What are the spiritual benefits of praying to the saints and Mary?

[godisgood77]

Good answer… Tommy 999 actually answered his own question when he said : “At times, I will also ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for me, if the request is not too personal or confidential.”

When asking the saints & Blessed Mother, we can ask for anything, personal or not!

I personally try not to ask for anything other than to hear God’s will so that I may align with it in my life… I definitely don’t always succeed, but when I was young, I always wondered why people ask God to grant their own intentions instead of asking for the wisdom, strength and courage to know and do His will.

 

[ptisme]

Background:
I am a protestant who was taught to pray to God our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. For example, when praying for wisdom, physical healing, my wife or other loved one, a friend, for help with a problem at work, – you name it – I pray to God in the name of Jesus our Lord and Savior for His intercession.

That is how I was born and raised to pray. It is a simple concept and is easy for me to grasp in my mind and spirit.

At times, I will also ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for me, if the request is not too personal or confidential.

The other day I turned on EWTN and heard Mother Angelica, whom I admire as a godly woman who is full of wisdom and common sense, praying to St Michael.

It got me wondering as to why Catholics so freely are able to pray to saints and Mary. I am not condemning this practice or looking down on it in any way because I realize there is a God and I’m not Him and I realize there is additional wisdom that I may not have come across in my life.

I just want to better understand the reasons behind the practice because it is totally foreign to me and makes me feel (at first impression) like I am end-arounding God by not going to Him directly and that it is adding complexity to the whole equation by praying to others in heaven.

Question 1:: *What does praying to saints and to Mary accomplish in your life that praying to God directly through Christ can’t accomplish? *

**Question 2: ***What I am missing out on for not doing so? *

Thanks in advance for your insights. :tiphat:

Mary and the Saints are all part of the Church which you belong and Jesus is the head. We are never more alive than after we are dead. Healthy practice but not necessary. Also, when we pray to the Saints we keep active their memory here on earth and try to emulate them.

 

[Jon_S_1]

The issue is that not all people in positions of authority in the Catholic Church teach this. For example, the pastor at my local Catholic Church recently said during his homily that you can not go directly to God and you must instead go to Mary. He also put the same in the bulletin… it was baffling. More troubling is that this was not an isolated incident concerning one rogue priest… there are many priests and lay people that teach this same thing as though it was a bonafide teaching of the Church. That is where the confusion comes in.

I think you must be misunderstanding as the mass itself is going directly to God.

The Confiteor… “I confess to Almighty God”.

How would your priest explain such things.

 

[johnnyc176]

I think you must be misunderstanding as the mass itself is going directly to God.

The Confiteor… “I confess to Almighty God”.

How would your priest explain such things.

And we also ask the Blessed Mother the angels and the saints to pray for us in the Confiteor. So of course the Church encourages us to pray to the saints.

 

[ptisme]

The issue is that not all people in positions of authority in the Catholic Church teach this. For example, the pastor at my local Catholic Church recently said during his homily that you can not go directly to God and you must instead go to Mary. He also put the same in the bulletin… it was baffling. More troubling is that this was not an isolated incident concerning one rogue priest… there are many priests and lay people that teach this same thing as though it was a bonafide teaching of the Church. That is where the confusion comes in.

I find this so difficult to be true that I doubt it is.

 

[Jon_S_1]

And we also ask the Blessed Mother the angels and the saints to pray for us in the Confiteor. So of course the Church encourages us to pray to the saints.

Yes,

But your claim is a lot of priest say we CANNOT pray to God directly. The Confiteor the mass, along with thousands of other catholic prayers refute this extremely erroneous notion.

As another poster stated, the claim is so outrageous it is likely not true, or you misunderstood.

Even one of the most common prayers we pray before meals refutes this.

"Bless us O LORD and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy Bounty through Christ our Lord "

 

[pianistclare]

Hey Tommy!
For me, I know that Jesus knows everything going on in my life. He knows my wretchedness, my struggles, my problems, my failings. At times, I kind of feel like I’m pestering Him…asking Him for help 24-7, and not praising Him enough, not being thankful enough. In those moments, I tend to focus my prayers to God in the more “thankful” mode, and then I turn to Our Lady and my special Saint friends for my petitions, asking them to pray with me for relief from the things that burden me. Kind of like when you get a friend to ask a question fro you, because you’re embarrassed or shy to ask for something.
It may seem silly to some, but that’s how I feel sometimes. Like Jesus must hear me and say “Oh man, when is that woman every going to get her act together?” LOL
Of course, Jesus is loving and kind, and compassionate. He doesn’t ever say that. But in my humanity I still sometimes feel that way. At these times, I find solace and comfort, and camaraderie, if you will from the Saints. And the love our my Mother, Mary. Everyone knows that they can always turn to their mama, no?
Peace friend.

