Love thy Enemy

[BarbTherese]

@superblue: If you find it difficult to pray for those you hate, then pray for more capacity to love.

Your posts lately have all been pretty angry. You start threads railing against a different group of people every day. Now you start one asking if it's okay to pray for the destruction of those you hate. It sounds like you have a lot of hate. God can fix that if you ask Him to—if you want Him to.

St. Dominic prayed for the devil himself.

THAT'S Christian.

Thank you, Gabriela.  Your post has rested a bit of a concern of mine since during my serious active-illness days, I would pray very ardently indeed for Satan and its helpers, those in Hell.  

interesting responses thus far, i am still unsure.... what i can say is I honestly do not have it in me to pray for the conversion of those the likes of ISIS, Al etc cant spell it/ I mean we still have Moses and his staff, when ever it was up, his side was winning, etc..........

and bleh,  i guess also, does not praying for our enemy go against us in some manner ? 

 

And Exactly S. O. V   Jesus kicking everyone out of the temple..... do we say ah ha a contradiction or do we turn around an say no no that is just " tough love " ?

I just find this all some what confusing to the degree of big enemies, those committing horrible crimes, etc.... little enemies, like a horrible boss, neighbors etc.... that isn't too terribly hard to get to the point.

Well we can be very sure of one thing beyond any doubt at all................all of our problems and fears will be settled according to God's Will either direct or permissive whatever our prayers of intercession may be.  We rejoice in this! 

 

 does not praying for our enemy go against us in some manner

No way if you think about it, rather to the contrary.

do we say ah ha a contradiction or do we turn around an say no no that is just " tough love

We can certainly say that there is such a thing as Just and Righteous anger and yes, Jesus did express His in a quite physical manner.  However, He did not actually hurt a person physically in that physical expression.

In praying for those that have done serious wrong or crimes - people that we find it probably impossible to like - we can certainly pray that they repent and save their souls.........and that our attitude will change.  I too am a sinner and what makes my sin less serious than another's when the degree of sin can also be measured by Grace granted not to sin, including whether our past experiences have been positive or negative.  It is such a blessing and a plus in life, a sign of Graces granted, to have had a happy childhood and teenage years and on into our adult life.  Not all have this by far! "To whom more is given, more will be expected" Luke 12 V48

Must agree, superblue, that you do sound particularly angry and resentful in your post..........'venting your spleen' (in a foul mood).  It happens!  I have long thought that Jesus was 'venting his spleen' and in a foul mood when he cursed the poor fig tree.

Matthew 21:19
And seeing a certain fig tree by the way side, he came to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only, and he saith to it: May no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And immediately the fig tree withered away.

Jesus was walking along and was hungry and sighted a fig tree, anticipating I suppose, figs to eat.  Arriving at the tree, He finds no frujit at all only leaves and so He cursed the tree and it withered away.  What on earth had the poor fig tree done to deserve such a fate?

Edited July 20, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[superblue]

i don't really like it when people infer emotion in my comments.

 

and fyi, when i don't reply to someone's comments, it is because they are on my ignore list, i hope this won't become a game of lets post the ignored users posts.

Edited July 20, 2015 by superblue

[Nihil Obstat]

Uh... Does anyone have references on St. Dominic praying for Satan? That strikes me as very odd.

[Credo in Deum]

Uh... Does anyone have references on St. Dominic praying for Satan? That strikes me as very odd.

Not to mention completely pointless.

[Nihil Obstat]

Not to mention completely pointless.

Seriously.

[veritasluxmea]

Uh... Does anyone have references on St. Dominic praying for Satan? That strikes me as very odd.

I've read Lives of the Brethren and didn't find it there :/ but it could have come from a different source. 

Mark Twain had a quote on praying for Satan: "But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?" -Mark Twain.

The idea of praying for Satan seems to stem from a misconception that once you die you can repent and change where you end up. The Catholic understanding has been that you can't repent in hell and satan can't repent. Where you go is where you go, even if you mightily regret it. There was actually a debate in the early Church about this- someone said God was so merciful at the end of time He would forgive even satan- and that was shot down by the papacy on the grounds that satan (and people in hell) can't repent or be forgiven at that point. They are where they are! (No time to look it up right now I have to leave soon.) There's nothing wrong with the impulse to pray for him- if a human was living like that I would be strongly drawn to praying for them- and since I see things from a human perspective I understand where that would come from- but I know it's pointless. Well, no prayer is wasted but it wouldn't have the intended effect. 

[Nihil Obstat]

Satan cannot repent since, as the highest of creatures, with a perfect intellect, his choice to reject God was complete, irrevocable, and made with equally complete freedom and understanding.

If someone produces something regarding St. Dominic I will certainly reconsider, but at the moment I am inclined to think that actually praying for Satan would be a sort of blasphemy.

[Not The Philosopher]

Alan Jacobs' book, Original Sin makes a brief note of a story about St. Martin of Tours exhorting the devil to repent, but isn't much interested in exploring its veracity or anything. So the story in some form or another at least exists, whether true or false.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Not The Philosopher

[BarbTherese]

The Church does teach, I am sure, that Satan and the fallen angels, those already in Hell, cannot be redeemed.

