Guided Prayer Exercise: Love Your Enemy
Breathe
Settle into your chair or a comfortable position and take a deep breath–in and out. Spend a few moments breathing. Notice your body’s rhythm; sense where you might be holding tension. Breathe in and breathe out, releasing those muscles. Release that tension, stress, or worry to Jesus. If to-do lists, concerns for the day, anxiety, or responsibilities fill your mind in the silence, offer them up as a prayer asking Jesus to hold all those things and that he will draw near to you.
Meditate
When you are ready, read today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What word or phrase stands out to you? What image comes to mind as you reflect on the scripture? Jot them down in your journal or pause and sit with them for a few moments. Ask the Lord what they might be communicating to you.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expands and enlarges our understanding of the law. The life of faith is not transactional or one of accounting–the rain (provision from God) falls on both the righteous and unrighteous. Who is your enemy? What would it mean to love them?
Pray
O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing; Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
James, Laura. Sermon on the Mount, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57891 [retrieved February 10, 2023]. Original source: Laura James, https://www.laurajamesart.com/collections/religious/.
