Unlike the Set Aside Prayer, which spread by word of mouth and appears in no AA literature, this one is in the book — page 552, in a member’s story rather than the instructional chapters, which is why it is often quoted rather than cited.
Historical Context
The passage is told as personal experience. A woman carrying a resentment she could not shift is given the instruction by another member, tries it while fully expecting it not to work, and finds after two weeks that it has. That framing matters: the prayer is offered as something to do, not something to feel, and the book is explicit that it works even when you do not mean a word of it.
The Resentment Prayer
If you have a resentment you want to be free of,
if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free.
If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them,
you will be free.
Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness,
and you will be free.
The instruction continues, and this second half is the part usually left out:
Even when you don’t really want it for them,
and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it,
go ahead and do it anyway.
Do it every day for two weeks,
and you will find you have come to mean it
and to want it for them,
and you will realise that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred,
you now feel compassionate understanding and love.
How it is actually used
Most people name the person out loud and ask for specific things — that his business does well, that her health holds, that their children are happy. The specificity is the point. It is easy to wish someone generic good; it is much harder to ask sincerely that the person who hurt you gets exactly what you want for yourself.
Two weeks is the stated length, and people who have done it tend to say the change arrives somewhere in the second week, without announcement.
Best Times for This Prayer
- When a resentment keeps returning after you have already written about it.
- During a Fourth Step inventory, alongside the resentment columns.
- In Step Ten, when something new surfaces during the day.
- When the person you resent has not apologised and is not going to.
- When you know the resentment is dangerous to your sobriety.
Scripture Connection
“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” — Matthew 5:44
The Big Book is not a religious text and does not quote this verse, but the instruction is the same one, expressed as a practical experiment rather than a commandment. Both ask a person to act ahead of their feelings and let the feelings follow. The Big Book’s version simply attaches a timescale to it.
Related prayers in recovery
The Big Book’s own treatment of resentment begins earlier, at pages 66–67, where the reader is asked to see the offending person as spiritually sick and to pray for “the same tolerance, pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.” The Resentment Prayer is that instruction turned into a fortnight of practice.
It sits close to the Tenth Step Prayer, which is the daily version of the same work, and to the Seventh Step Prayer, which asks for the defects underneath the resentment to be removed. The Set Aside Prayer is often said before beginning any of it.
