You ask for prayer to remove people from your life, people you say harass you under demonic influence. But consider what sort of prayer this is. To pray against enemies is to provoke your Master, not to please Him. For if having enemies is a reproach, how much greater the evil when you pray against them? You are asking God to act on your anger, but He commands you to put anger away. Why would you imitate the demons by seeking the harm of others? The devil is the one who breeds enmity, and if you pray against these people, you are doing exactly what he desires.
Do not mistake the true enemy. These human beings, even if they are stirred by evil spirits, are not your real foes. The enemy is Satan. Against him alone should your wrath be kindled. Cry out with the Church, “Bruise Satan under our feet!” He is the one who incites harassment. Will you waste your prayers on the instruments he uses, while leaving the source untouched? That would be like striking at shadows instead of the one who casts them.
Consider instead the gain that comes from bearing spite with meekness. First, you obtain deliverance from your own sins. Second, you build fortitude and patience. Third, you acquire a mildness and benevolence that sets you free from the tyranny of anger. He who does not know how to hate is delivered also from despondency and will not spend his life on vain sorrows. By hating others, you punish yourself. By loving them, you benefit yourself. Is it not better to stand above the injury than to be thrown down by it?
Look to the saints. Paul chose for the sake of his enemies, those who stoned him, those who scourged him, to wish himself accursed. He loved them more than anyone loves his own friends. And you, for lesser provocations, pray for their removal? If he had prayed against them, he would have lost the crown. Instead, he followed his Lord, who did not promise deliverance from death but gave something far greater: the power to despise death and love those who kill. You are asking for a small thing, to have people taken away. He offers you a great thing: to be transformed into a son of God, one who can love even enemies.
Do not seek their removal; seek their salvation. Pray for them, bless them, and in doing so you will heap coals of fire on the head of the serpent, not on them. If you pray for them, God may deliver you both, you from bitterness, them from the demons that drive them. Remember that Christ by one offering perfected forever those who are sanctified, and He sat down at God’s right hand until His enemies are put under His feet. All unbelievers, all demons, will be subjected. Leave the timing to Him. Your part is not to call down fire but to show mercy, so that you may receive the adoption promised to Abraham’s children.
I will not pray for the removal of these people from your life. That would be to join in the enemy’s work. But I will pray that God grants you a spirit of longsuffering, that you may overcome evil with good, and that those who trouble you may be loosed from the devil’s snares and come to the knowledge of the truth. Then you will not only be at peace but will have gained brothers from those who were once foes.