Are some Saints more powerful than others?

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Two hypothetical saints that both die when they are 30 and both lived saintly lives. The first dies of pneumonia and the second had years of persecution, torture and martyrdom because of the faith. If the second one has more treasure stored in Heaven does that mean he has more sway with God?
 
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No.
Mary has “more sway with God” because she is Jesus’ Mother.
Some theologians would also put St Joseph (as being Jesus’ foster father) and/or John the Baptist (who in Scripture was sanctified in the womb and called “greatest” by Jesus) in an upper echelon of saints, just below Mary.

But other than that, saints don’t get ranked.
 
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Yes, they all do get ranked. Yes, some Saints are greater than others. We just don’t know the whole ranking., but we are capable of comparing.

Glory in heaven is like the size of the recipient we can use to store water. The bigger the love for God, the larger the recipient.
 
Aulef said:
Yes, they all do get ranked. Yes, some Saints are greater than others. We just don’t know the whole ranking., but we are capable of comparing.
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Please provide reliable source support for “some saints are more powerful with God”. Yes, God ranks us all in holiness, including saints, but that wasn’t the OP’s question. He was asking if certain saints are more likely to get us a good result with God. That’s totally different and there is to my knowledge no basis for claiming that one saint is more powerful with God than another, except for Mary and possibly (based on writings of Popes) the two others I mentioned.

Nor is it based on who had the longest and most painful martyrdom. St John the Evangelist for example died a natural death. Do we avoid praying to him because he didn’t suffer pain? No.
 
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I don’t know about power, but we are told that some have more grace than others. I do not know what that amounts to though. I presume it is good to have more grace. My guess is that a saint with more grace is more in tune with God. I kind of doubt that “power” (the capacity to affect random things in one’s surroundings) is a sought after commodity in heaven, as that would imply glorification of the self, when, at that point, God is All.

Like true happiness, true understanding probably only comes with being in heaven with God.
 
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I would argue that it is an accepted truth that some saints obtain more merit than others i.e. a sinner converted as death vs. someone who had ministered in the cult of religion since childhood.

I would like to quote St. John Vianney who especially had a devotion to the martyr St. Philomena: “to Philomena nothing is refused.”

I agree with Aulef
Aulef said:
Glory in heaven is like the size of the recipient we can use to store water. The bigger the love for God, the larger the recipient.
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… in essence, the more we love God on earth, the more we will know Him in Heaven.

St. Thomas also mentions in the summa that certain saints can only hear prayers for specific intentions.
 
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I don’t think the message there is necessarily that God will give/regard everyone the same, but rather just that we ought to accept what we are given, and not worry how God will treat the rest because He is perfect and only He can say what is fair, what is deserved.
 
cannotdecide said:
I would argue that it is an accepted truth that some saints obtain more merit than others i.e. a sinner converted as death vs. someone who had ministered in the cult of religion since childhood.
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“Obtaining more merit” is first of all, not something humans on earth can judge, and second of all, has nothing to do with whether God hears the prayers of a certain saint or not.

St. John Vianney had a devotion to St. Philomena. That doesn’t mean that the guy in the next pew praying to another saint wasn’t going to get his prayer answered because he didn’t pick St. Philomena and instead picked St. Swithin or St. Joan of Arc.

If we all just picked the saints we thought had “most merit” then nobody would ever become a canonized saint because in order to become a saint, there needs to be “evidence of cult,” i.e. people praying for the deceased person’s intercession, and who would pray for the intercession of Servant of God Lucia dos Santos or Venerable Fulton Sheen when St. Philomena is the saint most likely to get the job done? It makes no sense.
 
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But why then, does Jesus say “greatest in the kingdom of heaven” and “least in the kingdom of heaven”
Not disagreeing with you. Because I would like to believe all saints are enjoying heaven equally. But I have pondered this before…
 
or you can just pray to Jesus yourself. isn’t that why He died to open that line of communication again?
 
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I think I’ve stated this before upthread, but it’s perfectly possible for God to have levels of “greatest” and “least” in the Kingdom of Heaven based on merit, but not prioritize intercessory prayers.

There seems to be some concept on this thread that a saint having greater merit means that the saint’s intercession would be more efficacious. Apart from our Mother Mary, who is recognized in Church teaching as having a very special connection to Jesus as well as being the only sinless human ever, there is no teaching or evidence that a particular saint has more powerful intercession than another saint.

It’s rather disturbing for someone to be going around saying “Who’s the most powerful saint, so I can ask their intercession?” The great saints who, while on earth, chose to ask the intercession of certain saints in heaven didn’t choose their intercessors based on this concept of “who’s the most powerful saint?” They chose a saint with whom they felt a personal connection for some reason. Furthermore, calling one saint more powerful than another is verging on prohibited voodoo practice. All saints are just praying with us, to God. They don’t have powers of their own. Whatever they do is God working through them.
 
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There is some scriptural evidence that merit and the efficacy of prayer go hand in hand (cf. James 5:16), but I think that is generally because such a righteous person tends to be more “in tune” with what is conducive to salvation, and those are the prayers God always answers yes to. All the Saints in heaven would be perfectly “in tune”

That being said, as you mention there are degrees of glory in Heaven and therefore it makes sense there would be degrees of glory on earth (we see this between canonized an uncanonized saints) and that God might work in such a way through them that is most fitting to their merits. The “most fitting” reasoning is why Mary has her special role and is glorified above all the saints.

But yeah, thinking of it in terms of “power” seems off.
 
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If I remember correctly, St Thomas Aquinas wrote about the hierarchy of angels. If angels have hierarchy, why wouldn’t saints? Mary is called first among saints, it means in Heaven not all are equal at least in some sense.
 
Remember that St. Michael the Archangel, the “prince of the heavenly host”, and the other archangels were actually from the second-lowest group of angels in the “hierarchy of angels”.
 
cannotdecide said:
I would argue that it is an accepted truth that some saints obtain more merit than others i.e. a sinner converted as death vs. someone who had ministered in the cult of religion since childhood.
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There is a variance of glory in Heaven but it isn’t - per se - based on a timetable of how long a person was serving in the Church. An atheist that asks God for forgiveness in their final moments doesn’t necessarily have less merit than a privileged person weaned with excellent spiritual role models from infancy. It is all hidden from us but known to God.
 
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