Saint question

[mommy_k]

I have a devotion to Mary. Why would I also need to ask for intercession from a saint instead of Her? She is Queen of all Saints and I feel like I would be ‘cheating’ on my devotion to Her.
She is closest to Jesus, so She can ask of anything.

I love many saints, an would love to ask for intercession from them too, but to me it shows a lack of confidence in Mary on my part. Please help me understand this.

I am a cradle Catholic and have seen many people go to saints and wish I could too, but I am blocked by this thinking.

Thank you-

 

[ajecphotos]

I always ask St Padre Pio to intercede. Nothing wrong in that as long as that is all you do. For me, God is the most important one to pray to. I always ask Mary to intercede for me too.

To me, some people go over board when praying to saints. I have seen quite a bit of that.

I am not one to kiss relics and bow down to saints, like i used to do. My outlook on that has changed as i tend to think that even the saints would be trying to pull us back from kissing a relic of them or kneeling in front of a statue / relic of them and praying. This is my own personal view. As long as you put God first in everything then i see no problem in asking a saint to intercede for you. God bless

 

[mommy_k]

Thank you for your reply!

I also ask for intercession from Angels-ie: St. Michael, but in my mind the angels are different somehow.

I would very much like to have a devotion to St. Teresa of Avila. I am hoping to put my mind at rest so I can begin.

 

[dmar198]

I have a devotion to Mary. Why would I also need to ask for intercession from a saint instead of Her?

Technically you wouldn’t need to, but consider this: God has set patron saints over certain causes because sometimes He wants to grant our prayers only through their intercession. If you decide not to ask for their intercession, God might not answer that prayer, and he might have answered it if you had asked for their intercession. It’s just something to consider. We have patron saints for a reason.

 

[Origen52]

There is no jealousy in heaven, and Mary having been conceived without mortal sin, would not have been jealous during her earthly life. Her feelings are not hurt if you also pray to the saints.

We pray and reflect on saints with whom we feel a connection. This is not done in place of worship to God, just as we say the rosary but still go to Mass. I usually just talk to my favourite saints. Because I tend to have a quick temper when dealing with people I think are being deliberately obtuse, I usually turn to Saint Jerome for help in curbing that tendency.

 

[Bookcat]

he is Queen of all Saints and I feel like I would be ‘cheating’ on my devotion to Her.
She is closest to Jesus, so She can ask of anything.

I love many saints, an would love to ask for intercession from them too, but to me it shows a lack of confidence in Mary on my part. Please help me understand this.​

Nope. God wills it to be a family…a Church. A communion of saints (the Saints who are Canonized, the saints in heaven who are not, the saints on earth…and those in purgatory -saint being a term for all those living in Christ -see my other posts on such)…a communion of Love.

Similar to the fact that my praying to Our Lady is not taking away from my praying to Jesus the Lord! I pray very directly to him…but asking Our Lady’s prayers is good and within the will of God. So too is asking others in heaven to pray…or others who are not …like each other here on this pilgrimage.

 

[fred_conty]

Right here on CAF we have a special prayer forum to solicit prayers from people. If we don’t believe in this, then I can see a person not asking for prayers from the saints, that is their prayer forum. It is always good to have as many people praying for us and our intentions as possible.

When we ask one saint to pray for us it dosen’t mean that we stop praying and let them do all the praying. But rather we have asked them to pray with us. The more we have the better.

The church herself prays the litany of the saints on some occasions to ask many of the saints to pray for our intentions. If the church does it, then we should do what she does.

The time we spend talking to them is the same as if we talked to any good friend. If we are afraid to talk to them because it takes away our time with praying to Jesus, then we shouldn’t talk to anyone on earth either for this too would be taking time away from talking to Jesus. But rather charity is what Jesus asked of us. That means we care for others. The saints care only if they know what our problem is and that means we must talk to them and let them know.

Anytime you talk to saints, you are talking to other Christs, for we are all God’s children and talking is one of the ways we must carry on with charity for one another. They love us and want to know. And one saint is never jealous of another being prayed to.

Pray to many as you like or to none if you like, but do it from love and not the wrong reasons.

May Jesus be praised and may all be blessed.