Ancestor Veneration

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AmericanCitizen312

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I know Catholics pray to Saints for intercession, but can a Catholic also pray to a passed loved one for the same reason, like a parent or grandparent?
 
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I ask my deceased relatives to pray for me all the time, especially my dad and my grandma (his mom). This is not “veneration,” which is a word usually reserved for the Blesseds and Saints that have been recognized by the Church.

I also make sure I pray for my deceased relatives as well. :+1:t4:
 
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Well for me it’s pretty hard to tell if all of your ancestors is in heaven unless the Lord gives a sign of they give them a sign to you or you saw them up in heaven. The most assured ones are what we called and proclaimed by the Holy See: “The Saints” who intercedes our prayer to Our Lord Jesus Christ: the one who presents our prayer to God the Father. If your ancestry has a line of Saints I would say: “Congrats!”
But if not you could venerate them but its like a gamble though because you don’t know where their state are. They could be Purgatory or Heaven; or the worst part is Hell. If they are in purgatory if you help them by saying prayers and Holy Mass, if they go to heaven rest assured that they will also help in your prayers too. The more souls you help the more souls are going to help you.
If in case if they are in hell, you cannot venerate them, if in case you venerate them; its pretty useless.

That’s why devotion to the Souls in Purgatory is very useful. It’s never useless. So if you have a spare time or even every day offer them prayers or Holy Mass, rest assured in the times of difficulty, there are many who will help you.
 
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AmericanCitizen312 said:
I know Catholics pray to Saints for intercession, but can a Catholic also pray to a passed loved one for the same reason, like a parent or grandparent?
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Yes, you can. But they won’t be able to help you until they’ve entered heaven.

If you knew them personally and they appeared to live a holy life (attended Church every Sunday, had a strong faith in God, prayed regularly, did works of charity), you can be pretty confident that one day (hopefully sooner than later) they’ll be in heaven where they could assist you and intercede in your behalf. Until then, pray for the eternal repose of their souls and also pray to God to give you a sign to let you know when they’ve entered heaven.
 
I likewise pray for my mom, and also pray to her, asking her to help my family and me.
 
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Why would a family member need to be prayed to in order that they pray for you? Or a saint for that matter?
 
The Communion of Saints prays for us constantly.

Am I correct in my understanding that what you’re asking is why a Saint wouldn’t know what we want before we even ask for it? If you would be so kind so as to clarify so that I can see if I can explain.
 
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Shortly after my mother died, my sister prayed to her and asked her for a favor. She got it almost right away.
 
FiveLinden said:
Why would a family member need to be prayed to in order that they pray for you? Or a saint for that matter?
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I see your point. They (and we) do not “need to,” as you wrote.

We believe that praying for others is efficacious because we are united in Jesus Christ, not just symbolically but also spiritually. Therefore the prayer of one believer can benefit another. I am not sure that it makes a difference that one is still living here on earth while the other is living in heaven. If the one on earth can pray, and his prayer is efficacious, then the one in heaven can too.
 
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If you have reason to believe that your parent or grandparent is in heaven, you can pray to them to help you, as a private devotion.

I pray for the intercession of my deceased parents frequently, sometimes also my late husband and other relatives. Of course I pray for all of their souls as well.
 
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FiveLinden said:
Why would a family member need to be prayed to in order that they pray for you? Or a saint for that matter?
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If you’re a child, and your dad sees you struggling with something, he might come and try to help you, but he likes very much to be asked, because it’s part of the father-child relationship.

In the same way, a person in heaven is your family member (we’re all one big family in Christ whether you were related by familial ties to the person on earth or not) and while he may help you without your asking, especially if he was your father on earth, he still likes to be asked. It builds the relationship. It also might help to prioritize your need even if the saint knows about it already.

We don’t just stop talking to God and saints because they already know what’s going on with us. If we did that, we would have no friendship or relationship, and relationships are what it’s all about. Not just getting requests granted like we’re asking a genie to come out of a bottle.

I frequently talk to my deceased loved ones in Heaven, and my favorite saints in Heaven, even when I don’t have anything to ask them for. I just want to say Hi sometimes, or thank them for something they did for me in the past, or be in their company. It’s not always all about asking for this and that.
 
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I found a relevant paragraph in the CCC. (The bold emphasis is mine.):
958 Communion with the dead . “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.” Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.
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I found this on this on the Ascension website.

The Church has not ruled definitively on this matter. The faithful are allowed to have differing opinions one way or the other. St. Thomas Aquinas believed that, although the souls in purgatory “are above us on account of their impeccability”, they nonetheless “are not in a condition to pray” for those on earth. Other theologians and Doctors of the Church have disagreed with St. Thomas’ assessment. In the first place, St. Robert Bellarmine sees the souls in purgatory as being more than capable of praying for us, as they have greater love for God than we possibly can on this earth, given their close proximity to heaven, not to mention that they are ensured that they will enter heaven eventually. However, he denies that the Church Suffering are aware of our condition and circumstances on earth as the Church Triumphant are ( De Purgatorio , Book 2, Chapter 15).

In response to both of these Doctors of the Church, yet another tossed his hat into the ring. His theological thought has been supported by many more saints since then, such as St. (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina. Often called the “Most Zealous Doctor”, St. Alphonsus Liguori, after quoting a number of theologians who supported the belief, writes the following in the first chapter of his great work, Prayer: The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection . He poses the question on whether or not it is good to invoke the souls in purgatory. He answers:

“[W]e should piously believe that God manifests our prayer to those holy souls in order that they may pray for us; and that so the charitable interchange of mutual prayer may be kept up between them and us…

“n this state they are well able to pray, as they are friends of God. If a father keeps a son whom he tenderly loves in confinement for some fault; if the son then is not in a state to pray for himself, is that any reason why he cannot pray for others? And may he not expect to obtain what he asks, knowing, as he does, his father’s affection for him? So the souls in purgatory, being beloved by God, and confirmed in grace, have absolutely no impediment to prevent them from praying for us.

“Still the Church does not invoke them, or implore their intercession, because ordinarily they have no cognizance of our prayers. But we may piously believe that God makes our prayers known to them; and then they, full of charity, most assuredly do not omit to pray for us. St. Catharine of Bologna, whenever she desired any favor, had recourse to the souls in purgatory, and was immediately heard. She even testified that by the intercession of the souls in purgatory she had obtained many graces which she had not been able to obtain by the intercession of the saints.”
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So apparently the Church has not spoken definitively on this.

Doctors of the Church disagree on the subject.

We are free to ask the prayers of those in purgatory if we wish.
 
Yeah, there’s a difference of opinion on whether souls in purgatory can pray for us while they’re there, or only when they get to Heaven. The Church has not said one way or the other and you will hear some priests say one thing and some say the other.

Given that Purgatory and Heaven time is nothing like earthly time, I do not concern myself with this. I’m sure they’ll pray for me whenever they are able to do so, or it will be referred to a “higher authority” as no prayer is ever wasted. If they’re in Purgatory now, they will be in Heaven eventually, will pray for me then, and God will apply all prayers at the appropriate times, so it’s a completely moot point whether they’re in Purgatory or Heaven right now, except that of course I do all I can to help get my loved ones out of Purgatory quickly.

People who sit around getting hung up about their prayers being possibly ineffective if someone is not in Heaven yet are being overly technical and underestimating both God’s ability to arrange things and the power of prayer in general.
 
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