[Gabriela]

Satan cannot repent since, as the highest of creatures, with a perfect intellect, his choice to reject God was complete, irrevocable, and made with equally complete freedom and understanding.

If someone produces something regarding St. Dominic I will certainly reconsider, but at the moment I am inclined to think that actually praying for Satan would be a sort of blasphemy.

I'm pretty sure I read this in a book about Dominican spirituality. I read several at one time, though, so I can't recall which it was. I remember it, though, because when I read it, I thought, "Oh good! I'm not the only one!" I like to pray for people I think no one else prays for, like Hitler, Stalin, terrorists, people who are totally isolated, etc. Obviously not many people pray for the devil, so sometimes I add him in.

@Sr Mary Catharine OP could probably tell us whether she knows of any story about St. Dominic doing this. I'm not sure if she comes into the Open Mic, though.

 

i hope this won't become a game of lets post the ignored users posts.

You make my point for me.

[superblue]

interesting ; if satan isn't an enemy to pray for then who is, but it is also pointless to pray for satan..... love thy enemy.

[beatitude]

interesting responses thus far, i am still unsure.... what i can say is I honestly do not have it in me to pray for the conversion of those the likes of ISIS, Al etc cant spell it/ I mean we still have Moses and his staff, when ever it was up, his side was winning, etc..........

and bleh,  i guess also, does not praying for our enemy go against us in some manner ? 

And Exactly S. O. V   Jesus kicking everyone out of the temple..... do we say ah ha a contradiction or do we turn around an say no no that is just " tough love " ?

I just find this all some what confusing to the degree of big enemies, those committing horrible crimes, etc.... little enemies, like a horrible boss, neighbors etc.... that isn't too terribly hard to get to the point.

This reminds me of the story of Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie. They were Dutch Christians who were deported to a concentration camp during World War 2 for hiding Jews in their home. I think you might enjoy reading Corrie's autobiography The Hiding Place - she grappled with the exact same question of love for enemies when she was in the concentration camp (where her sister eventually died). Before her death, Betsie told Corrie "If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love!" and said that after the war they must devote their lives to showing people "that love is greater...People will believe us, because we have been here." Corrie began that mission within months after leaving the camp, setting up houses for the rehabilitation of former prisoners and also homeless former Nazis. But one day, at a speaking event at a church, she came face to face with one of her former captors:

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, a former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggles to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

If you don't have it in you to love a particular person, the Holy Spirit will give you that love. I have worked with some traumatised and bitter people in conflict zones, and I have seen the truth of what Corrie wrote. We just have to want that love - and if we don't want it, we have to pray for our own forgiveness in choosing hatred instead of Christ.

We need to remember that each person is a beloved son or daughter of God. It's easy to feel hostile towards a group, because we don't actually have to think of them as individuals - they become something faceless. They aren't people, they're only ideas. It's far harder to maintain that hostility towards an individual person, because even if a person is very violent and hateful, it is always possible to see something else in them - something more than their sin. After all, no one is just the sum of their sins. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and no matter how much we dirty up that image with our actions, underneath it will always be present. Loving people means remembering the best of them. Personally I have found that if I try hard to do this for the people around me it gets much easier to be loving and compassionate to neighbours who are farther afield, who I may only read about in newspapers and never actually meet. It also becomes easier to love an enemy. The French Trappist monk Christian de Cherge, who was taken hostage and murdered in Algeria in 1996, had a premonition that he would be martyred and he had this to say on the subject:

If it should happen one day – and it could be today – that I become a victim of the terrorism that now seems to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to Algeria; and that they accept that the sole Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure.

I would like, when the time comes, to have a space of clearness that would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who will strike me down.

I could not desire such a death; it seems to me important to state this: How could I rejoice if the Algerian people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder?

My death, obviously, will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But they should know that…for this life lost, I give thanks to God. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, my last-minute friend who will not have known what you are doing…I commend you to the God in whose face I see yours. And may we find each other, happy “good thieves” in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

Finally, we have to be careful about over-emphasising the difference between big and little sins, because no one goes out and commits a huge sin right away: the road to a huge sin is paved with a hundred little sins, and if we start giving ourselves a pass ("Well, they're killers, and I'm just angry at them - it's not like I'm doing what they do!") then we weaken our own conscience to the point where it's easy to start committing bigger and bigger sins. As de Cherge made clear, we are all thieves - whether we are the unrepentant thief or the good thief, it is up to us to decide. All of us need Christ's mercy; when he was dying he did not point to certain people in the crowd and go, "You, you are more responsible for this than he is."

Unfortunately the story of Jesus turning over the money' changers tables in the temple is often used as a get-out clause by Christians who want to find a biblically sanctioned reason to stay angry with people. The money changers and merchants were defiling a holy place by their greed and self-interest. But isn't not wanting to forgive also a form of self-interest? After all, we are trying to get out of something difficult, something unpleasant to us. Christ did not carry grudges, he never killed anyone, never shed one drop of human blood, never refused anyone his forgiveness even as he died - there is nothing in his life that can be used to justify holding back love. But there is a lot there to inspire us to be more loving, and as Corrie ten Boom wrote, we don't have to struggle on our own with that. He helps us.

