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rocklobster
Guest
I pray the rosary, but I don’t just pray it for myself. It doesn’t feel right to do that. So, I’m wondering, do these promises extend to other people if you pray for them?
The 15 promises made by our Lady to those who pray the Rosary
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nsper7
Guest
I think the promises attached to the Rosary, as well as the Green and Brown Scapulars and her willingness and desire to intercede and help us lost sinners, are a great sign of the Virgin Mary’s motherly love for us. What good mother (and the Virgin Mary is the best mother) would not do everything possible to spare her children from suffering (and what greater suffering is there than Hell) and help them in all their needs and desires (sometimes that means showing them why such a need is not really a need or such a desire is a negative or destructive one)?
Even though we screw up (sometimes horrendously and of our own will…mortal sin), she still loves us and wants us to overcome our sins and join her one day in Heaven, all her spiritual children recognizing that even at our worst moments, our biggest failings, our weakest times, she was ever loving and faithful.
How much it must sadden her to see one of her children reject her love and offers of assistance…
Even though we screw up (sometimes horrendously and of our own will…mortal sin), she still loves us and wants us to overcome our sins and join her one day in Heaven, all her spiritual children recognizing that even at our worst moments, our biggest failings, our weakest times, she was ever loving and faithful.
How much it must sadden her to see one of her children reject her love and offers of assistance…
Well, you can say the Rosary for a specific intention (whether for help for yourself or for others or for something else).
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rinnie
Guest
I agree with you. And if you remaim in Christ and he remains in you, you must be in a State of Grace.Originally posted by Rinnie
There is a way to know if your prayers are accepted by Christ. Here is how you will know:
7 But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!
John 15:7
Hopes this help you and God bless you.
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rinnie
Guest
And where is your guarantee of forgiveness by a private confession. You do not have o ne. That is why you must go the Priest to have your sins forgiven before the Mystical Body of the Divine Son. If what you are saying is true there would be not need for confession. That is the reason God left us the Church to respond to mortal sin and confess it to a Priest who has the Power from God to remove Mortal sin. We cannot do it by priviate confession. And if when we pray and we are in mortal sin we are separated from the Body of Christ so I disagree with you.
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Shin
Guest
Yes, I put it badly. Let me just excerpt quotes from St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, how he puts it:
Prayer must be humble: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Here St. James tells us that God does not listen to the prayers of the proud, but resists them. . .
Some say many vocal prayers; but he who does not make mental prayer will scarcely say his vocal prayers with attention: he will say them with distractions, and the Lord will not hear him. “Many cry to God,” says St. Augustine, “but not with the voice of the soul, but with the voice of the body; only the cry of the heart, of the soul, reaches God.” It is not enough to pray only with the tongue: we must, according to the Apostle, pray also with the heart if we wish to receive God’s graces: Praying at all times in the spirit." . . .
How, asks St. Cyprian, can you expect that God will hear you when you do not hear yourself? Prayer made with attention is the odoriferous incense that is most agreeable to God, and obtains treasures of grace; but prayer made with voluntary distraction is a fetid smoke that provokes the divine wrath, and merits chastisement. . .
But a person might say, I am a sinner, and God does not hear sinners, as we read in St. John’s Gospel: God doth not hear sinners. I answer, that these words were not spoken by our Lord, but by the man who had been born blind. And the proposition, if taken absolutely, is false; there is only one case in which it is true, as St. Thomas says, and that is when sinners pray as sinners;that is, ask something that they require to assist them in their sin; as, for instance, if a man asked God to help him to take vengeance of his enemy; in such cases God certainly will not hear. But when a man prays and asks for those things that are requisite for his salvation, what matters it whether he is a sinner or not? Suppose he were the greatest criminal in the world, let him only pray, he will surely obtain all that he asks.
The power of prayer to obtain what we ask does not depend on the merit of the person who prays, but on the mercy and faithfulness of God, who has gratuitously, and of his own mere goodness, promised to hear the man who prays to him.
The Lord revealed to St. Gertrude that our confidence so constrains him that he cannot possibly refuse to hear us in everything we seek of him. The same thing was said by St. Climacus: " Prayer exerts a holy violence upon God." Every prayer offered with confidence, as it were, forces God; but this force is acceptable and pleasing to him.
When we pray, it is not necessary that we should be friends of God in order to obtain grace; indeed, the act of prayer, as St. Thomas says, makes us his friends: “Prayer itself makes us of the family of God.”