 

[Brandall]

Thanks for the reply, Jon S. I am happy to hear of the breakthrough you encountered through doing that. Can you elaborate on what *praying the litany of saints * is? Is that like doing a repetitive prayer (like the Rosary) but to the saints? I am not familiar with this. Sorry for my lack of familiarity.

There were a few points in the thread where I wanted to comment and I will try to hit them all in this one post…

At the Easter Vigil, April 19, 2014, I was confirmed into the Catholic Church. I will occasionally say the litany of the Saints (here is a good version from EWTN ewtn.com/Devotionals/Litanies/saints.htm) and I will say a formal prayer at Church when it is suggested but honestly, I do not spend a lot of time praying to Saints. That does not mean that I have a problem with it, because I don’t. It just isn’t something I’ve been able to spiritually process. It’s my understanding that Catholics are not required to pray to Saints so that isn’t an issue at all.

I’ve found that a lot of protestants have issue with this. You commonly hear that “For there is one God.
There is also one mediator between God and the human race,
Christ Jesus, himself human,” (1 Timothy 2:5). They believe that you should only pray to the Father or to Jesus for him to plead on your behalf. Therefore, you will get reactions from them thinking what you are doing unnecessary to those that see it as a heresy. The reaction that I’ve developed to that stance is the following. If your best friend called and said his car was inoperable on the side of the highway and he wanted you to pray for him, what would you say? Would you say, “No, I will not pray for you. Take it directly to God (or Jesus)”? It’s very unlikely any of these supposed hard line protestants would give that response. Just like you can ask your friends to pray, you can also ask for prayers from the Saints. We know they are alive but for now, it’s just in a spiritual form. Why would they not want to help? They are so far beyond the level of holiness that we have acquired. Their prayer life is much more developed than ours. Like was mentioned earlier, James 5:16 says:“Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” The Saints in heaven are a lot more righteous than any of us on the earth. There really is no one better to ask for prayer.

In the post above, you called the Rosary repetitive and I guess in actuality it is, though spiritually, it is not about Mary and the words of the Hail Mary are just a way to meditate. I stumbled upon this site, rosary-center.org/howto.htm#loaded, that has given me an entirely different perspective.

You may have some experience with the Rosary but if you don’t, there are instructions on the site. Excluding the beginning and the ending, there are 50 Hail Mary’s said in the body of the Rosary. With each decade, you are to contemplate a different Mystery regarding the savior. You will find that on this site, they have each mystery divided by ten thoughts that correspond with the prayers. See this as an example rosary-center.org/joyful.htm. I’m literally looking at a different subsection of a mystery while I am saying each Hail Mary. For me, the focus is not on Mary at all but is on the life of Jesus. I’m still struggling with thinking of one thing while praying another. Hopefully this will not prove to be as much of a challenge to you as it has been to me.

Some on here say that they only ask for God’s will to be done and honestly, that has been an issue for me on how to pray. Do I request what in my mind, think I truly want or do I just ask for God to decide and his will be done. Recently, Fr. Mitch Pacwa was leading a call-in show on Catholic Radio and he was asked how he prayed when someone requested prayer. Fr. Mitch said he prayed for what the people asked him to pray. If they wanted him to pray for their healing, he would. If they asked him to pray for a solution to transportation issues, he would pray it as they requested. That might mean he prayed for them to get a new car. He generally followed their stated request as long as it was in reason.

This is from Luke 18:1-8 "And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; 3 and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

All of the above has led me to believe that it is okay to pray for what you want. That doesn’t mean you will get it because that is for God to decide. As my pastor recently said, "When you are requesting things from God, there are usually three answers.

1. Yes
2. Not yet
3. I have something so much better in mind for you"

I can live with that. So if you’re praying to win the lottery, that may not be the best that God can do for you. He will find something so much better for us. It may not make it financially easier for us in this life but Our Father, who art in heaven, knows better what we really need than we do. He might say yes to our requests or it may be a yes that is delayed. Whichever way it comes down, God is giving us what we need.

 

[Tommy999]

I personally try not to ask for anything other than to hear God’s will so that I may align with it in my life… I definitely don’t always succeed, but when I was young, I always wondered why people ask God to grant their own intentions instead of asking for the wisdom, strength and courage to know and do His will.

Good point, godisgood77. In my prayers, I make personal petitions but I usually end my prayer with, “But not my will but yours be done” in case God has a different plan in store.

