A Catholic Question About Prayer

[tabsie3210]

So I’m sitting here watching this news story about a man whose arm was caught in a boiler. He’d gotten it lodged between two slats that aimed inward and couldn’t get it out. He was stuck for three days before he finally was able to free himself by cutting off the arm.

Here’s the article: cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/11/health/main6572497.shtml

Here’s another article with video: aolnews.com/nation/article/with-arm-stuck-in-boiler-jonathan-metz-says-he-contemplated-suicide/19526058

My very first reaction was, “Dear God, please give him the strenght to get through this ordeal!”

Now, what’s odd about that is that here’s the guy, sitting there, having gone through this ordeal already and is talking about how he survived amputating his own arm and how he convinced himself not to commit suicide.

I thought, “Well, that’s a funny prayer to be praying,” but then I remembered that the Mass is a Parish prayer that celebrates the Last Supper. We don’t “re-sacrifice” Christ, we’re participating the same Last Supper that Christ and his followers had together.

Also, I remembered that time is a dimension of space, a way that objects relate to each other (for us, we relate to the movement of the Moon around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun). God lives outside of time, as do the angels and demons. I also remember that Christ’s mercy and the actions of his Crucifixion extended forward and backward in time, which is how his mother was able to be saved by his Crucifixion even before she was born by being Immaculately Concieved.

So what I’m wondering is, even though this gent is alive and well, and I do pray that this ordeal helped him to become closer to God and that he will have the strenght to endure whatever comes, is there anything wrong with praying for something like that, which has already passed?

I hope this makes sense. I can’t phrase it in any way that makes sense of what I mean.

I guess I’m asking, can I pray that he has the strenght to survive and not kill himself, like he was contemplating? I don’t make it a habit of actively praying for an outcome already known; I just was wondering if my “knee-jerk” prayer might have been inspired by something. :ehh: uch:

My brain hurts.

Quick Edit: I’m not sure if time is actually a dimension of space, having re-read that, but I do know that time is how two bodies relate to each other and that time doesn’t exist without space, and vice versa. So please don’t think me a complete idiot…

 

[Trishie]

Dear Tabitha,
Your inspiration to pray for him was right.
Time is no barrier to God.
I praise and thank God who put it in your heart to pray this man through his dreadful ordeal.

 

[tabsie3210]

Dear Tabitha,
Your inspiration to pray for him was right.
Time is no barrier to God.
I praise and thank God who put it in your heart to pray this man through his dreadful ordeal.

Your answer just opened up a whole new level of WOOT!!!

Imagine you have a relative who doesn’t know Christ, and whose conversion you always pray for, right?

Well, suppose that relative dies in a car accident and you don’t hear about it for a while. Now, St. Faustina taught us that Jesus will either approach us as the Merciful Savior or as the Just Judge, but that if you pray a Divine Mercy Chaplet, either beside the person or from afar, that God will pour out graces onto the dying, so that they may have a last-minute chance of feeling sorrow for their sins and repenting, whether it looks like they have repented or not (I will have to find the exact passage in her Diary for the quote).

So, if I can be inspired to pray for a man who lost his arm to survive the ordeal of losing his arm after it has happened, perhaps if you pray the Chaplet for your dead relative, he might be given last-minute graces and a chance to repent and know God!

(Please note I’m not saying that he’ll automatically go to Heaven, but that before death he will be given the grace to repent, which, should he do so, could lead to either Heaven or Purgatory. He still will be free to go to Hell if he so chooses).

So that means we have even more reason to pray constantly for everyone we know!

Divine Mercy is pretty awesome! Thank you so much, Trishie! You’ve made me very happy and stopped my brain hurting.

 

[The_Reginator]

Your story reminds me of an experience I had as a young teen.
Having had a ‘religious experience’ of sorts I asked for a bible for Christmas. I read about St. Stephen being stoned. I spontaneously began praying for God to give him strength.
Then I began to wonder if that was worthwhile since it happened almost 2000 years ago.

