Prayer

[mjordan]

I have a problem, I am a Catholic and the church teaches us to pray to the saints and Mary but prayer to me is worshop due to God the Trinity] only! I did a bible search on prayer and found that prayer in the bible was alway directed to God. How can I pray to anyone else???

Please help if you have an answer!!I

 

[mayra_hart]

II. INTERCESSION AND INVOCATION

We shall here speak not only of intercession, but also of the invocation of the saints. The one indeed implies the other; we should not call upon the saints for aid unless they could help us. The foundation of both lies in the doctrine of the communion of saints. In the article on this subject it has been shown that the faithful in heaven, on earth, and in purgatory are one mystical body, with Christ for their head. All that is of interest to one part is of interest to the rest, and each helps the rest: we on earth by honouring and invoking the saints and praying for the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven by interceding for us. The Catholic doctrine of intercession and invocation is set forth by the Council of Trent, which teaches that the saints who reign together with Christ offer up their own prayers to God for men. It is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God, through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour. Those persons think impiously who deny that the Saints, who enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, are to be invoked; or who assert either that they do not pray for men, or that the invocation of them to pray for each of us is idolatry, or that it is repugnant to the word of God, and is opposed to the honour of the one Mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ (Sess. XXV). This had already been explained by St. Thomas:

Prayer is offered to a person in two ways: one as though to be granted by himself, another as to be obtained through him. In the first way we pray to God alone, because all our prayers ought to be directed to obtaining grace and glory which God alone gives, according to those words of the Psalm (lxxxiii, 12): ‘The Lord will give grace and glory.’ But in the second way we pray to the holy angels and to men not that God may learn our petition through them, but that by their prayers and merits our prayers may be efficacious. Wherefore it is said in the Apocalypse (viii, 4): ‘And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God from the hand of the angel’ (Summ. Theol., II-II, Q. lxxxiii, a. 4).

 

[mayra_hart]

The reasonableness of the Catholic teaching and practice cannot be better stated than in St. Jerome’s words:

If the Apostles and Martyrs, while still in the body, can pray for others, at a time when they must still be anxious for themselves, how much more after their crowns, victories, and triumphs are won! One man, Moses, obtains from God pardon for six hundred thousand men in arms; and Stephen, the imitator of the Lord, and the first martyr in Christ, begs forgiveness for his persecutors; and shall their power be less after having begun to be with Christ? The Apostle Paul declares that two hundred three score and sixteen souls, sailing with him, were freely given him; and, after he is dissolved and has begun to be with Christ, shall he close his lips, and not be able to utter a word in behalf of those who throughout the whole world believed at his preaching of the Gospel? And shall the living dog Vigilantius be better than that dead lion? (“Contra Vigilant.”, n. 6, in P. L., XXIII, 344). The chief objections raised against the intercession and invocation of the saints are that these doctrines are opposed to the faith and trust which we should have in God alone; that they are a denial of the all-sufficient merits of Christ; and that they cannot be proved from Scripture and the Fathers. Thus Article 22 of the Anglican Church says: “The Romish doctrine concerning the Invocation of Saints is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”