Sometimes God won’t grant a particular petition and later I find out that I would’ve been worse off had it been granted. For example, one time I had a job interview at a place that I seemed to like a lot when I interviewed and thought it would be a good fit for my skills, but they didn’t hire me. I was bummed out about it at that time and felt depressed for a time.

Then, I was hired by a company that was farther down the list of companies I would’ve chosen to work for, and I took it mainly because I needed a job. Well, that job became a stepping stone to my current job that I’ve had for the past 30+ years, while the original company that didn’t offer me a job went bankrupt a few years after I interviewed there.

Like your name says, *God is good *and He knows what’s best for us even when we don’t know what is best for ourselves.

 

[Tommy999]

Hi Brandall,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It’s good to know that praying to saints is not a requirement to be a Catholic, although when I look at it from the standpoint of having them join me in prayer to God instead of praying to them *as if they we standing in place of *God, I don’t have as much difficulty with the concept.

I wonder what would happen if a particular prayer isn’t well-founded scripturally (like praying for something bad to happen to a person you don’t like), would the saint help impress upon you that he or she couldn’t go to God with that prayer because we shouldn’t pray for that sort of thing? I realize this may be a weird question, but I am trying to see what level of discernment the saint in heaven has in terms of feedback to us or do they serve as just a messenger who delivers prayers to the throne of God?

For example, if I made the same petition to a fellow Christian on earth, I’m confident that he or she (assuming they were a mature Christian) would point out to me that I shouldn’t be praying for bad things to happen to another person who God also created in His likeness. Just thinking out loud here…

 

[Tommy999]

Hey Tommy!
For me, I know that Jesus knows everything going on in my life. He knows my wretchedness, my struggles, my problems, my failings. At times, I kind of feel like I’m pestering Him…asking Him for help 24-7, and not praising Him enough, not being thankful enough. In those moments, I tend to focus my prayers to God in the more “thankful” mode, and then I turn to Our Lady and my special Saint friends for my petitions, asking them to pray with me for relief from the things that burden me. Kind of like when you get a friend to ask a question fro you, because you’re embarrassed or shy to ask for something.
It may seem silly to some, but that’s how I feel sometimes. Like Jesus must hear me and say “Oh man, when is that woman every going to get her act together?” LOL
Of course, Jesus is loving and kind, and compassionate. He doesn’t ever say that. But in my humanity I still sometimes feel that way. At these times, I find solace and comfort, and camaraderie, if you will from the Saints. And the love our my Mother, Mary. Everyone knows that they can always turn to their mama, no?
Peace friend.

Hi Clare,
Thanks for sharing from your personal experience. I understand it more when people do that. When you said, "Jesus is loving and kind, and compassionate. He doesn’t ever say that" I fully agree and relate, which is why I posed my original question as to why a Christian would need to go saints or Mary when our heavenly father has made Himself available to us through Christ for our petitions.

However, it makes sense and is scriptural that the saints in heaven do more than just sit around playing harps , so I believe that interceding for us is one of their roles along with being part of the “cloud of witnesses” the Bible speaks of.

I also wonder if they pray for us even if we don’t ask them. I hope that is the case.

Thanks again.

 

[Tommy999]

Tommy, one thing to remember is that no matter how much God loves us, He loves certain people more. That may seem incomprehensible. How can God love one person more than another? Well, we see all the way through the bible that God definitely favors some people. He favored Abel over Cain:

He favored David over Saul:

Mary found favor with the Lord. (Boy, did she ever!). Her soul “magnifies the Lord”. All generations shall call her “blessed”. Even the angel greeted her with Hail!, like a queen.

John was the “disciple that Jesus loved” (What? He didn’t love the others? Maybe, maybe not, but He loved John the most). Peter was favored over the other apostles, being given a change of name and the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

The best example of God favoring one person over another is Job:

Certain people have an extraordinarily close relationship with the Lord, and those are the people you want in your corner, praying for you. “The prayers of a righteous man availeth much”. The saints are those “righteous men”. As you can see from the above quote from the Book of Job, sometimes God simply does not want to hear your prayers, but He will listen, and grant your requests, if someone He favors prays on your behalf.

When I first re-converted to the Catholic Church, I had real trouble asking saints to help me, and I avoided doing so for a long time. But after I studied the saint’s lives, and became aware of all the graces that flow through saints to us, I started seeing them with different eyes. I started looking at them as friends. Friends in high places! You can never have too many friends. If the saints are ready, willing and able to help us on our journey, it’s really foolish to turn down their helping hands. So when we ask saints for their intercession, we are really acknowledging the God Who made the saints what they are. The saints always point us toward God, in this life and in the next.

