Praying for those from long ago question

[RachaelRene]

God is in the past, present, and future as to my understandings, then can we presume that we can help those who have lived many years ago with our prayers now?
If God is in all times will our prayers for those long, long ago help them?
Does that make sense?

If I want to pray for Jesus or a saint that suffered a terrible death that they did not feel the pains that they must have suffered will it do any good?

I am not sure if I am wording this right but I will go ahead and post it to see what you guys think.

Thanks

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

God is in the past, present, and future as to my understandings, then can we presume that we can help those who have lived many years ago with our prayers now?
If God is in all times will our prayers for those long, long ago help them?
Does that make sense?

If I want to pray for Jesus or a saint that suffered a terrible death that they did not feel the pains that they must have suffered will it do any good?

I am not sure if I am wording this right but I will go ahead and post it to see what you guys think.

Thanks

God is eternal - that does not mean we are. God is Infinitely Holy - that does not mean we are. And so on. God is not limited by time or space - but we are. So it would be silly to pray for some past event not to occur. Besides, it would be a distraction - we have quite enough to do praying for people who are really in need, & are in need now.​

The course of action suggested is a bit like praying to an entirely non-existent Saint - why invent a Saint out of one’s imagination & pray to him or her ? We are encouraged to pray to the Saints, for they are “in Christ” - & there are plenty to pray to without praying to entirely invented ones. What would be the point of doing such a thing ?

I suspect the idea that God can change the past is related to the foolish movement that advocates “generational healing” - but the past is significant, because it affects what follows it. God works through the processes in the universe, which is a created & dependent thing - including time & space. Change them, & salvation history is changed. Every instant we live is the result of everything in all the countless instants before; alter any one, & all are altered. The idea of praying for the past to be changed sounds frivolous, & looks very much like a form of “putting God to the test”

The idea that the past can be changed is like the idea of time-travel - interesting, but not ideas of things that are possible.

The question reminds me very much of a Ray Bradbury story in which the remote past is changed - you can read it here:

• scaryforkids.com/a-sound-of-thunder/

 

[Awful_Things]

God is eternal - that does not mean we are. God is Infinitely Holy - that does not mean we are. And so on. God is not limited by time or space - but we are. So it would be silly to pray for some past event not to occur. Besides, it would be a distraction - we have quite enough to do praying for people who are really in need, & are in need now.​

The course of action suggested is a bit like praying to an entirely non-existent Saint - why invent a Saint out of one’s imagination & pray to him or her ? We are encouraged to pray to the Saints, for they are “in Christ” - & there are plenty to pray to without praying to entirely invented ones. What would be the point of doing such a thing ?

I suspect the idea that God can change the past is related to the foolish movement that advocates “generational healing” - but the past is significant, because it affects what follows it. God works through the processes in the universe, which is a created & dependent thing - including time & space. Change them, & salvation history is changed. Every instant we live is the result of everything in all the countless instants before; alter any one, & all are altered. The idea of praying for the past to be changed sounds frivolous, & looks very much like a form of “putting God to the test”

The idea that the past can be changed is like the idea of time-travel - interesting, but not ideas of things that are possible.

The question reminds me very much of a Ray Bradbury story in which the remote past is changed - you can read it here:

• scaryforkids.com/a-sound-of-thunder/

I disagree. The OP said nothing about changing the past. In addition, his proposition is nothing like praying for an imaginary saint as imaginary things cannot receive grace. However, as God is outside of time, at the same time that the saint in question is undergoing trial, God is aware of all prayers offered on his behalf, including those that might be offered hundreds of years later. This isn’t a question of “changing” the past, but of one’s prayers in the future having been applied, through God’s omniscience, on the saint’s behalf at the time he suffered the trial. To use a very poor analogy, it would be like that saint purchasing something on credit card, the bill for which comes due a few hundred years later. The fact that you or I might receive that bill and pay it now doesn’t “change” whether or not an item was purchased once upon a time. Rather, the credit company applied credit (grace) to an individual based on the fact that it would be satisfied by payment (prayers) later on. It may very well be that God permits or calls one to pray for an event or person in the past in order to unite him more fully (and, thus, to unite the body of Christ more fully) to a saintly individual who underwent similar trials.

Or not.

Now … all that being said, while I don’t see any philosophical or logical problems with the proposition that we can pray for past events, the fact that we are not asked to do so (and that no examples of doing so exist) in Scripture, Tradition, or through the direction of the Magisterim (or even in private revelation, for that matter), indicates to me that it isn’t really God’s intention that we spend our prayer time doing so.

But I could be wrong.

 

[Dan86]

Yes, we can pray for people in the past. God dwells outside of time. He sees past, present, and future all at once. Prayers do not come to him in a certain order. Prayers are not restricted to a certain area of time.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I believe Padre Pio prayed for others outside his own time, including the past. It is not changing the past, but perhaps God granted a mercy for someone in 1945 because someone in 2008 prayed for that soul to have received mercy.