Article: Is It Possible to Pray Across Time, About What Happened in the Past?

[mdgspencer]

Is It Possible to Pray Across Time?| National Catholic Register

In reality, God is not bound by time. He is completely outside of time… He is also capable of interacting with history at any point.

… If God is aware of everything in history then he knows it if on April 15 I am praying for a man who died on April 12.

 

[Cruciferi]

I’m just a simple mammal. This is Mind boggling

 

[Kathleen18]

Yes! In “7 Secrets of Divine Mercy.” The author briefly discusses this very subject! There is no time, with GOD!

 

[JimG]

Yes. One might have a Mass said for someone who died recently or long ago. The Mass or prayer might help them in purgatory, or it might be applied to them at the last moment of their life or even earlier.

 

[twf]

Tolkien wrote an essay called “On Faerie Stories”. In this essay, he explained the value of faerie stories (or as we would say today, fantasy) in expanding the imagination and preparing one’s mind for the greater mysteries of faith. Fantasy, while fictional, often points to these great mysteries.
For me, Doctor Who opened my mind to this very concept… that for God, there is no past, present, or future… all of time and space is before him at once… much like the Doctor in the TARDIS… but on an even bigger more transcendent scale.

 

[Edward_H]

And this is why we “can’t love” in the past and “can’t love” in the future…we can only love in the present because that’s where God is helping us to love.

Love is deeds.

 

[Kathleen18]

I am trying to follow your thinking…
I can pray with LOVE for the conversion of my turned-atheist, ex-Catholic, ex fiance. That his heart would be turned back to God, even on his future death bed.

 

[Edward_H]

Sure…and that praying (that act of love, which is what it is) can only be done in the moment.

My point is that knowledge of God attributes help us pastorally, they help us to realize that love isn’t a feeling or a memory or a promise in the future. Love exists (the exchange or gift of self) only in the moment, not in the future, and not in the past…though supernaturally as this article points out God can do anything He wants across time because He’s not in time. So pray away!

 

[midori]

Someone once asked Padre Pio why he prayed for the happy death of his great-grandfather who had died many years earlier. He said he could do this because, “for the Lord, the past doesn’t exist; the future doesn’t exist. Everything is an eternal present those prayers had already been taken into account. And so I repeat that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather.”