All people on earth know how to pray. Even those who currently deny the existence of God. There are a lot of prayers. They are pronounced daily in hundreds of different languages, but their essence is the same - this is a person’s appeal to higher powers.
In this short article, we will consider only one of the prayer requests - this is a prayer for those who hate us and offend us.
Why is this prayer so important in Christianity?
If we turn to the history of mankind, we can see that not all religions of the world call to pray for people who offend us.
This is not even in Judaism, which is built on the doctrine preceding Christianity. You need to love friends, but beware of your enemies, the Torah tells us. Even Confucius testifies that evil cannot be answered with evil, only with justice.
Why does Christ call to love his enemies?
In essence, this contains the key to understanding Christian doctrine, permeated with the motives of love and forgiveness. The ability to forgive your enemies and not remember insults, moreover, even wish good to those who offend you, is the key to the transformation of the human soul, its purification.
Therefore, in Christianity there is a belief that if a person knows how to forgive his enemies and pray for them, then the Lord will forgive him for transgressions and will enable him to be in the kingdom of heaven.
Prayer for those who hate and offend us: what should it be?
There is a text of such a prayer that can be found in any Orthodox prayer book. This prayer is read at the very end of the morning and evening prayer rules.
However, this does not mean that you cannot pray for your enemies in your own words. Moreover, you need to pray not only in your own words, but just when we feel resentment and irritation boiling in our hearts.
It is very important at these moments to prevent anger from pouring out in bitter and terrible curses, or - even worse - in obvious aggression, but simply silently in your heart to pray for that person who speaks evil words to you or acts deeply dishonestly with you.
The ways of the Lord are inscrutable, perhaps at that very moment, just by praying for a person who offends you, you will save yourself from a bad deed and from an internal crisis.
Why is it always worth praying?
Praying is always and everywhere. In general, prayer comforts a person and gives him extraordinary inner strength. Having said simple words: “God forgive us, our offenders, send them joy, health, spiritual and physical strength,” you seem to overcome your spiritual weakness and become a stronger spiritual person.
After all, accumulating resentment against people is an empty matter. As they say, offended - people are unhappy, forced all their lives to drag a load of their own problems and grievances. And those who know how to forgive, naobort, can go through life easily and freely. They do not hold evil at people, the difficult life situation for them, accompanied by disappointments and misfortunes, is nevertheless surmountable, because they, seeing their own shortcomings, try to forgive their neighbors.
Always rejoice and always pray - the great saints of the Russian land bequeathed to us. And the ability to forgive your enemies and pray for them is one of the most important qualities of every Christian. Therefore, a prayer for those who hate us and offend should be the prayer that we repeat every day in our own hearts.
The significance of this prayer in terms of psychological science
Today, science, psychology, the object of study of which is the human psyche, largely complements the conclusions that theology offers us. From the point of view of psychology, the Christian virtue of forgiveness, love of one’s enemies allows a person to develop harmoniously, reaching a state that psychologists call self-actualization.
Only this happens not with the help of the potency of the personality itself, but with the support of divine powers.
A person, as it were, goes beyond the framework of his “I”, pushing the horizons of individual existence, receiving satisfaction from a certain “all-existence” to which each of us aspires.
And it doesn’t matter how to read the prayer: aloud, to oneself or to address it mentally in difficult life situations. The main thing is simply to read it and think that Christ has commanded his disciples to forgive insults and pray for those who harm us.
The bliss of those who follow the path of Christianity
In fact, real Christians are very happy people, they know how to enjoy life, they hope to meet God behind the grave, they know how to love and forgive. They know that the Lord’s ways are inscrutable, and even the enemy at some point can become a true friend, repent and be reconciled with us.
Christians know how to believe in miracles, because prayer itself is a real miracle that gives us the strength to live.
So we will be true Christians, we will believe, pray and love, and we will also know that in the prayer book there are wonderful words of forgiveness, which are called "Prayer for those who hate us and offend us."
We will pray and believe in the mercy of God and his holy providence for us!