How many prayers does it take to help?

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Nelka

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I sometimes wonder if I spent my whole life praying for the Holy souls in Purgatory that I might not even be able to help one move on or maybe every week I help one?

The same goes for the conversion of sinners, maybe it would take me 50 year of prayer to help one person convert?

Do you think maybe when I pray for the Holy souls in Purgatory that God adds my prayer to that of everyone else who is praying for the Holy souls that day to form one giant petition and that helps a bunch of Souls to move on?

What do you think?
 
If God loves you infinitely, then your prayers most certainly will have effect. As it is, they change and improve you.
 
Your prayer makes a difference. They are helping those in purgatory and people returning to the faith.

Your activity on this website also encourages other people like myself to pray more.

You are making a difference. God doesn’t give us a scoreboard to see how efficacious our prayer truly is.
 
Nelka said:
I sometimes wonder if I spent my whole life praying for the Holy souls in Purgatory that I might not even be able to help one move on or maybe every week I help one?

The same goes for the conversion of sinners, maybe it would take me 50 year of prayer to help one person convert?

Do you think maybe when I pray for the Holy souls in Purgatory that God adds my prayer to that of everyone else who is praying for the Holy souls that day to form one giant petition and that helps a bunch of Souls to move on?

What do you think?
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We may easily obtain partial indulgences, or with more difficulty, plenary indulgences, for souls in Purgatory. The indulgence is “a remission before God of the temporal punishment … through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints” Catechism 1471.
 
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God knows.

Maybe He waits for the absolute best time to move.

Maybe it’s when there is such closeness with God that our desire becomes His desire, that is when our humility allows God to work, or our faith is such that there’s no “doubt” distancing us from His will. Our desires and prayers become His will. Our desire is “perfected”.
 
One prayer makes a difference. And many prayers make a difference-probably more than the one.
 
I pray the prayer of St. Gertrude the Great.
According to tradition, St. Gertrude the Great was told by Our Lord that the following prayer, would release 1,000 souls from their suffering in purgatory each time it was piously prayed:

“Eternal Father,
I offer You the most precious blood
of thy Divine Son, Jesus,
in union with the Masses said
throughout the world today,
for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory,
for sinners everywhere,
for sinners in the universal Church,
for those in my own home,
and in my family. Amen.”
 
Focus more on the heartfelt disposition of your prayers and to Whom it is you are praying, rather than the quantity of prayers.
 
Nelka said:
I sometimes wonder if I spent my whole life praying for the Holy souls in Purgatory that I might not even be able to help one move on or maybe every week I help one?
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Short answer: every prayer helps, from the absent minded prayer of a sinner to a full on novena by Mother Theresa. How little or much of either one is beyond us to tell.

I will share this with you, though. I never really thought about it like you did; I just prayed and wondered how much I was really even helping. Recently, I was praying for the church suffering in bed before getting up and going to work when a profound sense of joy and peace came to me, and I got up for work with that on my mind. I had the intuitive feeling that the prayer was the last extra, little push that one particular soul needed to get out. When I shared it with my spiritual director, she was more confident than I was about my feeling.

Keep praying. When you get to Heaven, you’ll know where the prayers all went. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised like we all will.
 
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