have real, or imagined, justification/rationalization.

I’m pretty sure if you were immediately transplanted to a country which is hostile towards yours that you’d see there are people who would not welcome you with open arms just because of your nationality, faith, etc. This is quite real. It doesn’t have to be anything that you, personally, have even done to deserve that.

Pray for those people, then, if you can’t find any you are at odds with in your life right now.

 

[atassina]

Our enemies rarely attack us with swords nowadays.
Instead they come at us invisibly - over the internet, on the (m)TV and in the hallways of high schools and colleges. Beer and cigarette adds, contraceptives on the shelf at Walmart,…
-Tim-

Timothy, great observation. something i have always thought. i now have a something that i can recognize as my enemy. i continue to believe that the coming and present persecution in the USA will not involve any blood. instead it will involve losing jobs, heavy fines, lost businesses, loss of benefits, loss of home, savings, investments and possible imprisonment-- if we do not bow down and worship the demon god The Spirit of the Age. thanks, original poster

 

[Brendan_64]

i continue to believe that the coming and present persecution in the USA will not involve any blood. instead it will involve losing jobs, heavy fines, lost businesses, loss of benefits, loss of home, savings, investments and possible imprisonment-- if we do not bow down and worship the demon god The Spirit of the Age.

Agreed, and not just in the USA; in the UK, Europe and anywhere where Western Secularism has taken hold.