Praying for strangers

[rusmeister]

This was intended for the Charlie Hebdo thread, but it's really about all calls to pray for strangers (so is not specifically about that incident). This is my opinion, not Church dogma, so take it as you will.

As I wait for this thread to close....


For the record, seeing the crap that the paper has created is offensive, yes. However, the principle is that even though they are our "enemies" in a certain light they still need praying for especially since they are fellow victims of Islamic violence. There are still a dozen people who are dead and were created in the image of God. They are still a dozen souls who need praying for.

I believe in free speech wholeheartedly and try to remember that it even applies to those whom I disagree with and are offended by. Communists, militant atheists and anti-Christian people are all people I disagree with wholeheartedly, but I can't get too angry with them since they do not have the Church to guide them. Didn't Christ say on the cross, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do"?

Thanks!

I'm just saying that you didn't know them, I didn't know them and very likely no one we are close to was close to them - that we CAN pray for people we have no relationship with except the most abstract, but that I really think that kind of prayer tends to be a LOT less effectual than prayer for those we have relationship with. I think the six or whatever degrees of relationship matter. If someone close to you or Anhelyna's hurting and needs prayer, I'll pray for them. But if nobody really knows them, I can't do much more than a quick "Lord, have mercy!"
Maybe you can. But it is the prayers of a righteous man that availeth much, much more than mine, not being particularly righteous, and I need to direct what little energy and fervency in prayer I have towards my neighbor, those close to me.

All TAW members will probably agree that both what the terrorists did was wicked (shouldn't we be praying for them, too?) and that this little third-bit newspaper is - STILL is - engaged in foolish and provocative behavior, which doesn't JUSTIFY the murders, but we ought to be DARN careful not to give the least appearance of encouraging their blasphemy, either.

That said, by all means pray, if you can and feel led to. My own story was around getting a spiritual slap in the face over asking my priest if he could pray for an uncle of mine who had died outside the church that I wasn't all that close to. I got the lesson, and see my priority as my neighbor, my "blizhny" in Russian - those close to me, over those who are far from me in any sense of either space or relation, my "dal'ny" if you will. May the Lord have mercy on these men, and on the whole world, but they are definitely "dal'ny" (far, not neighbors) to us.

 

[ArmyMatt]

sounds about right to me, especially to pray for them, even though we don't know them really. tis one of those many things that really is in God's hands.

 

[Mary of Bethany]

I pray a "Lord, have mercy" for every situation/person that comes across my radar during the day. It doesn't matter if it's facebook, news, traffic, whatever. I don't feel like I need to know the person or the details. It just seems like that is what we are called to do, no matter how "effectual" it may be. And yes, for terrorists and murderers, too. And even for me.

Mary

 

[RileyG]

I pray a "Lord, have mercy" for every situation/person that comes across my radar during the day. It doesn't matter if it's facebook, news, traffic, whatever. I don't feel like I need to know the person or the details. It just seems like that is what we are called to do, no matter how "effectual" it may be. And yes, for terrorists and murderers, too. And even for me.

Mary

Thank you for this response.

I could never bring myself to praying for someone like Hitler, Bin Laden, Pol Pot etc. I do not feel called to and feel uncomfortable doing so. Does that make me wrong in this regard? I do not sound prideful, do I?

 

[Mary of Bethany]

Thank you for this response.

I could never bring myself to praying for someone like Hitler, Bin Laden, Pol Pot etc. I do not feel called to and feel uncomfortable doing so. Does that make me wrong in this regard? I do not sound prideful, do I?

I can only say what I feel in this regard, and that is this: How can I possibly ask for mercy and salvation for myself if I am not willing to also ask it for every other person?

Mary

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I agree with all this. I look at my busy days as a teacher, husband, dad, son, and now Reader! Hectic, busy days. I pray for my mom who is ENGULFED in Parkinson's Disease, my dad and mom both for good health, my wife who has a hectic and busy job, my 3 children (priority!), my priest and his wife, my church family and friends, my best friend, my pets, my finances and home, my students in my class, my job, TAW folks, etc.)

If I were to expand my prayers to include those distant folks, Obama would be high on my list with his priorities and direction! Then our governor, then a mess of other folks!

Heck, I forget too often to pray for my bishop Maxim! God forgive me!

Probably about LAST on my list of prayers would be people who painted pictures of my Lord and Savior orally or anally copulating. That most likely would fall dead last at prayer number 393, 192,992,202,000,293,111

If I am to pray for "enemies," I pray for those with whom I work who treat me poorly at my school or who politically try to maneuver and do what's wrong for the kids in order to advance themselves. I pray for my opponents who are on my sixth grade team but who talk behind my back and hose me. In that relationship, I pray God can help me to forgive, find patience, and help heal them myself with His grace!

If I am to pray for enemies, I pray ISIS will release hostages who are innocents like children or Orthodox Christians!

I guess I'm in total agreement with ya, Rus. Praying for the soul of Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden or kidnappers and child molesters is a laudable act, but in my fast-paced life, time constraints give me a priority list. At this point, perverts who smut-up my Savior fall low on my totem pole!

This was intended for the Charlie Hebdo thread, but it's really about all calls to pray for strangers (so is not specifically about that incident). This is my opinion, not Church dogma, so take it as you will.


Thanks!

I'm just saying that you didn't know them, I didn't know them and very likely no one we are close to was close to them - that we CAN pray for people we have no relationship with except the most abstract, but that I really think that kind of prayer tends to be a LOT less effectual than prayer for those we have relationship with. I think the six or whatever degrees of relationship matter. If someone close to you or Anhelyna's hurting and needs prayer, I'll pray for them. But if nobody really knows them, I can't do much more than a quick "Lord, have mercy!"
Maybe you can. But it is the prayers of a righteous man that availeth much, much more than mine, not being particularly righteous, and I need to direct what little energy and fervency in prayer I have towards my neighbor, those close to me.

