Why pray to anyone but Jesus?

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tacdon

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What is the point of praying to anyone but Jesus? Jesus can handle all our prayers
 
tacdon said:
What is the point of praying to anyone but Jesus? Jesus can handle all our prayers
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Catholics do not pray to Saints or to Mary but rather they ask the Saints and Mary to pray to Jesus for them. Whereas Jesus, whom Christians believe to be G-d, is a mediator to G-d the Father, the Saints are intercessors to Jesus.
 
meltzerboy said:
Catholics do not pray to Saints or to Mary but rather they ask the Saints and Mary to pray to Jesus for them. Whereas Jesus, whom Christians believe to be G-d, is a mediator to G-d the Father, the Saints are intercessors to Jesus.
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I know that Catholics claim they aren’t praying to saints, they say they are asking the saints to pray for them.

Whether you want to call it praying or asking, it is some form of communication.

I’ll rephrase it for you then. Why don’t catholics just pray to Jesus instead of communicating to saints to pray for them?

Its not like Jesus can’t handle all our prayers. The evidence that Jesus is the mediator between God and man is in the scripture and it is easily and plainly understood. However; the evidence that saints hear our prayers is very little and has to be stretched to make it fit.
 
tacdon said:
I know that Catholics claim they aren’t praying to saints, they say they are asking the saints to pray for them.

Whether you want to call it praying or asking, it is some form of communication.

I’ll rephrase it for you then. Why don’t catholics just pray to Jesus instead of communicating to saints to pray for them?

Its not like Jesus can’t handle all our prayers. The evidence that Jesus is the mediator between God and man is in the scripture and it is easily and plainly understood. However; the evidence that saints hear our prayers is very little and has to be stretched to make it fit.
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Is a body made up of only a head?
 
You should really be asking, Why did St Paul routinely ask other Christians to pray for him, when he could have simply prayed directly to Jesus himself? Catholics prayerfully ask Christian saints in heaven to pray for them for the same reasons.
 
Todd977 said:
You should really be asking, Why did St Paul routinely ask other Christians to pray for him, when he could have simply prayed directly to Jesus himself? Catholics prayerfully ask Christian saints in heaven to pray for them for the same reasons.
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👍

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. James 5:16
tacdon said:
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Also I hope you don’t mind if I share with you an extract from Dr. Scott Hahn’s conversion stroy on praying the rosary.
Scott Hahn's Conversion Story:
Text - catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0088.html
Audio (youtube) - youtube.com/watch?v=FrQN8LHYg5g

First, I began to pray a rosary. I was very scared to do this. I asked the Lord not to be offended as I tried. I proceeded to pray, and as I prayed I felt more in my heart what I came to know in my mind: I am a child of God. I don’t just have God as my Father and Christ as my brother; I have His Mother for my own.

A friend of mine who had heard I was thinking about the Catholic Church called up one day and said: “Do you worship Mary like those Catholics do?” I said, “They don’t worship Mary; they honor Mary.” “Well, what’s the difference?” I said, “Let me explain. When Christ accepted the call from His Father to become a man, He accepted the responsibility to obey the law, the moral law which is summarized in the Ten Commandments. There’s a commandment which reads, ‘Honor your father and mother.’” I said, “Chris, in the original Hebrew, that word “honor,” kaboda, that Hebrew word means to glorify, to bestow whatever glory and honor you have upon your father and mother. Christ fulfilled that law more perfectly than any human by bestowing His glory upon His heavenly Father and by taking His own divine glory and honoring His Mother with it. All we do in the rosary, Chris, is to imitate Christ who honors His Mother with His own glory. We honor her with Christ’s glory.”
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Thank you for reading
Josh
 
tacdon said:
I know that Catholics claim they aren’t praying to saints, they say they are asking the saints to pray for them.

Whether you want to call it praying or asking, it is some form of communication.

I’ll rephrase it for you then. Why don’t catholics just pray to Jesus instead of communicating to saints to pray for them?

Its not like Jesus can’t handle all our prayers. The evidence that Jesus is the mediator between God and man is in the scripture and it is easily and plainly understood. However; the evidence that saints hear our prayers is very little and has to be stretched to make it fit.
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Because prayer is communication, and it is not limited strictly to God.

Now you tell me. A person who is in heaven is a saint, right? Now does Scripture not say that all saints are perfectly united with Christ?

You tell me how a person can be in Heaven and be ‘away’ from Christ. Is He in some palace that’s soundproofed while the saints just are bouncing around on clouds?

If they are with Christ, tell me how they cannot see and hear as He sees and hears, if they are perfectly united with Him. Are they going to be LIMITED in heaven?

What do you think souls in heaven will be like? How will they love and praise God if they’re apart from Him? What is the difference between heaven and earth if we’re still ‘away’ from Him --because we know that God is right here with us as well as being in heaven. What makes heaven special if it’s just another place where we’re going to be seeing God off in some distance?
 
