My latest on Ancient and Future Catholics:
Many Protestants ask Catholics: why do Catholics pray to Mary and other Saints? Why do Catholics give Mary honor? Do Catholics worship Mary? Catholics are not alone in this either: Orthodox Christians and many Anglicans pray to Mary also. I’m going to approach this in two ways. First, I want to look at the general practice of praying to others and honoring them. Then, I want to address whether or not it’s appropriate to pray to Mary, someone who is deceased.
Is it ok to pray to other people? Most Christians would probably answer in the negative. The response would be: we pray to God and that’s it. However, Catholics and Orthodox operate under the more broad definition of “pray,” which means to entreat or request. Although the term is largely used of God today, we still have remnants of this usage when it was used with others, e.g. “pray tell.” So, by praying to Mary, we are simply entreating her or asking her for something. What are we asking? Two things, actually.
First, we are asking her to pray for us. We are asking Mary’s intercession before God. Most Christians would have no problem with asking someone else to pray for them. We do it all the time when we pray for others or when someone says “keep me in your prayers.” The Bible (and even our daily experience) is filled with examples of members of the Hebrew or Christian communities praying on behalf of others.
Image by Jonathan Bennett from Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine, Euclid, OH. To order prints or download high resolution images, click here
David Bennett
Jennifer
asimplesinner
Fr. J.
Chad T.
Jorge Flores
Jonathan B
carmelbennett
nicenehobbit
Jason S
jaybird68
papaz
Dave Hartline
faceman
Good post. I am a convert so praying to the “Saints/Mary was very hard for me at first, but now I have no problem with it.
With my Protestant friends though (the one’s I have left:>) when they asked me why or how could I? The first thing I had to make them realize is, “The Saints are not dead.” I tell them, “If the Saints are dead then so is Jesus and Jesus is not dead.”
They may not ever pray to a Saint, but they begin to understand “those in heaven are alive and we are not praying to dead people.” Pretty much they begin to understand the reasoning behind it, and understand we are asking them to intercede for us, as we ask each other to do.
God Bless, Sandy
I hope Catholics don’t pray to saints to intercede between Jesus and God. But if they want intercession with God then Catholics can pray to Jesus. I assume your saints aren’t replacing Jesus so they must be interceding between us and Jesus. Where does the intercessions end? I believe it ends with Jesus. You believe your saints are in heaven but I believe your saints have yet to be judged. If the Catholic saints are alive then we won’t be seeing them in heaven or the lake of fire because the resurrection is the resurrection of the dead and not the living. I guess the Catholic Church believes it has power to judge people the same as Jesus to know who is written in the Book of Life.
I also think Catholics wear crucifixes and have statues of their saints because they want atheists and other christians to bear witness of their faith. It is better to engrave the love of Jesus in your heart then to engrave reminders of Jesus in statues and crucifixes. I think Catholics worship idols unintentionally but worship themselves intentionally similar to the pharisees.