Hi Boomerang,
I was going through previous posts and somehow missed this the first time around. I apologize for that. Do you have any recommended readings or links to reading up on the lives of the saints? I must say that apart from St Francis and a few others, I am not familiar with very many saints outside of the original apostles.

 

[Stilldreamn]

Hi Tommy,
Lutherans do not typically pray to the saints although we are to honor them, thank God for them, and imitate them. They are believed to pray for the Church in general, but it is not known if they pray on the behalf of individual believers.

That said, we are free to follow our own devotional practices as long as we are always conscious of Christ alone as our Saviour, Intercessor and High Priest.

After studying the lives of various saints, I felt really drawn to St. Monica since she demonstrates so beautifully the virtues of faith, trust and patience during her waiting on the Lord for the conversion of her son and husband. So I prayed, timidly, that she would add her prayers to mine, that she would lift my plea for my own family members to our Lord. She feels like a mentor, a friend, who waits with me, and gives me confidence.

It is good to pray together - sometimes though, you find yourself alone. There are always Christians in heaven willing to join your prayer to theirs, and present it to the Lord as incense.

 

[Tommy999]

Hi Tommy,
Lutherans do not typically pray to the saints although we are to honor them, thank God for them, and imitate them. They are believed to pray for the Church in general, but it is not known if they pray on the behalf of individual believers.

That said, we are free to follow our own devotional practices as long as we are always conscious of Christ alone as our Saviour, Intercessor and High Priest.

After studying the lives of various saints, I felt really drawn to St. Monica since she demonstrates so beautifully the virtues of faith, trust and patience during her waiting on the Lord for the conversion of her son and husband. So I prayed, timidly, that she would add her prayers to mine, that she would lift my plea for my own family members to our Lord. She feels like a mentor, a friend, who waits with me, and gives me confidence.

It is good to pray together - sometimes though, you find yourself alone. There are always Christians in heaven willing to join your prayer to theirs, and present it to the Lord as incense.

Thanks for sharing the Lutheran perspective on the subject, Stilldreamn. That sounds pretty close to the Catholic position as I understand it, although perhaps not exactly the same.

I agree very much with your statement, “as long as we are always conscious of Christ alone as our Saviour, Intercessor and High Priest”. I think that is first and paramount.

I suspect that some Catholics who are not well catechized could run the risk of elevating a saint or Mary to almost a divine status and therefore direct their prayer only to them as if they had to power to do only what God has authority to do, but since I am not Catholic I don’t know if that happens much or not.

The main thing I’ve learned from this thread is that we can ask the saints and Mary to pray for us, which is a concept that is growing on me provided I keep it in proper perspective.

 

[ptisme]

Thanks for sharing the Lutheran perspective on the subject, Stilldreamn. That sounds pretty close to the Catholic position as I understand it, although perhaps not exactly the same.

I agree very much with your statement, “as long as we are always conscious of Christ alone as our Saviour, Intercessor and High Priest”. I think that is first and paramount.

I suspect that some Catholics who are not well catechized could run the risk of elevating a saint or Mary to almost a divine status and therefore direct their prayer only to them as if they had to power to do only what God has authority to do, but since I am not Catholic I don’t know if that happens much or not.

The main thing I’ve learned from this thread is that we can ask the saints and Mary to pray for us, which is a concept that is growing on me provided I keep it in proper perspective.

I agree with this. We all need to keep in mind that the Saints and particularly Mary, are nothing without Christ. Mary is like a pair of glasses that helps us focus in better on Christ. As long as we aren’t focusing on the glasses themselves this is not idolatry, but is rather healthy

 

[Randy_Carson]

Question 1:: *What does praying to saints and to Mary accomplish in your life that praying to God directly through Christ can’t accomplish? *

**Question 2: ***What I am missing out on for not doing so? *

Thanks in advance for your insights. :tiphat:

First, nice post. We rarely get asked about praying to the saints so respectfully.

Second, does your church have a prayer chain that is used when needs arise?

We do, too, but a lot of the folks on the list are already in heaven.

 

[johnnyc176]

But your claim is a lot of priest say we CANNOT pray to God directly. The Confiteor the mass, along with thousands of other catholic prayers refute this extremely erroneous notion.

I didn’t make that claim. My comment was in support of your remark.

 

[rinnie]

Background:
I am a protestant who was taught to pray to God our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. For example, when praying for wisdom, physical healing, my wife or other loved one, a friend, for help with a problem at work, – you name it – I pray to God in the name of Jesus our Lord and Savior for His intercession.

