Retroactive Prayer

[diarmait]

I have heard it said that, just as Jesus died for my sins, and knew my sins when he died on the Cross, so too was he aware of my prayers and good works, and that these prayers and good works could have helped alleviate the agony in the garden and other sufferings of Our Lord. Is this reasonable? Does it have any basis in Catholic Theology?

 

[Verbum]

Hi diairmait,

To God everything is in the present. So you can accompany Jesus in the Garden of Olives and obey his request to “sit up and pray” with him. I think this may retroactively console Jesus.

Verbum

 

[diarmait]

Then I have a follow-up question. If to God everything is in the present, can our prayers have retroactive effect for those who have suffered in the past. For instance, can I pray to God to grant strength to a martyr and could my prayers have effect? Could I ask for Him to reduce the pain of my great-grandmother at the time she died? How about when my son bit through his lip? Or maybe when I skinned my knee as a kid?

 

[Spirithound]

Then I have a follow-up question. If to God everything is in the present, can our prayers have retroactive effect for those who have suffered in the past. For instance, can I pray to God to grant strength to a martyr…

Well, yes, and no. I shall explain. Even though God is outside of time, we are inside time, and these events have already happened. However, since God is outside of time, He would be anticipating your prayers and will have already lessened the suffering accordingly.
So that leads to the problem of whether to “ask” if it’s already been given. I would tend to instead thank God for lessening the suffering.

 

[MysticMissMisty]

OK, I get that this is an old thread, but I recently posted another one that touched on this topic ( forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=13052293#post13052293 ), so I figured I’d contribute here as well.

Just as God knows what we will ask for before we ask for it in the present to influence the future, He still wants us to ask. In the same way, perhaps, even though our retroactive prayers have already had their effect, He still wishes us to ask for the same reason He wishes us to do so in the present.

Wondering if there is any official Church teaching on this subject, either infallible or simply authoritative or if there is any other relevant Church teaching in either category that could be helpful here.

 

[MysticMissMisty]

Also, just thinking, how could you even prove the effectiveness of something like this? I mean, again, things have already happened either way, so, how could you prove that your prayer somehow changed things? How could you even prove that God honors such? Are thre any other evidences of God acting in a similar way outside of time from Scripture/t/Tradtition that we could use to support the idea of retroactive prayer, that is, if it has not already been infallibly established as some kind of dogma?

 

[DavidFilmer]

I will borrow an example from a famous philosopher: A man comes to his house to find it engulfed in flames. He prays that his family has escaped safely. But, of course (or so it would seem), the fate of his family is already determined - if they are in the house, they are dead, and if they escaped the house, they are alive. One might argue that his prayer cannot possibly have any effect. But God sees everything in the eternal “now.” He could hear the prayer of the man and apply its merits to the man’s family, even though the man has not “yet” made his prayer.

Does this concept have any scientific merit? Does “science” teach that things that happen in the “present” can effect the past?

Actually, this has been proven beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment proved that (at a quantum level) decisions made in the present affect actions in the past. No credible scientist today would dispute this. Time clearly does not operate at the quantum level as it operates at the macro level, and this has been proven empirically beyond reasonable doubt. At the quantum level, it has been empirically proven that things that happen “now” can affect past events.

Does God operate at the quantum level? I dunno. It’s pretty clear he does not operate at the macro level (since this is just another word for Creation).

 

[Errham]

Then I have a follow-up question. If to God everything is in the present, can our prayers have retroactive effect for those who have suffered in the past. For instance, can I pray to God to grant strength to a martyr and could my prayers have effect? Could I ask for Him to reduce the pain of my great-grandmother at the time she died? How about when my son bit through his lip? Or maybe when I skinned my knee as a kid?

The question isn’t can we. The question is should we. God is timeless, so is he able to hear us and apply our prayers retroactively? Probably only he himself knows. But he created time so that we wouldn’t have to deal with such scenarios. Time is a law of nature created by God, and we should follow it as best as we can. Such questions are getting way too over your head in things.

 

[MysticMissMisty]

The question isn’t can we. The question is should we.

This is something I was wondering about also.

I mean, honestly, I don’t see any direct prohibition against it and I don’t even see why there would be one. There seems nothing inherently immoral about it, at least to me.