Over-devotion to Saints and Angels?

[erine]

When is it too much devotion to Saints and Angels to the point of putting too much focus on them and not enough on Christ? I know that’s not really a question that can be specifically answered but I am just wondering. As someone raised episcopalian and always very drawn to the Catholic faith, I was super excited about Mary (my patron saint) and all the Church Triumphant, learning about angels and saints, and so on and praying novenas and such. I always knew they were there but has all this validation and information now. But sometimes my spiritual director gets concerned I’m putting them before Jesus, or was at first in my enthusiasm. I don’t want to do this obviously. Any thoughts?

 

[Trishie]

The desire and intention of the saints and angels is only to draw us closer to God. They lived the two great commandments, love God above all, and others as self and are therefore good examples.
The saints are our sisters and brothers,
but no one but God is God.
The saints and angels, and the Mother would never desire us to see them as our purpose. They wish to point us to God and to inspire us to God,
and as our sisters and brothers and our Mother, pray for us.
The Angels are commissioned by God to watch over us,
but their focus is God.

Yes, we need not to make them an end in themselves, always to fix on God, while delighted in our heavenly communion with all who love God above all beings and things.
Your priest may merely wish to ensure that you are aware of all this.

God’s kindest blessings to you.

 

[Jguerra]

When is it “over-devotion” to the saints and angels?

• When I decorate my home with more icons and pictures of them and not one of my Saviour.
• When I spend all my time at Mass praying my novenas and litanies instead of focusing on the liturgy.
• When I prefer to read the lives of the saints rather than the Bible.
• When I silently converse with my guardian angel or the saint of the day instead of a heart-to-heart dialogue with Jesus.

When do I have a balance?

• When I realize that the saints never lost their focus on the foundation and anchor of their faith despite all hardships.
• When I’m encouraged by their example to continue my walk with the cross.
• When I read the gospel and imagine myself instead of this or that saint with the disciples and Jesus.
• When I picture myself surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1) all cheering me on towards Him who saved me. Not one of those witnesses in that mental picture is saying, “Hey, look at me!”

Hope this helps,

Joe

 

[joshrp]

When is it too much devotion to Saints and Angels to the point of putting too much focus on them and not enough on Christ? I know that’s not really a question that can be specifically answered but I am just wondering. As someone raised episcopalian and always very drawn to the Catholic faith, I was super excited about Mary (my patron saint) and all the Church Triumphant, learning about angels and saints, and so on and praying novenas and such. I always knew they were there but has all this validation and information now. But sometimes my spiritual director gets concerned I’m putting them before Jesus, or was at first in my enthusiasm. I don’t want to do this obviously. Any thoughts?

As long as you treat the saints your friends and not as gods, you will be okay. No Protestant ever tells people they are too devoted to their living friends, now do they? Are we just disrespecting the dead by saying that we can’t have devotion to them?

 

[followingtheway]

When is it too much devotion to Saints and Angels to the point of putting too much focus on them and not enough on Christ?

Well, since I’m Hispanic, there is a lot of people who practice “Santeria” in our culture (not me or my family though). Santeros were Africans who the Spaniards wanted to convert to Catholicism, but they wanted to keep their polytheistic African beliefs, so what they did is the prayed to their gods and goddesses in front of statues of saints. The Spaniards noticed that these Africans shown too much devotion to these saints and later found out about their secret.

The religion is still alive today and many non-African Hispanic practice it and worship Catholic saints and calling them the name of African gods and goddesses.

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

Saints, Angels and Jesus are not separate subjects but are linked together in the hierarchy of truths that lead up to the One source of all Truth, God. It is only when we have distinctions between them and when we have ignorance in our learning about the faith that we separate these as either/or. All truth and all being finds its source in God.

If I have ignorance and separate these into distinct and separate subjects with no link between them, I need to study to get rid of my ignorance. If others have ignorance, then I need to help them to rid themselves of this ignorance, but I must make sure I have rid myself of ignorance first.

 

[erine]

As long as you treat the saints your friends and not as gods, you will be okay. No Protestant ever tells people they are too devoted to their living friends, now do they? Are we just disrespecting the dead by saying that we can’t have devotion to them?

Thanks for all your replies. They articulate a lot of what I’ve been thinking. I wanted to quote this one in particular because this is how I would get torn. I would feel like these new friends I had sort of known my whole life but wasn’t allowed to acknowledge as real, and so got over excited because of this whole new world that I now understood and could acknowledge. But then it’s like wait am I too enthusiastic? I guess the main point like you all said is to remember why they are saints and that we are all one body in Christ.

I think there was a lot of feelings of unworthiness of direct contact with Jesus or that He wouldn’t want to talk to me and stuff…now I’m getting how silly that was…

 

[erine]

Saints, Angels and Jesus are not separate subjects but are linked together in the hierarchy of truths that lead up to the One source of all Truth, God. It is only when we have distinctions between them and when we have ignorance in our learning about the faith that we separate these as either/or. All truth and all being finds its source in God.

If I have ignorance and separate these into distinct and separate subjects with no link between them, I need to study to get rid of my ignorance. If others have ignorance, then I need to help them to rid themselves of this ignorance, but I must make sure I have rid myself of ignorance first.

exactly…couldn’t have said it better myself