Tag: Intercession

Quick Apology: “Saint intercession isn’t in the Bible”

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In previous “Quick Apologies”, I’ve dealt with different aspects of the intercession of the saints. Today I’d like to address one of the final pieces of the puzzle…

Objection

After explaining the Catholic understanding of Saintly intercession, as well as having shown its merit, one is often presented with a common retort against many Catholic doctrines:

“But [Doctrine X] is not in the Bible!”

I’ve written before in another post about the problem with this objection and about the logical problems and presuppositions associated with it. However, is the claim actually true in this case? Is it correct to say that we don’t see saintly intercession within the pages of Scripture?

Response

We actually do see Saintly intercession within the pages of Scripture. We see departed Saints offering prayers and pleading for God to take action upon the earth.  In fact, we don’t just see departed Christians doing this…

Heavenly Helpers

In John’s Book of Revelation, we read the following:

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints…
– Revelation 5:8

These “twenty-four elders” are deceased humans, yet we are told that they offer bowls of incense before the throne of God which are representative of the prayers of other Christians. If they are offering these prayers to God, it would make sense that they have some knowledge of their content too.

In response to this, I’ve heard a variety of attempts to deny that this passage teaches Saintly intercession. However, the fact cannot be denied that the Book of Revelation presents us with a picture of the deceased interacting in some way with the prayers of those on earth. This stands in rather stark contrast to assertions which Catholics often hear (“Christians in Heaven can have nothing to do with Christians on earth”).

On earth as it is in Heaven

A little later in the Book of Revelation, we read about how the martyrs in Heaven petition God:

…I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne; they cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?” – Revelation 6:9-10

Here we have a concrete example of deceased Christian martyrs pleading for God to take action upon earth!

Not just Saints

A few chapters later, we see not only Saints, but angels as having something to do with prayers from earth:

And another angel came and stood at the altar 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. – Revelation 8:3-4

One might ask how this is possible. How could an angel have anything to do with the prayers of men on earth? How could they know of the contents of a man’s prayer? If we recall that angels rejoice whenever a sinner repents (Luke 15:10) then surely anything is possible through the grace of God.

Angel

UPDATE 11/20/15 07:10 – I just got back from Mass where the First Reading included the first passage I quoted in this post. I had no idea prior to posting 🙂

What does it mean “to pray to a Saint”?

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This blog post is meant as a supplement to my earlier earlier posts on the subject of Saintly intercession (read here and here)…

all_saints

One issue we have in Catholic-Protestant dialogue concerning the Saints is the language we use. You will often hear Catholics talking about “praying to Saints”. However, it is important to point out that what we really mean is that we’re asking the Saints to pray for us.

What’s in a name?

Part of the problem is the use of the verb “to pray”. It can mean two different things, depending on context. The word itself comes into English from the Latin word “precari”, which means “obtained by entreaty”. To pray, therefore, means to ask for something.

This is aptly demonstrated in my favorite Shakespeare play, A Much Ado About Nothing (Act 2, Scene 3):

BENEDICK: An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief…

DON PEDRO: Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music…

Here you see both uses of the word “pray”. In the first, Benedick petitions God, and in the second, Don Pedro asks Balthasar for music. In the former, a request is made to God, in the latter, to man.

A better dialogue

While I think that pointing out this distinction goes a long way to further Catholic-Protestant dialogue, I think that Catholics should go the extra mile and be careful with the way they speak around Protestants, so as to communicate the Catholic Faith as clearly as possible.

When talking with Protestants about praying to Saints, it might be worth spelling out exactly what you mean, saying explicitly that you’re asking the Saints for their intercession before the throne of God. Rather than talking about “Praying to the Saints”, you might speak about “Praying with the Saints”. Most Protestants are used to talking about praying with friends, so when expressed in these terms, the Catholic devotion will seem less alien and more accessible.

All you angels and saints, pray for us.

