...Saints ? ermm.. i don't get it

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MishellaLee

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So i’m new to being catholic… but i don’t get why people pray to saints… I don’t want you to think I’m a bad catholic or anything… But isn’t praying to someone who is dead…worshipping? Why do we pray to saints? I get confuzzled… I thought saints were just role models for us catholics, they got out of their comfort zone to do good…I don’t know…please answer!
 
No, it’s a common point of confusion to protestants and others unfamiliar with the faith.

We ask the saints to intercede on our behalf with Jesus. Just like you might ask me to pray for you, you can ask the saints to pray for you. They have no powers of their own, they do not grant our requests, they simply pray with us.

Jesus, in His prayer in the garden, asked that we might all be one. St. Paul discusses just as the body consists of many parts but is one body, so the church is made of many parts but all are one in Christ. All of us are part of the Catholic church, those on earth and those in heaven- God is the God of the living, not the dead, we are all alive in Him.

The saints are not gods, but they are just people we know to be in heaven. Scripture tells us that the prayer of the righteous man has great effect, how much more so the saints who are in heaven with Jesus.
 
MishellaLee said:
and … is that a stupid question? just curious :confused:
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No, it’s not. You have a question, and you’re smart enough to come looking for an answer.

I’m going to recommend a book for you. Don’t be put off by the title. It is part of the “For Dummies” series (which is far preferable to the "Idiot’s guide’ series).

“Catholicism for Dummies.”

It addresses saints very thoroughly and very readably and is outstandingly “orthodox” (meaning ‘correct’) in its Catholicity.

You can probably find it at the library or if you’re like me, find your local Barnes and Nobles, grab a copy there, find a comfy chair, and read the appropriate chapter.

And since I have the book right here in my own personal library, you’ll find it in “Chapter 15: Calling on the canonized” on page 273.

There is also a ‘boxed’ section on page 243 titled, "Is Saintly Intercession non-Christian? which will help.

To get right down to it, prayer to the saints (and prayer is NOT ‘worship’) is just like asking your ‘living’ friends to pray to God with you. It’s not necessary but at times you may feel comforted having others ‘with you’. But you don’t HAVE to pray to saints.

Even though they are physically ‘dead’ we know from Scripture that those who have died in Christ are united with Him in heaven AS LIVING BEINGS. So we aren’t praying to ‘the dead’. Christ defeated death, after all --death has no more power over any of us, in that when we die we KNOW that we will pass to ‘living forever’. Christ said "He who believes in me even though he should die, he SHALL LIVE FOREVER’ which certainly seems to me to show that Christ doesn’t consider those who have died to be ‘dead’ but instead to be living with Him eternally. . .

God bless you!
 
It’s not a stupid question, it’s something lots of people are confused by, and you’re much better asking than not. And you’re not a bad Catholic either, just new and with a lot to learn about the faith. Don’t worry - it took 2,000 years to get in the shape it’s in, so there’s always new things to learn!

Put it this way, have you ever asked another person to pray for you? Family or friends, pastors, people like that?

Maybe you haven’t, but if you did so would you feel like you were ‘worshipping’ the person who you asked to pray for you? I hope not, because you’re not worshipping them by merely asking them to pray for you.

And that’s all we’re doing with the saints in heaven. We believe that not even death can break the relationship all Christians do and should have with each other as fellow members of the Body of Christ, and there are many places in scripture where the members of that body not only DO pray for each other and ask for prayers from each other but are exhorted to pray for each other.

So, for example, in the Hail Mary we ask ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, PRAY FOR US sinners, now and at the hour of our death.’ We’re merely asking Mary for her prayers, like people doubtless did when she she was on Earth. And prayers to the other saints are similar. Yes, some prayers also talk about how wonderful the saint was and is for different reasons, but calling someone wonderful certainly doesn’t equate to worshipping them either, otherwise every mother surely worships her child when the child does something great!

By the way, both the word ‘prayer’ and the word ‘worship’ used to have quite different meanings and much broader uses than they do now. Hamlet’s mother Gertrude says to him ‘Hamlet, pray thee do not go to Wittenberg’. Documents in use in many courts, such as the United States Supreme Court, have a heading ‘prayer for relief’ and in fact in those documents people ‘pray’ the court to do particular things for them.

Some judges in my part of the world, and some other parts, are called ‘Your Worship’. An old form of the wedding vows goes ‘with my body, I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’

An awful lot of both praying and worshipping, seemingly, going on then - the good news is none of it is in the least sinful!!! None of it does or gives anything to anyone else that is due to God alone. :nope: 👍
 
Firstly - no, it is not a stupid question!