All TAW members will probably agree that both what the terrorists did was wicked (shouldn't we be praying for them, too?) and that this little third-bit newspaper is - STILL is - engaged in foolish and provocative behavior, which doesn't JUSTIFY the murders, but we ought to be DARN careful not to give the least appearance of encouraging their blasphemy, either.

That said, by all means pray, if you can and feel led to. My own story was around getting a spiritual slap in the face over asking my priest if he could pray for an uncle of mine who had died outside the church that I wasn't all that close to. I got the lesson, and see my priority as my neighbor, my "blizhny" in Russian - those close to me, over those who are far from me in any sense of either space or relation, my "dal'ny" if you will. May the Lord have mercy on these men, and on the whole world, but they are definitely "dal'ny" (far, not neighbors) to us.

 

[RileyG]

I saw the blasphemous pictures of our Blessed Lord and the Holy Lady made by Charlie Hebdo. Too bad I cannot erase it from my memory

 

[RileyG]

I agree with all this. I look at my busy days as a teacher, husband, dad, son, and now Reader! Hectic, busy days. I pray for my mom who is ENGULFED in Parkinson's Disease, my dad and mom both for good health, my wife who has a hectic and busy job, my 3 children (priority!), my priest and his wife, my church family and friends, my best friend, my pets, my finances and home, my students in my class, my job, TAW folks, etc.)

If I were to expand my prayers to include those distant folks, Obama would be high on my list with his priorities and direction! Then our governor, then a mess of other folks!

Heck, I forget too often to pray for my bishop Maxim! God forgive me!

Probably about LAST on my list of prayers would be people who painted pictures of my Lord and Savior orally or anally copulating. That most likely would fall dead last at prayer number 393, 192,992,202,000,293,111

If I am to pray for "enemies," I pray for those with whom I work who treat me poorly at my school or who politically try to maneuver and do what's wrong for the kids in order to advance themselves. I pray for my opponents who are on my sixth grade team but who talk behind my back and hose me. In that relationship, I pray God can help me to forgive, find patience, and help heal them myself with His grace!

If I am to pray for enemies, I pray ISIS will release hostages who are innocents like children or Orthodox Christians!

I guess I'm in total agreement with ya, Rus. Praying for the soul of Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden or kidnappers and child molesters is a laudable act, but in my fast-paced life, time constraints give me a priority list. At this point, perverts who smut-up my Savior fall low on my totem pole!

I pray for my brothers (top priority), my parents, family, people on CF, and anyone and everyone who asks for my prayers.

I ultimately believe God is just and merciful and the souls that are now deceased that blasphemed him are in his hands and at his mercy. I cast no judgments, (NOT implying you, Scott, just saying I agree with you ) My only comment will be "May the Lord have mercy upon them (and us)!!!"

R.P.

 

[rusmeister]

Please note I didn't speak of praying (only) for friends. Enemies can be neighbors, too, and as GKC said, the Bible tells us to love our neighbor and to love our enemies, probably because they are usually the same people. I have relationships on the Left Coast with old friends who hate what I stand for now. But the relationships are old and/or strong. I have people I interact with, some of whom really hate what I believe and stand for. There are English teachers who hate me just because I am a native speaker of English on their turf and they are not (this affects potential private students who would choose me over them because of who I am, questions of professionalism and ability aside). All of these are my neighbor.
But total strangers thousands of miles away are not. Certainly, I can and often do cross myself and say "Lord, have mercy!" But there would have to be something really, really wrong with my following the injunction to love my neighbor if I am filling my prayer list with the thousands and millions of people that somebody somewhere asks for prayer for. It would mean that you HAVE no relationships, no neighbors, if you have the time to jump up and do an akathist for every request on CF, Orthodoxinfo, or whatever.

So as my priest indirectly taught me, my priorities have to be for those I have some kind of connection, relationship to. I can manage a cross and "Lord have mercy" for nearly any request I come across. But more effort is going to go into the requests of people I actually deal with, and know to some extent. The greater the extent, the more effort. A request by RobNJ or Gurney means more to me than a visitor who drops in with a request for a sick friend. My prayers for my old real-world friends even more. And for those I live among now most of all.

I'm not saying "Don't pray." I'm saying that in the real world, we have to put our efforts and priorities in the right places.

what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don't, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father's house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there,

CS Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"

 

[~Anastasia~]

I think I understand what you're saying, Rus, and I agree with you. From past experience too praying for people.

For everyone who asks, yes, I will ask for God's mercy and say a quick prayer. If I feel to pray something else briefly for them, I will. And the same for people I don't know, but I see a need in passing.

Sometimes the requests stay strongly on my heart, and I will pray for them as often as I still continue to feel that way or think of them. These are usually people I have some connection to, or ones they care very much about. Or sometimes people in a situation I feel strongly about.

But generally speaking, as the circle comes inward, I tend to pray more for people. At the center are my husband and my daughter, and I pray for them most of all.

It's not that I think our prayers ought to be driven by emotion or selfishness, but ... I don't know. The effectiveness does "feel like" it has to do with how much it really touches us. That can be driven by the fact that they are in my family, part of my life, someone I've developed an affection for, someone who is very important to someone else I care about, or someone involved in something important to me. (That's kind of the outward spiral.)

But I do put my effort where my feeling is. Always have. Feeling isn't JUST those closest to me (sometimes I develop strong feelings to pray for acquaintances, or even those I actively dislike) ... But I do follow my feelings in how much prayer I invest in each person.