Praying for someone who hurt you: asking for their good

There are names you carry without ever having agreed to. You don’t go looking for them: they come back. In the car, in the shower, at the exact moment sleep was about to arrive. And the day you wonder whether you ought to pray for that particular person, something in you refuses at once.

That is a good sign. It means you have understood what is being asked, and that you have not yet reduced it to an exercise in being nice.

What is actually being asked

The line is so familiar it has become harmless. It is worth reading slowly.

But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.

— Matthew 5:44 (World English Bible)

Notice what is not said. Nothing about finding excuses for them, or understanding their childhood, or getting back in touch. Nothing about feeling anything — the verb love, here, names not an emotion but a will, a direction taken towards them. Nor is anything said about it being mutual: the sentence assumes, if anything, that the other person carries on.

What is asked comes down to a single, precise gesture: that their good should pass through you. That somewhere in your inner life they have a place where they are wished well rather than ill — and that this place is your prayer.

It is not the same as forgiving

The two get confused, and that is what makes people give up. Forgiving is giving up a debt: no longer waiting for the admission, the apology, the payment. It is work that sets you free, and it happens entirely on your side — that is what the page on forgiving someone who never apologised is about.

Praying for that person goes one step further. It is no longer only giving up wanting them to pay: it is wanting them to receive. The first gesture returns your freedom to you; the second gives them something. You can have forgiven long ago and never once done the second.

The order is not compulsory either. People do intercede before they have forgiven — asking good for someone they still resent. That is not hypocrisy: it is often where the rest begins to move.

A prayer for someone who hurt you

Here is a prayer written for this page. It does not assume you mean it.

Lord, I am bringing You someone I would never have chosen to bring. You know what was done, and I am not here to tell You it was nothing. I am asking for their good — and You can hear that I am asking without wanting it yet. Give this person what they need, even if it is not what I would wish. And keep me from using this prayer to give myself the better part.

The last line is not a stylistic precaution. It names the main trap of this prayer: it can serve very well to raise you above the other person — look, I pray for him — and become a more refined way of keeping the upper hand. A prayer that makes you superior is not the right one yet.

Watch for disguised requests, too. Let them realise what they did. Let them regret it. Let them come and talk to me. All of those are about you, not about them. Asking for someone’s good means giving up the right to write its contents. You do not know what this person needs; that is exactly why you are handing them over.

Where this prayer does not belong

This gesture holds between equals — never where you are afraid. If there is coercive control, threat or violence, this text is not addressed to you and must not hold you back for another minute. Praying for someone has never meant staying within their reach, staying silent, or giving up protecting yourself. Distance is not a failure of charity: it is often the condition for prayer to become possible again one day, from far off.

If you need to talk to someone, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines country by country — including for people worried about someone else.

Blessing, without meaning it

That leaves the practical question: where to start, on an ordinary evening, when the name comes back.

Bless those who persecute you; bless, and don’t curse.

— Romans 12:14 (World English Bible)

To bless is, literally, to speak well of. Paul does not ask you to think well; he asks you to say well — and he adds, as though he knew what came next, don’t curse. Between the two lies the real room for manoeuvre: most of the time you do not choose what you feel, but you do choose what you say aloud.

One concrete step, and only one. Tonight, add this name to the end of your prayer, in a single sentence: Lord, I hand You N.; give them what they need. Nothing else. No context, no case for the prosecution, no inventory of your progress. Some evenings you will say it grudgingly or through your teeth, and it will count just as much. It is the same gesture as carrying a loved one before God, applied to the name that should not be on the list.

That name may never leave your list. But little by little it will stop being the only one you say without wanting to give it anything.