It is, however, necessary to understand that our Lord’s promise to hear our prayers does not apply to our petitions for temporal goods, but only to those for spiritual graces necessary, or at any rate useful, for the salvation of the soul; so that we can only expect to obtain the graces which we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, as we said just now. " But," as St. Augustine says, " if we ask anything prejudicial to our salvation, it cannot be said to be asked in the name of the Saviour." That which is injurious to salvation cannot be expected from the Saviour; God does not and cannot grant it; and why? because he loves us.
. . . All the saints were saved, and came to be saints by praying; all the accursed souls in hell were lost through neglect of prayer; if they had prayed, it is certain that they would not have been lost. And this will be one of the greatest occasions of their anguish in hell, the thought that they might have saved themselves so easily; that they had only to beg God to help them, but that now the time is past when this could avail them.
. . . In all the misfortunes that occur to most persons in this life, a remedy comes with time, or with a change of state, or, at least, through a holy resignation to the will of God.
There is more of this sort in his work on prayer, ‘The Way of Salvation and Perfection’.
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rinnie
Guest
While I agree with you that it is through actual Grace we can make our way back to our Lord I do not agree that he will accept our prayers until we are back in Sanctifying Grace. If you are not in a state of S G the Holy Spirit departs from us.
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Bluegoat
Guest
This is like what Christianity teaches, except that it is the opposite.
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RyanML
Guest
So how is it that our Lord will respond to the prayers of a sinner by giving him actual graces but at the same time not accept the prayers of the sinner?
And remember, there was no grace before the coming of the Messiah and yet the prayers and sacrifices of the Old Covenant were acceptable to God. They were not sufficient to restore us to his friendship, but they were acceptable.
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RyanML
Guest
I didn’t say anything about Confession. All I said was that God gives actual graces to souls who, though in sin, make a generous move towards him through prayer.
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rinnie
Guest
Yes you are correct back in the O.T they indeed had to make sacrifices. Today we have the sacrament of Confession to replace the animal sacrifices. We still must do penance. I am sorry but if you are in mortal sin you must go to confession. If you are in mortal sin you are not in a state of Grace. The way to get yourself back into SG is confession. There is no other way. You cannot do it on your own I am sorrry.So how is it that our Lord will respond to the prayers of a sinner by giving him actual graces but at the same time not accept the prayers of the sinner?
And remember, there was no grace before the coming of the Messiah and yet the prayers and sacrifices of the Old Covenant were acceptable to God. They were not sufficient to restore us to his friendship, but they were acceptable.
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rinnie
Guest
Actual Grace is a free gift given to us from God. Actual Grace is what moves us to confess our sin. Grace is a free gift but we can use it or throw it away and ignore it. Just because you have actual grace does not mean you are in a state of Grace.So how is it that our Lord will respond to the prayers of a sinner by giving him actual graces but at the same time not accept the prayers of the sinner?
And remember, there was no grace before the coming of the Messiah and yet the prayers and sacrifices of the Old Covenant were acceptable to God. They were not sufficient to restore us to his friendship, but they were acceptable.
You must be in a state of Sant. Grace. John 20:21
If you sin moral you lose it. 1 John 5:15-17
It is not how God responds to our Prayers by giving us actual Grace, it is how we stay in the state of that Actual Grace God gave us. If we stay in that state of actual grace God indeed accepts our prayers. But if we are in mortal sin how would you say God accepts them when the HS has departed from us? Actual Grace is just the knowing we are wrong in our heart that God gives us. It is up to us to do something about it. And while I agree its is through prayers we must get back into the good graces of God if it is mortal sin we need a priest. Actual grace cannot save you:shrug:.
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rinnie
Guest
But we are talking about mortal sin here. Not venial!
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RyanML
Guest
Who is saying we can do it all on our own?
Confession is the normal means for bringing us back into God’s grace but it is not the only way. If we make a perfect act of contrition then we recieve the grace of the sacrament and God brings us back into his friendship.
We can’t do it on our own. We can only be saved by God’s grace. And although he has set up a normal means for us to return to his friendship, God is not bound by the Sacraments. He wills that all men be saved and he alone sees the heart. If one is truly sorry for having offended God but they do not have the means to confess or are not aware that God has given us this Sacrament, then God is still generous in his mercy and compassion.
In Christ,
Ryan
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RyanML
Guest
Mortal sin does not banish God completely from the soul. If we were completely devoid of God’s presence because of mortal sin then we would cease to exist. God is still present in his creation, no matter how imperfect it is. What is destroyed by mortal sin is the friendship with God that he restored to us by grace through Christ.But we are talking about mortal sin here. Not venial!
