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Prayer to Saints

atpollard

Active Member
[NOTE: Catholic DIR Thread]

My mother was raised Catholic and prays to Mary and the other saints (especially St.Jude).
I once asked her why and was told that it was because God is scary and Mary is not, so asking Mary to intercede for her is easier.

(I suspect that someone in some Catholic School fifty years ago needs a slap upside the head for giving her the wrong impression about God.)

But setting that aside, what is the real justification for praying to Saints?

[I checked a Catholic Church site, but this particular issue wasn't really covered, just that praying to Saints is not worshiping saints ... which I never thought that it was.]
 

atpollard

Active Member
Strange search algorithm, I run a search, find nothing in a page of hits, create a new topic and THEN it appears in the 'Similar Threads' at the bottom.

Praying to the Saints

The historic Christian practice of asking our departed brothers and sisters in Christ—the saints—for their intercession has come under attack in the last few hundred years. Though the practice dates to the earliest days of Christianity and is shared by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, the other Eastern Christians, and even some Anglicans—meaning that all-told it is shared by more than three quarters of the Christians on earth—it still comes under heavy attack from many within the Protestant movement that started in the sixteenth century.

Can They Hear Us?
One charge made against it is that the saints in heaven cannot even hear our prayers, making it useless to ask for their intercession. However, this is not true. As Scripture indicates, those in heaven are aware of the prayers of those on earth. This can be seen, for example, in Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." But if the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they must be aware of our prayers. They are aware of our petitions and present them to God by interceding for us.

Some might try to argue that in this passage the prayers being offered were not addressed to the saints in heaven, but directly to God. Yet this argument would only strengthen the fact that those in heaven can hear our prayers, for then the saints would be aware of our prayers even when they are not directed to them!

In any event, it is clear from Revelation 5:8 that the saints in heaven do actively intercede for us. We are explicitly told by John that the incense they offer to God are the prayers of the saints. Prayers are not physical things and cannot be physically offered to God. Thus the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally. In other words, they are interceding.

One Mediator
Another charge commonly levelled against asking the saints for their intercession is that this violates the sole mediatorship of Christ, which Paul discusses: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).

But asking one person to pray for you in no way violates Christ’s mediatorship, as can be seen from considering the way in which Christ is a meditor. First, Christ is a unique mediator between man and God because he is the only person who is both God and man. He is the only bridge between the two, the only God-man. But that role as mediator is not compromised in the least by the fact that others intercede for us. Furthermore, Christ is a unique mediator between God and man because he is the Mediator of the New Covenant (Heb. 9:15, 12:24), just as Moses was the mediator (Greek mesites) of the Old Covenant (Gal. 3:19–20).

The intercession of fellow Christians—which is what the saints in heaven are—also clearly does not interfere with Christ’s unique mediatorship because in the four verses immediately preceding 1 Timothy 2:5, Paul says that Christians should interceed: "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:1–4). Clearly, then, intercessory prayers offered by Christians on behalf of others something "good and pleasing to God," not something infringing on Christ’s role as mediator.

"No Contact with the dead"
Sometimes Fundamentalists object to asking our fellow Christians in heaven to pray for us by declaring that God has forbidden contact with the dead in passages such as Deuteronomy 18:10–11. In fact, he has not, because he at times has given it—for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. "There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. . . . For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed" (Deut. 18:10–15).

God thus indicates that one is not to conjure the dead for purposes of gaining information; one is to look to God’s prophets instead. Thus one is not to hold a seance. But anyone with an ounce of common sense can discern the vast qualitative difference between holding a seance to have the dead speak through you and a son humbly saying at his mother’s grave, "Mom, please pray to Jesus for me; I’m having a real problem right now." The difference between the two is the difference between night and day. One is an occult practice bent on getting secret information; the other is a humble request for a loved one to pray to God on one’s behalf.

Overlooking the Obvious
Some objections to the concept of prayer to the saints betray restricted notions of heaven. One comes from anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner:

"How, then, can a human being such as Mary hear the prayers of millions of Roman Catholics, in many different countries, praying in many different languages, all at the same time?

"Let any priest or layman try to converse with only three people at the same time and see how impossible that is for a human being. . . . The objections against prayers to Mary apply equally against prayers to the saints. For they too are only creatures, infinitely less than God, able to be at only one place at a time and to do only one thing at a time.

