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 leveled
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 mediator. 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 intercede: "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 séance. But anyone with
an ounce of common sense can discern the vast qualitative difference between
holding a séance 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.
"Directly to Jesus"
Some may grant that the previous
objections to asking the saints for their intercession do not work and may even
grant that the practice is permissible in theory, yet they may question it on
other grounds, asking why one would want to ask the saints to pray for
one. "Why not pray directly to Jesus?" they ask.
The answer is: "Of course
one should pray directly to Jesus!" But that does not mean it is not also
a good thing to ask others to pray for one as well. Ultimately, the
"go-directly-to-Jesus" objection boomerangs back on the one who makes
it: Why should we ask any Christian, in heaven or on earth, to pray for us when
we can ask Jesus directly? If the mere fact that we can go straight to Jesus
proved that we should ask no Christian in heaven to pray for us then it would
also prove that we should ask no Christian on earth to pray for us.
Praying for each other is simply
part of what Christians do. As we saw, in 1 Timothy 2:1–4, Paul strongly
encouraged Christians to intercede for many different things, and that passage
is by no means unique in his writings. Elsewhere Paul directly asks others to
pray for him (Rom. 15:30–32, Eph. 6:18–20, Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25,
2 Thess. 3:1), and he assured them that he was praying for them as well (2
Thess. 1:11). Most fundamentally, Jesus himself required us to pray for others,
and not only for those who asked us to do so (Matt. 5:44).
Since the practice of asking
others to pray for us is so highly recommended in Scripture, it cannot be
regarded as superfluous on the grounds that one can go directly to Jesus. The
New Testament would not recommend it if there were not benefits coming from it.
One such benefit is that the faith and devotion of the saints can support our
own weaknesses and supply what is lacking in our own faith and devotion. Jesus
regularly supplied for one person based on another person’s faith (e.g.,
Matt. 8:13, 15:28, 17:15–18, Mark 9:17–29, Luke 8:49–55). And
it goes without saying that those in heaven, being free of the body and the
distractions of this life, have even greater confidence and devotion to God
than anyone on earth.
Also, God answers in particular
the prayers of the righteous. James declares: "The prayer of a righteous
man has great power in its effects. Elijah was a man of like nature with
ourselves and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years
and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again and the heaven
gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit" (Jas. 5:16–18).
Yet those Christians in heaven are more righteous, since they have been made
perfect to stand in God’s presence (Heb. 12:22-23), than anyone on earth,
meaning their prayers would be even more efficacious.
Having others praying for us thus
is a good thing, not something to be despised or set aside. Of course,
we should pray directly to Christ with every pressing need we have (cf. John
14:13–14). That’s something the Catholic Church strongly
encourages. In fact, the prayers of the Mass, the central act of Catholic
worship, are directed to God and Jesus, not the saints. But this does not mean
that we should not also ask our fellow Christians, including those in heaven,
to pray with us.
In addition to our prayers
directly to God and Jesus (which are absolutely essential to the Christian
life), there are abundant reasons to ask our fellow Christians in heaven to
pray for us. The Bible indicates that they are aware of our prayers, that they intercede
for us, and that their prayers are effective (else they would not be offered).
It is only narrow-mindedness that suggests we should refrain from asking our
fellow Christians in heaven to do what we already know them to be anxious and
capable of doing.
In Heaven and On Earth
The Bible directs us to invoke
those in heaven and ask them to pray with us. Thus in Psalms 103, we pray,
"Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word,
hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his
ministers that do his will!" (Ps. 103:20-21). And in Psalms 148 we pray,
"Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the
heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!" (Ps. 148:1-2).
Not only do those in heaven pray
with us, they also pray for us. In the book of Revelation, we read: "[An]
angel came and stood at the altar [in heaven] with a golden censer; and he was
given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden
altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of
the saints from the hand of the angel before God" (Rev. 8:3-4).
And those in heaven who offer to
God our prayers aren’t just angels, but humans as well. John sees that
"the twenty-four elders [the leaders of the people of God in heaven] fell
down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of
incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5:8). The simple fact
is, as this passage shows: The saints in heaven offer to God the prayers of the
saints on earth.
[This section quoted from: Catholic Answers,
“Praying to the Saints (
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