Prayer for those who persecute the Church
Lord, you told us to pray for them and you attached no conditions, so here they are. The ones who signed the order. The ones who came at night. The ones who burned it and the ones who watched and said nothing. Those who took the church, and those who took the father out of the house, and the young man standing to one side, holding the coats. I am not asking you to pretend that it did not happen. I am asking for the one thing that would undo it: that they meet you on the road they are already travelling, and be knocked down by love and not by judgement, and get up unable to go on with what they were doing. Guard the ones they are hunting. Hide them well. Keep the bitterness out of the widows and out of the children. Give the ones in prison something to say at three in the morning. And if one of my enemies is to become my brother, let me be ready to embrace him and not to make him account for the years. You forgave from the cross before anyone had apologised. Amen.
Pass it on
When this prayer is prayed
Where the Church is under pressure — and for most Christians alive today it is. The young man who stood holding the coats while Stephen was stoned to death was named Saul; three chapters later he is Paul, and half the New Testament is his. This is not sentimentality about enemies. It is the historical record of what praying for one did.