A Prayer for Our Enemies

The Mom Weekly Volume 49: July 16, 2024

I started this post back on June 22, which was/is the feast of Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More. I love this feast because Saint Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers, a favorite in our family, due to all the lawyers! 🙂

With news of recent days, this is even more appropriate than it was several weeks ago.

Most people can agree that there is an awful lot of rancor and even a disbelief that anyone can hold a political, religious, or other view different from one’s own. So reading about “A Prayer for Our Enemies,” written centuries ago, is tailor-made for 2024.

You kids all know how much I love and admire Universalis for prayer, specifically the app. It has the Mass Readings, Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer, the Office of Readings, a Lectio Divina section, and more. Each day has an “About Today” tab, with a little background for the saint(s) of the day, often obscure ones from the United Kingdom as Universalis creator Martin Kochanski lives there.

We have subscribed to Universalis since even before our earliest iPhones. Dad & I both had Palm Pilots back in the day (!), and we had Universalis on them. Talk about early adopters! 😉

The Universalis website looks a little 1990s, which is when it was created, but I assure you, the app is very user friendly and up-to-date. It has everything you need and nothing you don’t.

So, back to June 22, the feast of Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More. The “About Today” has a portrait of each of them, and a biographical sketch. And reprinted beneath those was St. Thomas More’s “Prayer for Our Enemies.” It has been such an impact on me that my photos app has mutliple screenshots of this prayer, almost every year in recent years. 

But if there were ever a prayer for July 2024, or all of 2024 for that matter, this is it. I’d like to make an effort to pray it every day. I encourage you to do the same.

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

A Prayer for Our Enemies

Almighty God, have mercy on N. and N., and on all that bear me evil will, and would me harm. Their faults and mine together, by such easy, tender, merciful means as thine infinite wisdom best can devise, vouchsafe to amend and redress; and make us saved souls in Heaven togther, where we may ever live and love together with thee and thy blesssed saints, O glorious Trinity, for the bitter passion of our sweet Saviour Christ. Amen.

Lord, give me patience in tribuation and grace in everything to conform my will to thin, that I may truly say, “Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.”

The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me thy grace to labour for. Amen.

(The Latin phrase, referencing the Lord’s Prayer, is: “May God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”)

Interesting/notable:

https://juliewitmergardens.substack.com/p/jrr-tolkiens-oxford-garden

A tour of the Tolkein home garden in Oxford

Disappointed Tourist Website

An art installation of things that are no longer there. This reminded me of the Cast Courts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

An action item: Write and send a physical letter/postcard

As everyone knows, my love language has become sending birthday cards! But I also make an effort occasionally to send physical mail to people, unconnected to any event. It brings me back to the days of getting and sending letters from my parents, my siblings, and other friends when I was in college.

I’m not sure why this is, but it gives me such a boost of optimism whenever I send out mail. And so I’m going to offer this as an action item for you, in the hopes it will give you a boost as well!

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to write a quick note, and I promise you will be glad that you do. You may want to have things ready to go, such as writing paper and stamps. If you don’t already, your “action item” could be to gather those thing, and put them on a tray or in a small box. That way, when you get the idea to do so, it’s relatively easy to send a letter. 

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).