What happens to 'unused prayers?'

[Poet]

Something I think about: I’ve prayed at length for someone’s conversion, someone I care about who is very much on the wrong path.

Despite all those thousands of prayers, Rosaries, Chaplets of Divine Mercy, fasting, etc–he’s only going deeper and deeper into a terrible lifestyle that has included being part of breaking up a marriage and family (as only one example)

If he is going to reject the graces God certainly must have offered him as a result of my prayer–does God give those graces and blessings and that help to someone else? Can I ask God, if he’s going to reject all that prayer, can I re-direct it to someone else?

This isn’t a huge question to me but one that just crosses my mind now and then and I’m curious what happens with the prayers we send out that come back ‘empty.’

 

[phil3]

What is that song “some of gods greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”

 

[Tis_Bearself]

No prayer is ever wasted. If this person is still alive, then even if they live a terrible life they could still convert in the last moment of death. Your prayers might operate to save them from Hell.

If somehow the person still ends up in Hell despite your prayer, the prayer wasn’t wasted. It may have prevented them from doing even worse things. It may have helped the people who he hurt with his bad lifestyle. It may have made reparation to God for the person’s sins so that there weren’t even worse consequences. And it most definitely helped you yourself. In the event there is some “leftover” prayer, then God would direct that to be used in the best way, without your having to ask him to.

 

[Lucy_1]

What @Tis_Bearself said, and also part of prayer is to help us grow, not only to get results. We are changed and grow in holiness by our prayers, whether they’re answered or not.

 

[PetraG]

If your child shared with you her great concerns, but the person you were both concerned about had not yet consented to the help and life you so wanted to give her, would that time you and your child spent sharing ever be wasted?

You have not only wept to the Lord for this poor soul, but with the Lord, who thirsts for the redemption of that soul to grace more than you or I ever could. Consider your prayers to be time that you and the Lord spent together in concern for this lost soul and all the others for whom Our Lord thirsts.

Of course that is not wasted. Your expression of love for that errant soul is put eloquently by Paul in the 1st chapter of the Letter to the Colossians, in which he wrote “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church” (Col 1:24) Your prayers are time spent at the foot of the Cross, filling up what Our Lord desires to bring about the salvation of souls. Don’t despair, then. It is impossible that this is wasted.

Read that whole first chapter of Colossians; I think it may comfort you.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

No prayer is unused. All prayer is conversation with God and His Saints.