[truthfinder]

We can certainly (and should) pray for people who have done despicable things during this life.  We are not privy to their judgement; but praying for Satan is misguided, as Nihil has pointed out, because of the angelic nature of knowledge.  Satan made his decision once and for all.

[Gabriela]

 

This reminds me of the story of Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie. They were Dutch Christians who were deported to a concentration camp during World War 2 for hiding Jews in their home. I think you might enjoy reading Corrie's autobiography The Hiding Place - she grappled with the exact same question of love for enemies when she was in the concentration camp (where her sister eventually died). Before her death, Betsie told Corrie "If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love!" and said that after the war they must devote their lives to showing people "that love is greater...People will believe us, because we have been here." Corrie began that mission within months after leaving the camp, setting up houses for the rehabilitation of former prisoners and also homeless former Nazis. But one day, at a speaking event at a church, she came face to face with one of her former captors:

If you don't have it in you to love a particular person, the Holy Spirit will give you that love. I have worked with some traumatised and bitter people in conflict zones, and I have seen the truth of what Corrie wrote. We just have to want that love - and if we don't want it, we have to pray for our own forgiveness in choosing hatred instead of Christ.

We need to remember that each person is a beloved son or daughter of God. It's easy to feel hostile towards a group, because we don't actually have to think of them as individuals - they become something faceless. They aren't people, they're only ideas. It's far harder to maintain that hostility towards an individual person, because even if a person is very violent and hateful, it is always possible to see something else in them - something more than their sin. After all, no one is just the sum of their sins. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and no matter how much we dirty up that image with our actions, underneath it will always be present. Loving people means remembering the best of them. Personally I have found that if I try hard to do this for the people around me it gets much easier to be loving and compassionate to neighbours who are farther afield, who I may only read about in newspapers and never actually meet. It also becomes easier to love an enemy. The French Trappist monk Christian de Cherge, who was taken hostage and murdered in Algeria in 1996, had a premonition that he would be martyred and he had this to say on the subject:

Finally, we have to be careful about over-emphasising the difference between big and little sins, because no one goes out and commits a huge sin right away: the road to a huge sin is paved with a hundred little sins, and if we start giving ourselves a pass ("Well, they're killers, and I'm just angry at them - it's not like I'm doing what they do!") then we weaken our own conscience to the point where it's easy to start committing bigger and bigger sins. As de Cherge made clear, we are all thieves - whether we are the unrepentant thief or the good thief, it is up to us to decide. All of us need Christ's mercy; when he was dying he did not point to certain people in the crowd and go, "You, you are more responsible for this than he is."

Unfortunately the story of Jesus turning over the money' changers tables in the temple is often used as a get-out clause by Christians who want to find a biblically sanctioned reason to stay angry with people. The money changers and merchants were defiling a holy place by their greed and self-interest. But isn't not wanting to forgive also a form of self-interest? After all, we are trying to get out of something difficult, something unpleasant to us. Christ did not carry grudges, he never killed anyone, never shed one drop of human blood, never refused anyone his forgiveness even as he died - there is nothing in his life that can be used to justify holding back love. But there is a lot there to inspire us to be more loving, and as Corrie ten Boom wrote, we don't have to struggle on our own with that. He helps us.

We need a whole different order of props just for beatitude.

Seriously, it just feels wrong to give her one prop and then the rest of us lowly worms the same prop.

We can certainly (and should) pray for people who have done despicable things during this life.  We are not privy to their judgement; but praying for Satan is misguided, as Nihil has pointed out, because of the angelic nature of knowledge.  Satan made his decision once and for all.

I am certainly open to correction on this matter. I'm holding out hope that @Sr Mary Catharine OP will come in here and confirm what I think I remember, though. If that fails, I can ask a Dominican theologian on Friday.

[superblue]

Beatitude, those stories are very inspiring, and is helping me on the subject, you are probably aware thought that are still Nazi hunters who find an prosecute those still living involved with Nazi war crimes, one recently was just convicted and sentenced for i think 4 yrs or so.........

So there seems to always be some kind of line to walk or balance, we might be able to one day reach a point to honestly forgive someone, even if we have to beg Christ to intervene and put His forgiveness in our hearts.... though there is the law, the law just doesn't forgive ....... in some cases i suppose they do..

Then we dive more into things like the death penalty which has been brought up time and again,  back and forth on it, it doesn't stop.... But then we have again scripture and an endless source of material to choose from on this topic....

What about the verse though an this just came to mind :::  what you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what you loosen on earth shall be loosened in heaven.... seems like it ties into Love Thy Enemy..... and the topic of forgiveness. In that verse the Apostles are being given authority ....  and I wonder if they thought back to what Christ had said in regards to Love Thy Enemy and also sat down an had to scratch that one around for a while.

Now that doesn't mean forgiveness means no penalties what so ever... there is purgatory as a recourse for the scars of our sins..... etc and another topic...

 

so it all ties together and maybe after some more figuring .... it might become clearer.