We are not praying to someone who is dead - our God is not a God of the dead but of the living (Mark 12:27). They are saints because they are in heaven -therefore they are even more alive than we are now! They are enjoying the presence of the Lord, freed from sin, adoring Him night and day. To pray to the saints is not the same as worshipping them - that would be wrong, since worship, as the Church teaches, is due to God alone. However, ask what are you doing when you pray to a saint? You are asking them to intercede with the Lord on your behalf. Do you not do the same thing if you ask a friend to pray for an ill relative, for example? That is intercession - but surely the intercession of the saints is even more powerful than this since they are truly in the presence of the Lord! The book of Revelation mentions the prayers of the saints which are offered to God in the form of incense (5:8; 8:3-4) - this is what happens when we pray to the saints.

Note too that the idea of seeking the intercession of saints is no mere invention of the Catholic Church as some Protestants would like to believe. It is clearly a scriptural practice, and it is a practice which was recommended by the Early Church Fathers. Origen wrote: “Not the High Priest (Christ) alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels…as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep”. And, for one other example, Saint Augustine wrote: “A Christian people celebrate together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers”. So, the saints are most certainly to be taken as models for living our own lives, but it is also laudable to seek their aid in prayer.
 
MishellaLee,

Since you say you are new to Catholicism, something you may want to look for when getting books on the faith is the ‘Nihil Obstat’ and ‘Imprimatur’ which is normally indicated in the first few pages along with the publisher info. This is an indication that the book has been reviewed, with the Imprimatur indicating that a bishop has declared it free of doctrinal error.

I like several of Karl Keatings books, ‘Catholicism and Fundamentalism’ is a good book presenting many of the fundamentalist criticisms of Catholicism with an explanation of the actual Catholic position and defense/explanation.
 
Thankyou guys so much :] I will read up on it more. And thankyou all, for your time to answer my questions… :}

thankyou thankyou thankyou!

god bless you all

thankyou again :]

-Michelle :]
 
MishellaLee said:
So i’m new to being catholic… but i don’t get why people pray to saints… I don’t want you to think I’m a bad catholic or anything… But isn’t praying to someone who is dead…worshipping? Why do we pray to saints? I get confuzzled… I thought saints were just role models for us catholics, they got out of their comfort zone to do good…I don’t know…please answer!
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Hi, and welcome to the faith! Since the saints are in heaven, we don’t consider them “dead”. We worship God, we honor the saints. Much the same way you would honor your father and mother, or anyone else who does great things. We presume the saints can hear our prayers and pray for us. Since they are perfect in heaven, they are very close to God and they can receive our requests and offer them to God on our behalf. I know the Blessed Mother perfects our prayers for us berfore offering them to her Son, so she is a good advocate. I liken it to asking a friend or relative to pray for me when I’m sick or in trouble. You can ask anyone whom you consider to be a good advocate to speak to God on your behalf. Saints are included. If they can hear us, then they can pray for us, too.

Likewise, we pray for the souls in purgatory to help them get to heaven sooner, and when they do, they in turn, pray for us.

Remember, as Catholics, we believe in the “Communion of Saints”, which means we believe we are all one body in Christ. Those in heaven are the Church Triumphant; those in purgatory are the Church Suffering, and we souls remaning on earth are the Church Militant. So, together, we are Christ’s Church and we help each other with prayer and intercession rather than ignore each other.

If you can ask a neighbor to pray for you, why wouldn’t you ask a perfect soul in heaven to pray for you, also? They are much closer to God than your neighbor is!

Many non-Catholics misunderstand our prayers to saints. They accuse us of “worshiping” the saints like we worship God. But if you think about the various kinds of prayers:

Adoration (prayers of adoration are to God)
Contrition (prayers of contrition are to God)
Thanksgiving (Prayers of thanksgiving are primarily to God, but also to a saint whom you feel has interceded for you)
Supplication (or petitioning - we may petition God directly, or since we ask neighbors to pray prayers of petition on our behalf, it is fitting that we could also ask this of a particular saint)

So, not ALL prayers have to go directly to God. There are various types of prayers and although adoration is for God alone, supplication and thanksgiving can be directed at saints or neighbors or friends or family. Saying you can’t say “thank you” to a saint is like saying you can’t say “thank you” to a friend for giving you a gift.

