Just a thought from a lutheran

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themattman

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Ok so I need someone ro tell me why as a Protestant it seems you are praying to Mary? This is not an attack. I am trying to understand your faith, because I fell that God has been calling to the Catholic faith for years and I keep running because I don’t understand. And because my wife is very ati catholic.
Anyway if we could start with this and then move on it would be helpful.
Merry Christmas everyone. The Lutheran looking for the truth
Matthew
 
So she can pray for us. It’s like asking another Christian to pray for you. And what better person that Jesus’ mom?
 
themattman said:
Ok so I need someone ro tell me why as a Protestant it seems you are praying to Mary? This is not an attack. I am trying to understand your faith, because I fell that God has been calling to the Catholic faith for years and I keep running because I don’t understand. And because my wife is very ati catholic.
Anyway if we could start with this and then move on it would be helpful.
Merry Christmas everyone. The Lutheran looking for the truth
Matthew
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Hi, Matt…I am not that clear with your question…but are you asking why pray to Mary or the saints?

It is called intercessory prayer. Some definitions to clear. Prayer, to a Catholic, is not worship, but prayers are pleas, requests, intercessions…petitions…and we ask those already in heaven to help us pray to God for our pleas, petitions. Catholic worship is through the Mass.

i hope this helps a little. If not clear, please ask some more questions.

Please refer or read the Journal on Mary, Mother of God…it should clear alot of things for you…chnetwork.org/resources/coming-home-journals/

Godbless and Merry Christmas…
 
themattman said:
Ok so I need someone ro tell me why as a Protestant it seems you are praying to Mary? This is not an attack. I am trying to understand your faith, because I fell that God has been calling to the Catholic faith for years and I keep running because I don’t understand. And because my wife is very ati catholic.
Anyway if we could start with this and then move on it would be helpful.
Merry Christmas everyone. The Lutheran looking for the truth
Matthew
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The saints in heaven are alive. Thay are fully alive in God. Love is more powerful than death.

When your loved one dies you still love the person. Love is always reciprocated, or it is not love. If you love deceased relative that person still loves you.

What it means to love someone is to will the person’s good. One way we do that here is to pray for those we love. You want good thigs for those you love and the ultimate good is heaven, to be with God and His saints forever.

The fully alive souls in heaven pray for us, because they love us.

There is one Church, one Body of Christ. There are not many churches. There is one. There is not a church in heaven and another one on earth. We are one body, in communion with the saints in heaven and one another here on earth, all alive in Christ.

Mary is the mother of God, the mother of Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinty. She is a creature, a human person, like you. She is also a child of God, a daughter of the Father. She conceived by the Holy Spirit. So she is mother of the Son, daughter of the Father, and spouse of the Holy Spirit.

She is fully alive in God, as are the saints, but Mary is unique. No other person is like her. She loves you. She is also your mother and will assist you ont your spritiaul journey.

Asking another Christian to pray for you is sometyhing Protestants do all thew time. How odd it is that they reject the help of the saints, especially Mary who again is mother of the Son, daughter of the father and spouse of the Spirit.

Jesus is like you in every way, but sin. He felt pain, hunger, sore muscles, and also as fully man like you, had certain people close to Him, His mother being the closest.

If your mother asked you for a favor for her friend, or some stranger asked the same. Which would have most infliuence with you?

This life is a spiritual journey. It order to get to our destiny we need help. We pray for one another on our journey’s and the saints pray for us for the same reason, they love us.

Mary mother of all souls, pray for us.
 
hn160 said:
Why not just pray to Christ, He promised to hear us?
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We do pray to Christ. Sometimes it is scary to pray alone. So we pray with Mary to Christ. And sometimes we are incapable of doing/saying/praying anything except, Mary pray FOR me.
 
hn160 said:
Why not just pray to Christ, He promised to hear us?
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Don’t you profess the creed? Then you should be familiar with this phrase…“communion of saints”?

Look at post 4…it is explained in the response to similar question you posted.

And as per James…the prayer of a righteous man availeth much…and you should know what intercessory prayers are, right?

Frrom…scripturecatholic.com/saints.html

Eph. 3:14-15- we are all one family (“Catholic”) in heaven and on earth, united together, as children of the Father, through Jesus Christ. Our brothers and sisters who have gone to heaven before us are not a different family. We are one and the same family. This is why, in the Apostles Creed, we profess a belief in the “communion of saints.” There cannot be a “communion” if there is no union. Loving beings, whether on earth or in heaven, are concerned for other beings, and this concern is reflected spiritually through prayers for one another.

1 Tim 2:1-2 - because Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), many Protestants deny the Catholic belief that the saints on earth and in heaven can mediate on our behalf. But before Paul’s teaching about Jesus as the “one mediator,” Paul urges supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. Paul is thus appealing for mediation from others besides Christ, the one mediator. Why?

1 Tim 2:3 - because this subordinate mediation is good and acceptable to God our Savior. Because God is our Father and we are His children, God invites us to participate in Christ’s role as mediator.