Quick Apology: Why not go to the source?

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Today’s “Quick Apology” is a sequel to an earlier post, Quick Apology: You can’t pray to dead people. In that post I explained how those who have died in friendship with Christ are not “dead”, but are in fact more alive than we are. On Facebook, one of my friends responded with this question…

Objection

“But why would you want to pray to a Saint? Why not just go to the source, Christ?”

Response

This question is a reasonable one and makes sense until we consider everyday Christian practice…

When I meet up with my closest Christian friends, I will almost always ask them for their prayers concerning particular things going on in my life. However, if the above objection were valid, shouldn’t I being going directly to Christ? Why would I ask others to intercede for me when I could just instead make my requests to the Source directly?

To be certain, Christ has a special kind of mediation (1 Timothy 2:5), but that doesn’t preclude other kinds of mediation. In fact, we’re told in Scripture that we should intercede for each other (1 Timothy 2:1). So, the reasons why one would ask the Saints for their intercession are the same reasons why one would ask for the prayers of close friends. As my friend Steve said:

I’ve never seen a man in a true emergency when, for example, a car wreck requires emergency surgery for his young child, opt out of having others pray with him because he’d rather go straight to the Source.

It’s not an either/or proposition. Praying to the Lord directly is a good thing. Asking for the intercession of others is also a good thing. These two things don’t have to be in competition.

“We are taught by the Catholic faith that we may pray not only to God himself, but also to the Blessed in heaven, though in different manner; because we ask from God as from the Source of all good, but from the Saints as from intercessors” – Pope Leo XIII (Augustissimae Virginis Mariae 9)

So, back to the question: why would you want to pray to Saint? Well, when we are baptised, we become part of a very large family, a “great cloud of witnesses”, all united together in Christ. What do good families do? They pray for each other.

When we ask friends to pray for us, I think it’s safe to say that we particularly request intercession from those whom we esteem as being strong in faith since “the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16). Who is more righteous than those standing before the throne of God, those in “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…just men made perfect”?

Cloud of Witnesses

PS – I’ll endeavour to do a more thorough post in the future as to what mean when we speak of “prayer” to the Saints. Don’t let me forget…

PPS – Joe over at Shameless Popery also blogged about this topic yesterday. Go check it out 🙂

Quick Apology: You can’t pray to dead people

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Continuing in my series of brief apologetic responses, today I would like to look at the subject of Saintly intercession. As I mentioned last time, these will not be thorough, nuanced rebuttals, but simply how I typically would reply when I only have a brief window of opportunity to respond to objections to my Faith.

Objection

I often see on internet forums the following common objection to Saintly intercession:

“You can’t pray to dead people”

Response

In response to this objection I point out that the Saints are not dead:

“…have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” – Matthew 22:32

If Jesus says that the Saints (“Abraham…Isaac….Jacob”) are alive and well, then I think it’s pretty safe to assume that they are indeed alive. Last week we had the Feast of the Transfiguration when Jesus speaks with Moses…a “dead” man (Matthew 17:1-4). Therefore, it is incorrect to call those Christians who have passed away “dead”. They are more alive in God than they have ever been!

Abraham-Isaac-and-Jacob-610x350

Praying for Osama

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I meant to post this blog entry a long time ago, but it became one of the many posts to hide itself away in my Drafts folder. I came across it yesterday and, given the recent horrific events in Connecticut, I thought it was an appropriate time to finally post it.

An unusual prayer request

Back in May of 2011, there was a great stir after a parishioner of a parish in Florida requested a Mass to be said for the soul of Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden

This request caused all kinds of uproar among other parishioners:

“I think it’s totally wrong, he doesn’t belong in the Catholic religion. For what he did to Americans, he doesn’t belong anywhere…”

“It’s unconscionable, it’s sacrilegious…”

While I can understand the gut reaction of those who objected to this proposed Mass intention, how compatible are these statements with the Catholic faith?

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