I still don’t know whether one can offer up retroactive prayers. It seems to make sense but I really haven’t investigated the matter. (Or even thought about it much.)

 

[Peepicheep]

I have a vague memory of hearing that when St. Benedict read the books of St. Augustine and heard of how St. Monica spent such years in prayer for the conversion of her son, St. Benedict was inspired to also pray for the conversion of St. Augustine. My google-fu is not good enough to fine that story now.

 

[tabsie3210]

Your story reminds me of an experience I had as a young teen.
Having had a ‘religious experience’ of sorts I asked for a bible for Christmas. I read about St. Stephen being stoned. I spontaneously began praying for God to give him strength.
Then I began to wonder if that was worthwhile since it happened almost 2000 years ago.

I still don’t know whether one can offer up retroactive prayers. It seems to make sense but I really haven’t investigated the matter. (Or even thought about it much.)

It is an odd sort of thing - St. Stephen was martyred 2000 years ago, this young man had his arm amputated at least several days, if not weeks or months, ago, and yet, here we are, spontaneously compelled to pray for them during their ordeal.

When I was watching the video, I got to the part where he had decided to take off his arm, and that one of the things he did was stop to pray first, and that was when I sort of blurted out my own prayer. I just want him to be happy and healthy, but I was thinking of him during the emergency when I offered it up.

I know we can offer up sufferings of the past - for example, if I broke my toe and rushed to the emergency room, I’d be a bit too hurt to think about it, but later on, while healing, I could offer up my pain for the intention of Christ’s Sacred Heart or for souls in Purgatory.

Maybe my reaction was due to the communion of Saints - all the saints in Heaven are also with us on Earth and with the Catholics in Purgatory, and we’re all praying to the same God and working together - we and the saints pray for those in Purgatory, those in Purgatory pray for us and each other, etc. But there’s no “time” after death, not as we experience it, so I’m wondering if I happened to be watching the video about him now, but during his ordeal the saits were praying for him, and I just joined in.

I don’t know if he’s in full communion with the One True Faith, but I know God desires the good of all his people, and we’re commanded to pray for all people, our friends, enemies and everyone between.

I also am very confused by this because my sense of time is way off. I don’t remember dates or days very well - about the only reason I keep my brain straight has to do with what days my mother is off from work and what day is Sunday so I don’t miss Mass. I don’t have a very good sense of time (which is why I’m typing this at 12:48 AM when I thought it was only around 10 PM, gah! I need to look at that little clock in the corner of my computer screen more often!). And I know that the future has already happened, sorta kinda, which is why God knows the future but we don’t (here comes that headache again :banghead, so I think maybe prayers don’t work on the same human schedule as everything else we experience. So does that mean praying for things that have already happened might be beneficial?

I guess it would depend on what you were praying for. Like, in my earlier example, if you were praying for a loved one who passed on due to an accident, and said the Divine Mercy Chaplet for him, then I think that would fall into the “Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself” category, but if you pray for God to turn back time and unmake something, I don’t think that’ll fly.

Opinions?

P.S. - The gentleman in that article seems to be doing very well, and had actually saved his own life by taking decisive action. Whether my prayer for him post-experience had anything to do with his saving his own life, I’m grateful to God that he’s alive, that he is doing well, and that he’s kept such a positive outlook on everything! Blessed be God forever!

 

[StephenFrancis]

Very honestly I do not see it, except for the souls in Purgatory who are beyond time and space. But if someone is already in hell, for example, how can I pray for them to be saved and not go there in the first place? It is like asking God to make the proverbial rock that He cannot lift because it is too heavy. Faith is BEYOND logic but never against it.

Otherwise, let’s just ask God to stop Adam and Eve from that first sin and be done with this whole nonsense of a fallen world. Or Cain not to murder Abel. We cannot change history. We are not meant to.

That is my thought on it.