1 Tim. 2:5 - therefore, although Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, there are many intercessors (subordinate mediators).
 
hn160 said:
Why not just pray to Christ, He promised to hear us?
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He also told us to pray together. A Lutheran congregation joins together in prayer. A Lutheran asks another Lutheran to pray for some partiucular thing. We ask Mary to pray for us, to join us in praying for some intention, as you would ask another Lutheran.

Why would one person ask another to pray for something, when all you have to do is pray to Christ?

The term, I pray you, used to be commonly used. It has nothing to do with worship, which is for God alone.

Do you make requests of others that they would help you find a job, solve a problem? Why not just make the request of Christ?

The difference in asking anyone here alive on earth and asking Mary for help, or any of the saints, is that she is in heaven.
 
hn160 said:
Why not just pray to Christ, He promised to hear us?
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According to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. v) the order established by God among things is that “the last should be led to God by those that are midway between.” Wherefore, since the saints who are in heaven are nearest to God, the order of the Divine law requires that we, who while we remain in the body are pilgrims from the Lord, should be brought back to God by the saints who are between us and Him: and this happens when the Divine goodness pours forth its effect into us through them. And since our return to God should correspond to the outflow of His boons upon us, just as the Divine favors reach us by means of the saints intercession, so should we, by their means, be brought back to God, that we may receive His favors again. Hence it is that we make them our intercessors with God, and our mediators as it were, when we ask them to pray for us.
 
Why not pray directly to Christ? ALL prayer is directed to Christ, the saints, being holier than us, will do a better job at praying to CHrist for us than we would even for ourselves.
 
Mary is our heavenly Mother who gently takes us by the hand and leads us to Christ (like at the wedding feast of Cana).

I use this example with my 5th grade CCD kids.

“You want something from your dad so you go to your Mom and say,'hay mom, can you ask dad if I can have ______?” Forgive the simpleness of this explanation, but it was intended for 5th graders, but ya git the point.

Mary does not grant our prayer requests but takes them to her Son so HE can grant them, if it be in His Will to do so, and Mary NEVER EVER goes against the Will of God.👍
 
Would you pray for me because I will pray for you. We ask the Blessed Mother to pray for us. I don’t ask her to forgive my sins but I hope she will love a wretch like me and shall we say “put in a good word to her Son” about my efforts and desire to be a better person and the immense help I need to do so. We adore the Blessed Mother for the role she accepted to be the Mother of our Lord. Gabriel came to Mary and said, Hail Mary, full of grace. That phrase “full of grace” (and I’m sure there might be other verses to support) was primary in Pope Pius IX’s 1854 declaration that Mary was free from original sin. That idea had been considered and traditionally accepted for centuries absent of any definite Papal declaration until 1854. Four years later (1858) in Lourdes, France, Bernadette Soubirous meets the Blessed Mother at the Grotto of Massabielle, a garbage dump on the outskirts of Lourdes. She has 15 encounters with the Holy Mother and by now Bernadette has drawn a crowd, a mixture of believers and others who thinks she’s nuts, cracked, and needs to be committed. Bernadette is 14 years old and not considered by many in the town not to be the “sharpest tool in the box.” She does not know who this lady is. She refers to the lady as “that one.” On the 15th encounter, she asks the lady who she is; the lady is hesitant to answer. After the third request, the lady sternly looks at her and says, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The historical record indicates Bernadette did not know the meaning of Immaculate Conception but when she told her supporters and the parish priest that term, shock of all shocks. We don’t worship Mary. Let me repeat that again, we don’t worship Mary. She has a reflective power who reflects of her Son’s love and forgiveness and she loves us as well. We believe that she fell asleep and was assumed body and soul into heaven without suffering a physical death. I know what the Lutheran Church says about the Blessed Mother, I am former LCMS. The Lutheran Church (especially the LCMS) misunderstands and hence disagrees with the Church on the doctrine of Mary. I don’t know whether this is a result of extensive study or just the desire not to pursue the Church’s extensive study and resultant declarations of the Blessed Mother. As for myself, I love the Blessed Mother, I’m more than happy to “have her in my camp.” I keep my Rosary with me at all times and pray the Rosary every day and I’m a better man for it.
 
