Thank you so very much, Speedy, for your testimony. You are giving me a great gift of encouragement to keep up the steady prayers for the atheist father and brother of a very dear friend of mine. I do believe that God can soften men’s hearts–He softened Pharoh’s heart at the end, for the Children of Israel, after all.
Thank you, and Blessed Christmas to all of you on this thread.
Amen.
Speedy is echoing the words of our Blessed Mother :
Speedypizza:
…Trust me, pray for others, and offer up penances for the conversion of poor sinners.
Our Lady of Fatima:
“Make sacrifices for sinners and say often, especially while making a sacrifice: O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
The prayer the Angel of Fatima taught to the children before the Blessed Sacrament is also a prayer for conversion:
My God , I believe , I adore , I trust and I love Thee.
I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore,
do not trust and do not love Thee
Oh Most Holy Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
I adore Thee profoundly.
I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity
of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world,
in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and
indifferences by which He is offended.
By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I beg the conversion of poor sinners.
Amen
There are several more things which come to mind:
- Each of our conversions is actually a lifelong process [CCC 1425 to 1430; link http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm”] HERE ]
- St Maximillian Kolbe said, of Marian Spirituality: " …we need Mary for the conversion of sinners, for the bringing of tepid souls to sanctity, for bringing the millions of non-Christians to Christ." Ranked first among the Conditions for Conversion he speaks of is :“First, we will be as effective converters (or evangelizers or missionaries) as we are personally devoted to Our Lady.” Fr. John Hardon S.J., on St. Maximillian Kolbe
- Father Hardon’s *Modern Cathollic Dictionary *defines preventing grace as:
PREVENTING GRACE.
The grace that goes before the free consent of the will. It moves the will spontaneously, inclining it to God. A preventing grace may be a good thought or a good impulse, without human effort, to perform some action that leads to heaven.
- A very similar question was asked a little over year ago at CAF. Anyone interested in two more pages of answers can find the thread by clicking HERE .
- Our Blessed Lord distinctly said that “With God, all things are possible.”
- At Fatima, Our Blessed Mother said, “Pray, pray much and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them.” - She didn’t say, “souls that you pray for go to Hell .”
There are some other things I could’ve added, but , to be honest, none of the aforementioned really applies to the original question as far as I can tell.
Because the OP’s example says :
… For eg. many people prayed for the conversion of Christopher Hitchens, but he didn’t convert because he had no intention to…
To say Christopher Hitchens didn’t convert , is to state definitively that Christopher Hitchens is in Hell. **The Holy Catholic Church has never made any definitive statements on who (among human souls) is actually in Hell **… probably a good idea for all of us to follow this example.
, so that worked out pretty well! I’ll never give up hope. And sometimes, I think that we change ourselves when we pray for others to convert. I know in my experience that it’s made me trust and have more faith. It’s made me study my Faith more diligently so I can understand better. Prayer can change the world, but it also can change ourselves.