Prayer is simply communication. God does not forbid us to communicate with anyone. He made us to be social and He has even given His very own mother to us as our advocate. That means we may speak to her. She hears us, as do all the saints. By the way, this includes ALL people in heaven - not just those whom the Church has canonized. So if you have a loved one that you think is in heaven or purgatory, you can speak (pray) to them.

I hope that explanation was helpful.
 
When I was a child, I believed I had a guardian angel. That sounds silly, but I had a very traumatic childhood, and when bad things would happen, this person would appear in my dreams and tell me that I would be OK. I don’t remember if the angel identified himself as my guardian angel first or if my mother was the first to call him that. I do know that it was a great source of comfort for me and only increased my faith in God. The things that I experienced were very grown-up problems, and this guardian angel gave me a sense of peace and protection from those things.

I had a very big problem accepting saints and praying to them. My perspective changed when someone told me “think of saints as our guardian angels.” This, I can relate to, since I’ve always felt like I’ve had the protection of a guardian angel. And just like I use to talk to my guardian angel when I was scared or hurt, I can talk to the saints now. They are not God, but they do God’s work by ensuring our protection.
 
MishellaLee said:
So i’m new to being catholic… but i don’t get why people pray to saints… I don’t want you to think I’m a bad catholic or anything… But isn’t praying to someone who is dead…worshipping? Why do we pray to saints? I get confuzzled… I thought saints were just role models for us catholics, they got out of their comfort zone to do good…I don’t know…please answer!
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we ask the Saints to pray for us just like we ask each other to pray for us. What is condemned in the Bible is trying to contact spirits to ask for information about the future, etc… this is different, we dont do this. In addition, the Saints are alive in Christ. We are all united by the Holy Spirit, we are all one Church. People don’t stop being part of the Church when they die… there’s the Church Militant (Earth), Church Triumphant (Heaven), and Church Suffering (Purgatory). The reason we ask them to pray for us, is because in Scripture it says that the “prayer of a righteous man avails much” and they are very close to God, especially now that they are in Heaven. Their prayers are very powerful.

The other part is what you said about worshipping… praying is not worshipping. Worship is offering the Eucharist, - and we only offer the Sacrifice of the Mass to the Father.
 
God loves for us to pray to the saints because He loves to do good to us through people.

So that, for example, in your family, God gives you a gift through your mother, or through your father, or a brother or a sister.

We are a Communion of Saints ultimately… and so we cannot be cut off from one another. But rather, one body in Christ, we are always helping one another, united in our love of God.
 
icamay said:
When I was a child, I believed I had a guardian angel. That sounds silly, but I had a very traumatic childhood, and when bad things would happen, this person would appear in my dreams and tell me that I would be OK. I don’t remember if the angel identified himself as my guardian angel first or if my mother was the first to call him that. I do know that it was a great source of comfort for me and only increased my faith in God. The things that I experienced were very grown-up problems, and this guardian angel gave me a sense of peace and protection from those things.

I had a very big problem accepting saints and praying to them. My perspective changed when someone told me “think of saints as our guardian angels.” This, I can relate to, since I’ve always felt like I’ve had the protection of a guardian angel. And just like I use to talk to my guardian angel when I was scared or hurt, I can talk to the saints now. They are not God, but they do God’s work by ensuring our protection.
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It does not sound silly at all to have believed that you had a guardian angel. In fact, I hope it is a belief that you have not abandoned. The Church teaches that we are all under the guidance of a guardian angel. From the Catechism:
#336 From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by [the angels’] watchful care and intercession. “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him into life”. Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.
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Furthermore, the guardian angels have their own feast day: October 2! The feast won’t be celebrated this year as it falls on a Sunday.
 
MishellaLee said:
So i’m new to being catholic… but i don’t get why people pray to saints… I don’t want you to think I’m a bad catholic or anything… But isn’t praying to someone who is dead…worshipping? Why do we pray to saints? I get confuzzled… I thought saints were just role models for us catholics, they got out of their comfort zone to do good…I don’t know…please answer!
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Why do you say that praying to someone who is dead is worshiping? Do you pray to God? Do you worship God? Is God dead? God is alive, and He is the God of Life. The saints are alive in heaven in the company of God. We pray to them to pray for us. Prayer isn’t worship. Although we use prayer for worship, not every prayer is worship. When we pray to Saints, we ask them to pray for us the same way we ask the person beside us at church or our friends and relatives to pray for us.
 
Think about the 19th century Victorian era Britain… “Pray, would you pass the salt?” Pray means to ask. Prayer to God can be adoration/worship, but only to God. Whenever we pray to saints we ask for their intercession.

Peace,
Phil
 
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