15thClub said:
Would you pray for me because I will pray for you. We ask the Blessed Mother to pray for us. I don’t ask her to forgive my sins but I hope she will love a wretch like me and shall we say “put in a good word to her Son” about my efforts and desire to be a better person and the immense help I need to do so. We adore the Blessed Mother for the role she accepted to be the Mother of our Lord. Gabriel came to Mary and said, Hail Mary, full of grace. That phrase “full of grace” (and I’m sure there might be other verses to support) was primary in Pope Pius IX’s 1854 declaration that Mary was free from original sin. That idea had been considered and traditionally accepted for centuries absent of any definite Papal declaration until 1854. Four years later (1858) in Lourdes, France, Bernadette Soubirous meets the Blessed Mother at the Grotto of Massabielle, a garbage dump on the outskirts of Lourdes. She has 15 encounters with the Holy Mother and by now Bernadette has drawn a crowd, a mixture of believers and others who thinks she’s nuts, cracked, and needs to be committed. Bernadette is 14 years old and not considered by many in the town not to be the “sharpest tool in the box.” She does not know who this lady is. She refers to the lady as “that one.” On the 15th encounter, she asks the lady who she is; the lady is hesitant to answer. After the third request, the lady sternly looks at her and says, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The historical record indicates Bernadette did not know the meaning of Immaculate Conception but when she told her supporters and the parish priest that term, shock of all shocks. We don’t worship Mary. Let me repeat that again, we don’t worship Mary. She has a reflective power who reflects of her Son’s love and forgiveness and she loves us as well. We believe that she fell asleep and was assumed body and soul into heaven without suffering a physical death. I know what the Lutheran Church says about the Blessed Mother, I am former LCMS. The Lutheran Church (especially the LCMS) misunderstands and hence disagrees with the Church on the doctrine of Mary. I don’t know whether this is a result of extensive study or just the desire not to pursue the Church’s extensive study and resultant declarations of the Blessed Mother. As for myself, I love the Blessed Mother, I’m more than happy to “have her in my camp.” I keep my Rosary with me at all times and pray the Rosary every day and I’m a better man for it.
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bookofconcord.org/defense_20_saints.php

Here the reformer Melanchthon speaks of the reasons why the Lutheran reformers, and Lutherans since have foregone invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and it is NOT because of a rejection of her greatness, or their’s, but because of the perceived abuses of invocation, and a rejection of treasury of merits.
Lutherans do not deny that the saints pray for the Church Militant. They do, regardless of our invocation of them.
Besides, we also grant that the angels pray for us. For there is a testimony in Zech. 1:12, where an angel prays: O Lord of hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on 9] Jerusalem? Although concerning the saints we concede that, just as, when alive, they pray for the Church universal in general, so in heaven they pray for the Church in general, albeit no testimony concerning the praying of the dead is extant in the Scriptures, except the dream taken from the Second Book of Maccabees, 15:14.
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The concern for us is as follows:
Moreover, even supposing that the saints pray for the Church ever so much, 10] yet it does not follow that they are to be invoked; although our Confession affirms only this, that Scripture does not teach the invocation of the saints, or that we are to ask the saints for aid.** But since neither a command, nor a promise, nor an example can be produced from the Scriptures concerning the invocation of saints, it follows that conscience can have nothing concerning this invocation that is certain.** And since prayer ought to be made from faith, how do we know that God approves this invocation? Whence do we know without the testimony of Scripture that the saints perceive the prayers of each one?
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Now, **my opinion **is that this is a rather tepid rejection of invocation, and I believe that had the invocation of saints been presented in those times as Catholics present it today, the confessions might have been written differently regarding it. As a result of this, and also because of its historic practice within the Church, both east and west, I believe Lutherans ought not be too strident in our rejection of invocation, if Catholics present it in the ways Catholics here do so.
I also believe that it is perfectly appropriate for us to recognize that the saints do pray for us, and that we do well to pray the Father listen to their prayers on our behalf.

Jon
 
If you listen to the prayers, we are asking Mary to pray for us. We are asking for her intercession. We honor her, venerate her, and love her, but we do not WORSHIP her. I’m a convert, and as such, I’m still trying to get closer to Mary because in the faith I was raised in (Southern Baptist) we didn’t consider Mary special. There wasn’t any focus on her at all. So I’ve had to develop a relationship with our Lady but thru God’s grace I feel closer to our Mother every day. So we don’t pray to our Lady in the way we pray to God, but we honor her in song and in canticles,etc. and we ask always for her intercession. Pax.
 
hn160 said:
Why not just pray to Christ, He promised to hear us?
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Okay, well then, why have prayer lists? Why have prayer circles? We ask people to pray for us because there is power in numbers. As Catholics we ask people to pray for us just like Protestants. The only difference is we ask the Saints to pray for us. Protestants don’t ask the dead to pray for them. We do. In fact, one of my so called “big guns” is St. Joseph. He has helped me with his intercession many times. Try it, it works. Pax.
 
JonNC said:
bookofconcord.org/defense_20_saints.php

…

Now, **my opinion **is that this is a rather tepid rejection of invocation, and I believe that had the invocation of saints been presented in those times as Catholics present it today, the confessions might have been written differently regarding it. As a result of this, and also because of its historic practice within the Church, both east and west, I believe Lutherans ought not be too strident in our rejection of invocation, if Catholics present it in the ways Catholics here do so.

I also believe that it is perfectly appropriate for us to recognize that the saints do pray for us, and that we do well to pray the Father listen to their prayers on our behalf.
Jon
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Thanks for the information Jon. Much appreciated. If I may add my two cents, it seems to me that the entire basis for the “tepid” rejection lies not in a rejection of the practice per se, but in the rejection of the teaching authority of the Church. To Catholics, the argument is easily rejected, as we accept the authority of the Church to teach such matters as a matter of Sacred Tradition that comes to us from the Apostles, whether or not such “warrant” is expressly to be found in Scripture. However, we would also say that the scriptural warrant for asking the saints for intercession (whether in Heaven or on Earth) does find its roots in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments.

Christmas Peace,
Robert
 
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