Recently, at youth group, when the kids were asked to offer their petitions, one stood out to me. This particular person offered his petition for all the souls in hell. I smiled slightly and thought to myself, “Good job wasting your prayer, kid.” Of course, I don’t think prayers are wasted, and yes, I’m sure the person who offered this prayer thought they were doing something good. After all, how many of us think about those poor, damned souls? I know I don’t.
Unless someone cuts me off in traffic.
However, it does beg the question: Are prayers for the damned truly wasted? Is it a futile endeavor? Can our prayers not at least, perhaps for a second, ease their torment in the Pit?
Perhaps we need to look at history to help shed some light on this uncomfortable question.
The story begins with Trajan, Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117.
Trajan was a pagan, and although he was remembered as an exceptionally capable and just ruler, Christians had good reason to regard him suspiciously. Under his administration, Christians could be punished for refusing to renounce their faith.
Nevertheless, a legend arose concerning an extraordinary act of justice performed by the emperor.
According to an early medieval account, Trajan was preparing to lead his army into battle when a widow approached him. Her son had been murdered, and those responsible had escaped punishment.
She pleaded with the emperor to obtain justice.
Trajan initially dismissed her request, promising to settle the matter when he returned from his campaign.
But the widow persisted.
What if he never returned? Who would obtain justice for her then?
Trajan suggested that his successor could handle the matter.
The widow challenged him again. Why leave another man to perform the justice that he himself was obliged to administer?
According to the legend, the emperor was so moved by her words that he halted his expedition and personally ensured that the widow received justice.
It was an extraordinary image: the most powerful man in the Roman world stopping an army to listen to a grieving mother.
The account appears in the Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, written by an anonymous monk of Whitby in the early eighth century, and was subsequently retold in other medieval works.
Nearly five centuries after Trajan's death, Pope Gregory the Great supposedly encountered the story while passing through Trajan's Forum in Rome.
Gregory was deeply moved.
Here was a pagan emperor, someone who had never professed the Christian faith, nevertheless demonstrating a virtue that Christians themselves were commanded to practice.
The account reminded Gregory of Isaiah's command to defend the oppressed and uphold the cause of the widow.
Yet Trajan had died a pagan.
According to the theological assumptions underlying the legend, that meant Trajan was suffering eternal punishment.
Gregory found the thought unbearable.
He went to St. Peter's Basilica and began to pray for the emperor's soul. Some accounts emphasize that he wept profusely, pleading for mercy upon a man who had died centuries earlier.
Eventually, Gregory received a divine revelation assuring him that his prayers had been heard.
The early Anglo-Saxon account describes Trajan's soul as having been refreshed through Gregory's tears. Later versions speak more explicitly of deliverance from punishment.
The Golden Legend, compiled by Jacobus de Voragine in the thirteenth century, includes a heavenly response announcing that Trajan had been spared eternal suffering.
Now, here is where things really start to get interesting.
The medieval versions differ on precisely what God granted Trajan.
In the Golden Legend, after recounting the divine response, Jacobus presents an interpretation according to which Trajan remained in hell but was relieved of its pains.
In other words, Trajan's sentence was not reversed, but his suffering was mitigated.
The same account also contains a curious addition. Gregory was allegedly offered a choice between enduring two days of purgatorial suffering or suffering illness throughout the remainder of his earthly life as a consequence of his extraordinary intercession.
Gregory chose the latter.
The legend then connects this choice to the pope's well-documented physical ailments.
None of these miraculous events is established historical fact. They belong to the medieval hagiographical tradition, which often conveyed theological ideas through extraordinary stories.
Of course, medieval legends are hardly the foundation upon which we should build our theology. However charming or extraordinary the story might be, it leaves us with a rather uncomfortable question: Could the prayers of the living actually accomplish something for the damned?
As it turns out, this question was not confined to medieval storytellers. It also troubled one of the greatest theological minds the Church has ever produced: St. Thomas Aquinas.
In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas addresses the question directly: Whether suffrages profit those who are in hell? (Supplement, Question 71, Article 5).
And wouldn't you know it? He brings up Gregory and Trajan.
Aquinas considers the possibility that Trajan was miraculously restored to life through Gregory's prayers, thereby receiving another opportunity to accept God's grace. He also acknowledges another interpretation: that Trajan's punishment was temporarily suspended until the Last Judgment.
But Aquinas is careful not to mistake an extraordinary exception for the ordinary course of divine justice. Ultimately, he maintains that our prayers cannot ordinarily alter the condition of those definitively condemned to hell.
Which is perhaps disappointing news for anyone hoping to organize a spiritual jailbreak, or to pour the metaphorical cool glass of water on the inflamed.
Nevertheless, Aquinas's discussion reveals something rather remarkable. Even while defending the permanence of hell, medieval Christians were willing to ask whether God's mercy might reach into places from which there seemed to be no escape.
And so, this All Souls’ Day, I would like to offer a humble alternative. Rather than praying for the conversion of those already damned, pray that they might have received the grace of conversion before their fate was sealed. Pray that, in those final moments of earthly life, they might have turned toward God rather than away from Him.
Now, you might object that such prayers are rather late. Trajan has been dead for nearly two thousand years. Perhaps your own loved one died decades ago, having never professed faith in Christ. Surely the opportunity has passed? After all, the Church teaches that death marks the end of our earthly opportunity to accept or reject God's grace. We cannot simply pray someone out of hell.
And you would be right.
At least, from our perspective.
But God is not bound by time as we are. For Him, there is no yesterday or tomorrow, no distant past or uncertain future. Every moment of creation is eternally present to Him. The moment of Trajan's death, the moment of your loved one's death, and the moment you offer your prayer are all known to God in His eternity.
Which raises an extraordinary possibility: Could God, knowing the prayer you offer today, have taken it into account when He offered His grace to someone at the hour of their death?
There are theologians who have entertained precisely this possibility. It is not a guarantee, nor is it something the Church has definitively taught. But neither should we underestimate the mystery of a God whose mercy is not constrained by the ticking of a clock.
We cannot change the past. We cannot overturn the particular judgment. But we can entrust those we love to the God who was present to them in their final moments and who eternally knows the prayers we offer for them now.
And that, I think, is a far better use of our prayers than attempting to organize a jailbreak from hell.