That is how I was born and raised to pray. It is a simple concept and is easy for me to grasp in my mind and spirit.

At times, I will also ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for me, if the request is not too personal or confidential.

The other day I turned on EWTN and heard Mother Angelica, whom I admire as a godly woman who is full of wisdom and common sense, praying to St Michael.

It got me wondering as to why Catholics so freely are able to pray to saints and Mary. I am not condemning this practice or looking down on it in any way because I realize there is a God and I’m not Him and I realize there is additional wisdom that I may not have come across in my life.

I just want to better understand the reasons behind the practice because it is totally foreign to me and makes me feel (at first impression) like I am end-arounding God by not going to Him directly and that it is adding complexity to the whole equation by praying to others in heaven.

Question 1:: *What does praying to saints and to Mary accomplish in your life that praying to God directly through Christ can’t accomplish? *

**Question 2: ***What I am missing out on for not doing so? *

Thanks in advance for your insights. :tiphat:

Because in the book of Job if you read it, God tells Jobs friends he will not accept their prayers, but he will accept the prayers of Job and to have Job pray for them.

The Saints and Mary are with God and he accepts their prayers.

As Job taught as sometimes when we are in a state of Sin, although God always hears our prayers, it never states he always accepts them.

That is why we need the prayers of the Saints to help us, especially when we cannot seem to get out of our state of sin at the time.

While we indeed pray to God, we also ask the Saints and Mary to pray for us also.

And also we as humans do not always know what to truly pray for, when we ask the Saints to pray for us they know what we need better then we do.

Example dear Blessed Mother please let me get this house, please Go to God and ask him to help me.

The Blessed Mother would go to God and say, Dear God as you and I both know this is not the house for her, please give her the peace and wisdom to accept that at this time your will is not hers.

It really helps. When I would be denied for whatever reason, somehow I would be okay with it, because of the help from God by the prayers of the Blessed Mother or Saints.

Its just sometimes when we are either in a state of sin, or even out of a state of sin, we are unhappy and do not know why and don’t even know what to pray for. The Blessed Mother and Saints do, and know what to pray for.

Then (back to the house) when the time is right, you get the house that fits you, and sometimes find out the other one had termites, no water, etc. sometimes it really unreal the way their prayers helped. Other times you will never know the bullet you dodged.

 

[Jon_S_1]

I didn’t make that claim. My comment was in support of your remark.

Oops that was supposed to be in response to godisgood. He claimed a lot of priests say this which I find incredulous.

 

[pablope]

Background:
I am a protestant who was taught to pray to God our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. For example, when praying for wisdom, physical healing, my wife or other loved one, a friend, for help with a problem at work, – you name it – I pray to God in the name of Jesus our Lord and Savior for His intercession.

Question 1:: *What does praying to saints and to Mary accomplish in your life that praying to God directly through Christ can’t accomplish? *

**Question 2: ***What I am missing out on for not doing so? *

Thanks in advance for your insights. :tiphat:

You may like this article…calledtocommunion.com/2014/02/do-the-saints-pray-for-us-a-response-to-perry-sukstorf-and-marcia-fleischman/

*This biblical picture of the Church explains why the earliest Christians found no difficulty asking for the prayers of the saints. This wasn’t a distraction from Christ. It was proof that the faithful on earth and the faithful in Heaven are still joined through Christ in holy friendship. Nor was devotion to the saints something that medieval Catholics made up. Even Protestant historians like Joachim Jeremias and secular historians like Peter Brown recognize that the practice is of Jewish origins. It reflects a thoroughly Hebraic, biblical, and communal picture of salvation. (Passages like 2 Kings 13:20-21 show how old these attitudes are.)

Peter Brown also notes that pagans in Rome were perplexed by Christian devotion to the saints and their relics. Early Christians worshipped in cemeteries, catacombs, and among the dead. This was something pagans did not do. But the pagans failed to grasp why Christians did this. The earliest Christians believed in resurrection: the dead in Christ will rise again. Devotion to the saints and their relics witnessed to this faith. For Catholic Christians, death does not have the last word.

Again, devotion to the saints is not something that appeared in the middle ages. It’s been part of Christianity from the beginning. Nor is it simply a Roman Catholic practice. Wherever you look in the ancient Christian world – Latin, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Malabar (Indian), Assyrian (Persian), Catholic or Orthodox – we find devotion to the saints. Consistent opposition to tto the practice arose only in the Protestant Reformation – some 1500 years after the resurrection of Christ.