"How, then, can they listen to and answer thousands upon thousands of petitions made simultaneously in many different lands and in many different languages? Many such petitions are expressed, not orally, but only mentally, silently. How can Mary and the saints, without being like God, be present everywhere and know the secrets of all hearts?" (Roman Catholicism, 142-143).

If being in heaven were like being in the next room, then of course these objections would be valid. A mortal, unglorified person in the next room would indeed suffer the restrictions imposed by the way space and time work in our universe. But the saints are not in the next room, and they are not subject to the time/space limitations of this life.

Further, the Bible indicates that the glorified human intellect enjoyed by the saints in heaven has a phenomenal ability to process information, dwarfing anything we are capable of in this life. This is shown by the fact that, on Judgment Day, we will review every act of our lives. But since Judgment Day is not going to take eighty years to review the events of an eighty year life (if it takes any time at all), our intellects will be able to process enormous amounts of information and experience once freed from the confines of this mortal life. And not only will we be aware of the events of our own lives, but of the lives of those around us on Judgment Day as well, for Christ stated that all our acts will be publicly revealed (Luke 12:2–3).

This does not imply that the saints in heaven therefore must be omniscient, as God is, for it is only through God’s willing it that they can communicate with others in heaven or with us. And Boettner’s argument about petitions arriving in different languages is even further off the mark. Does anyone really think that in heaven the saints are restricted to the King’s English? After all, it is God himself who gives the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Surely those saints in Revelation understand the prayers they are shown to be offering to God.

The problem here is one of what might be called a primitive or even childish view of heaven. It is certainly not one on which enough intellectual rigor has been exercised. A good introduction to the real implications of the afterlife may be found in Frank Sheed’s book Theology and Sanity, which argues that sanity depends on an accurate appreciation of reality, and that includes an accurate appreciation of what heaven is really like. And once that is known, the place of prayer to the saints follows.

www.Catholic.com Catholic Answers

I trust that Catholic Doctrine has not changed since 2004.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
That is an interesting story with your mother. I think a proper (imo) way to put it is sometimes we feel more comfortable talking to some people for some reasons. For example, I used to pray to Mary. It wasnt that God was scary, but more I was raised by single mother. So, associating with the Mother of Christ was easier than associating with Christ. Also, because family are one with each other (I am a part my mother and she likewise) same with Christ and His Mother.

With the saints, at confirmation, we usually pick a confirmation saint to whom we relate to. Kind of like finding a friend who has similar interests as you. So conversation with confirmation saints are conversating with friends. If a Catholic feels its hard to come to God about a issue sometimes he or she will ask his or her friend.

Its really more of a friendship with the saints as Gods chosen people. I dont see it more than that. Im sure other Catholics will give you various views.

[NOTE: Catholic DIR Thread]

My mother was raised Catholic and prays to Mary and the other saints (especially St.Jude).
I once asked her why and was told that it was because God is scary and Mary is not, so asking Mary to intercede for her is easier.

(I suspect that someone in some Catholic School fifty years ago needs a slap upside the head for giving her the wrong impression about God.)

But setting that aside, what is the real justification for praying to Saints?

[I checked a Catholic Church site, but this particular issue wasn't really covered, just that praying to Saints is not worshiping saints ... which I never thought that it was.]
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
It's because we believe in the Communion of Saints. The Kingdom of Heaven is without time and space so the friendship of the Saints in Heaven is eternally available to us, just as the friendship of our Christian brothers and sisters on earth is available to us. Death is no barrier to God's family. There is the Church Triumphant (all those in Heaven), the Church Militant (all those Christians striving for holiness in this life) and the Church Suffering (those future Saints in Purgatory). So just as you would turn to a Christian on earth to pray for you to God, you may do the same with a Christian who is in Heaven and their intercessions are very powerful since they are in total friendship and unity with God. We pray for those in Purgatory to lessen their time there.
 

EverChanging

Well-Known Member
I am agreement with the answers above. Some Catholics of an older generation, and probably some today, do have an unhealthy fear of God. But even when that is not the case, sometimes it is easier to pray to a saint that we know was a sinner, maybe even a great sinner. They can understand that and have sympathy.

