Intercessions: asking people in heaven to pray for you.

Catholics are often(for lack of a better term) "attacked" by Protestants who claim that Catholics "worship Mary and pray to the saints". This is not he case. Catholics neither worship The Blessed Virgin Mary nor Pray to the saints, we request their intercessions. In other words, we ask them to pray to God for us. When I explained this to one Protestant she replied: "how can you pray to saints instead of God? God is alive and the saints are dead." This is a very profound statement, however it is only half true. God is alive, He is alive in every single one of his people; the saints, however are not dead. Christians do not die. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." (John 8:51 KJV) Like all Christians, the saints did not die, but rather moved on to their life with God in heaven. This is why we can ask them to pray to God for us because they are right there with Him. We can also ask the same of Mary since she was the mother of Jesus, who was true god and true man, and therefore the mother of God. Here's a little secret that even some Catholics don't know: we can even pray to our friends and family members who have gone to heaven (BTW This is one secret that I urge you not to keep).

Why have intercessions, why not just pray directly to God at all times? First of all, understand that intercessions are optional, they are a tool offered by God to make prayer more comfortable and a little easier or think of it like strength in numbers, several people praying for the same thing works great here on earth and it works just as well if some of the people praying are in heaven. How does one know who to intercede to? To be honest, it really doesn't matter, intercede to whomever you feel most comfortable. The Virgin Mary is a popular person to intercede to because she is the mother of Jesus and therefore the mother of God and all Christians. There are also many patron saints, these are saints whom the church has named "experts" of certain areas because they had a powerful experience in that area during their life time. For example, Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost articles because of an incident he experienced in which a novice carried off a valuable psalter he was using. St. