Hello, you will often hear prayers for the dead who are in purgatory. Even mass intentions that are offered for the repose of the soul of such and such. Praying for the souls in purgatory is entirely orthodox and biblical. However, suppose that the person(s) we are praying for is damned to hell. The bible makes it clear that praying for the damned is of no avail. That being said, how do we know we are not wasting our time praying for people, since they might be in hell, and if they are, then praying for them is entirely useless.
- Thanks in Advance
If you’re spirituallly sensitive enough, I think you might get a sense it’s a waste of time. But without that, the answer is that you simply don’t know whether the person is in Hell or not.
This is an issue that’s been brought up by others and directed to me, both on the forum and in private messages. The reason is that I had the experience of my father appearing to me the night he died. At the end of the session, he gave this almighty scream while trying to ward something off, and promptly disappeared. During the preceding discussion however, he stated that it ***would be ***a waste of time praying for him. I mean he’d been very cruel to his own family for 20 years, deliberately set out to wreck my life, had rejected the faith, and didn’t give a damn about God.
But at the time I was an atheist myself and had no intention of praying for him, obviously. But during the same discussion he said I’d become a Christian, and would wonder if I should pray for him. I became a Christian about four years later, and a Catholic about thirteen or fourteen years after that. As a Protestant I idn’t really pray for the dead, but as a Catholic it’s a different story. So on the night he died, he stated himself it ***would be ***a waste of time. In short, from where he was being judged, he could see this very question would be of import to me, some years down the track.
So do I pray for him or not? Personally I think it is a waste of time. Others on this forum think I should persevere. But then most people don’t get visits at the time someone else dies. For me it’s the only occasion in my life when this particular scenario has happened. There have been a number of other spiritual experiences, but nothing else like this.
Technically, from a Protestant viewpoint, with their either / or mentality, even my mother would be in hell, although those who knew her well would disagree. She hadn’t been in church for years, and although she lived a generally good life, she had her faults, and I can think of at least one major “sin” that would have been held against her at her judgment. Yet I personally suspect she’s in purgatory, and will get to heaven one day. At bottom I think she still had some sort of faith in Christ. But the reality is that I just do not know.
So if you don’t know, and haven’t been told one way or the other, all you can do is keep praying for them. And as others have suggested, if the person is in hell, then maybe the prayers will be directed to someone else’s benefit. It’s a strange spiritual world out there.
*Romans 8:26-27 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.*This passage shows that the Spirit will make intercession on behalf of a saint to properly express the intention of that saint who did not know what he “ought to pray for.” If the Spirit “helps us in our weakness,” I see no reason to exclude the weakness of not knowing if a person is in heaven or hell. The intention of the petitioner is to save a soul, and his weakness in misdirecting that prayer by theoretically naming someone in hell is not going to void the prayer. We trust the Spirit to “redirect” the prayer, as bnbkaine worded it, in “accord with God’s will.”