You should also be asking, Why did St James tell sick Christians to call for the elders of the Church that they might pray for them, when he could have simply told the sick to pray directly to Jesus themselves?
 
Todd977 said:
You should really be asking, Why did St Paul routinely ask other Christians to pray for him, when he could have simply prayed directly to Jesus himself? Catholics prayerfully ask Christian saints in heaven to pray for them for the same reasons.
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You never read about Paul or anyone in the bible asking any saints in heaven to pray for them either.
 
tacdon said:
What is the point of praying to anyone but Jesus? Jesus can handle all our prayers
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Counterargument: Why bother asking your friends to pray for you, if “Jesus can handle all our prayers”?

Our goal isn’t to belittle Jesus. Rather, you could consider it the logic that if the saints are already praying for us (Rev 8:3-4), why not tell them what to pray about?
 
tacdon said:
I know that Catholics claim they aren’t praying to saints, they say they are asking the saints to pray for them.

Whether you want to call it praying or asking, it is some form of communication.

I’ll rephrase it for you then. Why don’t catholics just pray to Jesus instead of communicating to saints to pray for them?

Its not like Jesus can’t handle all our prayers. The evidence that Jesus is the mediator between God and man is in the scripture and it is easily and plainly understood. However; the evidence that saints hear our prayers is very little and has to be stretched to make it fit.
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Don’t you ever ask your friends to pray for you when you are going through a tough time?

See, Catholics believe in the Communion of Saints. An easy way to explain the Communion of Saints is that it is a team: everyone is playing and the goal is Heaven. We all help each other out along the way. It is a prayer chain that encompasses all of the people of God.
 
Razanir said:
Counterargument: Why bother asking your friends to pray for you, if “Jesus can handle all our prayers”?

Our goal isn’t to belittle Jesus. Rather, you could consider it the logic that if the saints are already praying for us (Rev 8:3-4), why not tell them what to pray about?
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The verse you gave doesn’t say that saints are praying for us. Why didn’t any of the apostles pray to saints in heaven?
 
tacdon said:
You never read about Paul or anyone in the bible asking any saints in heaven to pray for them either.
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KJV

Ephesians 6:18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
 
tacdon said:
The verse you gave doesn’t say that saints are praying for us. Why didn’t any of the apostles pray to saints in heaven?
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How do you know they didn’t? I find prayers to the saints to be specifically helpful in situations where I don’t quite know what to pray for. Their wills are perfectly aligned with God’s, so they know what to ask Him for on my behalf. It isn’t Jesus that is insufficient, it’s my prayers. The saints’ prayers are perfected though.
 
tacdon said:
The verse you gave doesn’t say that saints are praying for us. Why didn’t any of the apostles pray to saints in heaven?
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I will cede that it never explicitly says that the prayers are for us. But it is directly stated in the Bible that the saints are praying to God about something.

As a side note, how do we know God is a Trinity? The Bible never actually says the Holy Spirit is a third Person of God. All the times the Holy Spirit is ever mentioned, you could just as easily replace it with a non-Trinitarian spirit of God affecting the world. Similarly, we can’t say the apostles didn’t pray to the saints, just because it’s never mentioned in the Bible. I remind you how John the Evangelist closed his Gospel:

“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25, RSV-CE, emphasis mine)

Nowhere does the Bible claim to be an exhaustive description of Jesus’ life and life in the early Church.
 
tacdon said:
I know that Catholics claim they aren’t praying to saints, they say they are asking the saints to pray for them.

Whether you want to call it praying or asking, it is some form of communication.

I’ll rephrase it for you then. Why don’t catholics just pray to Jesus instead of communicating to saints to pray for them?

Its not like Jesus can’t handle all our prayers. The evidence that Jesus is the mediator between God and man is in the scripture and it is easily and plainly understood. However; the evidence that saints hear our prayers is very little and has to be stretched to make it fit.
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So you’ve never ever have prayed for anyone? If someone’s loved one passes away, do you tell that person “I will not pray for you, you need pray yourself”?

And if Jesus can handle our prayers he can also handle the Saint’s prayers too, don’t you think?
 
tacdon said:
You never read about Paul or anyone in the bible asking any saints in heaven to pray for them either.
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My question is: Where does the bible say that it has everything relating to faith in it? It doesn’t. You and I know that it is sufficient, but Jesus came that we might have life in abundance - not just in sufficiency (John 10:10).

But, Paul (or his follower) wrote about the “great cloud of witnesses.” (Hebrews 12:1) What does that mean to you? To Whom do they witness? And, about whom?

Please remember that the 1.5 billion Catholics and Orthodox consider that many of your beliefs are quite new to Christianity and appeared nowhere on earth before popping up in Europe in the 16th century.

Just saying.
 
tacdon said:
The verse you gave doesn’t say that saints are praying for us. Why didn’t any of the apostles pray to saints in heaven?
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So who would they be praying for if not us, those already in heaven are not in need of prayer and if someone was in hell no prayer could ever help them.
 
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