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RyanML
Guest
This is incorrect. One can not stay in a state of actual grace because actual graces do not last in the soul like sanctifying grace. Actual graces are spiritual “tugs” and inspirations that move us towards God. So for example, if someone is in mortal sin and hasn’t been able to make a confession, God may give him actual graces to pray and do penance. By responding to these graces, he disposes himself to be more open to God’s workings in his life which may lead him back into God’s friendship.
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glenconnor
Guest
Okay so I am going through RCIA and have yet to receive my First Communion nor have I done my First Confession. But I pray every night a list of prayers I have to bring me closer to Christ. Are you trying to say that I am wasting my time to pray because God will not hear me because I am in a state of Mortal Sin? Didn’t Christ come to heal the sinners, not glorify the saints? Well, I’m going to pray anyway, and trust in God to listen to me, or not as He sees fit.
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JohnMPhilomena
Guest
Keep right on praying. God knows your heart. He hears you. He wants you to call out to Him.
I had similar concerns when I converted a year ago. I was flying on airplanes in a state of Mortal Sin. What if there was a crash? My wife put my fears to rest.
Good luck on your RCIA.
Peace,
John Marie Philomena
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rinnie
Guest
Everything I have said is not getting out of control. I said that in order for us to be in the good grace of God and to be righteous in his eyes we cannot be in the state of Mortal Sin. I never said no one should pray, nor would I ever say that.
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rinnie
Guest
Okay fine, you can believe that confession is not the only way. I again disagree with you.
CCC 1442 Christ has willed that in her prayer and life and action his whole church should be the instruction of the forgiveness and reconciliation that he acquired for us by his blood. But he entrusted the exercise of the power of absolution to the APOSTOLIC MINISTRY which he charged with the ministry of reconciliation. The Apostle is sent out on behalf of Christ with God making his appeal through him and pleading Be reconciled to God.
While I agree that if one is not aware of our teaching they are not bound to it, but that is not the point. THe point is, it is for us as Catholics and we know. You do not want to die in Mortal sin. Its as simple as that.
The scripture says God accepts the prayers of the righteous. Where again does it say he accepts the prayers of those in the state of Mortal Sin? Please show me.
James 5:16 The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.
psalm 34:15 The Lord has ears for the just and ears for their crys. The Lords face is against evildoers to wipe out their memory from the earth. When the just cry out the Lord hears and rescues them from all distress.
Isaiah 1:15 When you spread out your hands I close my eyes to you though you pray the more I will not listen.
I am sorry if you do evil which is mortal sin, you must do as Isaiah says in 1:18 Come now and set things right, and we both know that is the reason that Jesus gave the Priest the Power of the HS to give us Absolution. For a Catholic Confession and a Priest is the only way.
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rinnie
Guest
Now to get back to the question at hand that is why I ask the Blessed Mother to also and always pray for me. I know she is in a State of Grace and I can be sure her and the Saints prayers are heard by Christ.
That is why People do not understand why it is so important for us to ask for their assistance. Especially when we are not in a State of Grace to ask them to pray for us because they are and by them praying for us their prayers could help us until we get to confession.
That is why intercession is so important for us. Just like Jobs kids were not in a state of Grace he interceeded for them and God accepted his prayers because Job was in a state of Grace. If God would accept Jobs prayers for his kids how could he not accept the Blessed Mothers prayers for us.
I by no means am saying (before it gets all out of control again) to skip confession. Never. Run do not walk if you are in mortal sin. But ask the Blessed Mother and Saints to pray for you while you are on your way. And always even if you are in a state of grace. You never know as Paul said if there is sin that you do not realize.
And PS to all you Catholics. Today is a Holy day!
That is why People do not understand why it is so important for us to ask for their assistance. Especially when we are not in a State of Grace to ask them to pray for us because they are and by them praying for us their prayers could help us until we get to confession.
That is why intercession is so important for us. Just like Jobs kids were not in a state of Grace he interceeded for them and God accepted his prayers because Job was in a state of Grace. If God would accept Jobs prayers for his kids how could he not accept the Blessed Mothers prayers for us.
I by no means am saying (before it gets all out of control again) to skip confession. Never. Run do not walk if you are in mortal sin. But ask the Blessed Mother and Saints to pray for you while you are on your way. And always even if you are in a state of grace. You never know as Paul said if there is sin that you do not realize.
And PS to all you Catholics. Today is a Holy day!
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