On a more theological level, there is a concept in Catholicism, more emphasized in the East but still part of Western doctrine, called theosis. "I have said, Ye are gods." God is absolute being, existence. Everything else exists relative to him and through him. The whole creation longs to be liberated and saved. We are saved through grace through faith working with charity. The Sacraments are a guarantee of that grace when rightly received. In the Eucharist we take Christ into ourselves to become incorporated in him. Through grace we come to share in God's attributes more and more. This process continues after death (though Eastern and Western Catholics have a different emphasis and theology in regard to purgatory).

The saints in Heaven, like the angels, always behold the face of God -- the beatific vision. They have some amount of awareness about our condition and prayers because of that. The saints have become gods through grace -- they are not God by nature but through participation. They share in God's glory. Worship is owed to God alone by His nature, but the saints share in it through participation. Grace and salvation is not something merely attributed to us. Grace is infused and we are transformed in this life and even after death. Therefore we venerate the saints.

The rest of creation shares in this, too. In the Canticle of Brother Sun St. Francis is able to say, "Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun" and "he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, most high, he bears the likeness." Even in speaking with great fervor and love of the creation, God is being worshiped, the creation sharing the praise insofar as it is related to God.
 
Apart from on moral issues, on which I feel our ethical understanding can and should progress at times and supersede earlier (mis)understandings (Speaking only for myself, not for the Vatican ;) ), I think arguing from the perspective of "This is the way it has always been" actually does merit more positive consideration than perhaps we would normally think to afford it in a non-religious context. We have very very early writings from Christians, non-Christians writing about Christians, and archaeological findings, to support veneration of and prayer to Saints. In fact, during the Roman persecutions of Christians, Christians would grab shreds of fabric from the clothes or even fingers of dead holy people and preserve them after they were killed if at all possible, what became known as relics. We have Roman authorities talking about the Christian practice of taking "sacred" bread to those who could not be there on Sunday, and so on and so forth.

Veneration of Saints and the idea of communion that is more than simply memorial, among other things, appear to be things that have existed since nearly the beginning, if not the actual beginning. As there is no reason to consider these things immoral (Obviously, they don't hurt anyone), which would to me be a prima facie argument for getting rid of them if there were, I think before we destroy our tradition and heritage, we would need an affirmative reason to feel obligated to dump these things. I don't see one. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, the entire Christian world spoke with one voice on this stuff. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental/Coptic Christians, etc.. They all venerated Saints and believe in the real presence of Christ in communion. Why not?

The concept that scripture is the ultimate and only authority is a very odd notion, if you think about it. I mean, there were all kinds of Gospels and scriptures written that aren't in a standard bible. First of all, most non-Catholic bibles exclude 7 books from the Catholic bible because they are thought to be originally written by Jews in Greek instead of in Hebrew and read in many Jewish shuls in the time of Christ (Only after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD did the Jewish councils rule that those books were not canonical, and by that time Christianity was a separate group that had no reason to and in fact at the time did not recognize that rulings. The Jewish rabbis who did not believe in Jesus were fighting to preserve their cultural and religious heritage against a Greco-Roman influence that they felt Christianity itself was an outgrowth of. Obviously, the Church accepted these books for the same reasons the Jewish people of the Christian era rejected them.). On what authority do we not count those? There were many Gnostic Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas that presented Jesus in a very different way than the four canonical Gospels in some respects. On what authority do we not count those? At some level, the bible itself is a product of tradition. Bishops met in council and decided what was in and what was out in both instances. The book did not fall from heaven fully written.

The question is really isn't why would praying to Saint be permitted, it's why wouldn't it? And I won't accept an argument from traditions that started after 1000AD or from a reading of scripture through a cultural lens of people living 1500 years or more after the texts were written. I need a moral case that these traditions hurt people, or some plausible case that everything we know about history is a lie, and I don't think that either of those two things are cases anyone could make to me in a persuasive fashion.

Having said that, I don't think prayer to or veneration of Saints should be mandatory. Do what you want.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
The question is really isn't why would praying to Saint be permitted, it's why wouldn't it? And I won't accept an argument from traditions that started after 1000AD or from a reading of scripture through a cultural lens of people living 1500 years or more after the texts were written. I need a moral case that these traditions hurt people, or some plausible case that everything we know about history is a lie, and I don't think that either of those two things are cases anyone could make to me in a persuasive fashion.
Id certainly like to know this too. Maybe you can also post this in same faith debates? Or religious...give some more perspectives on this question?
 
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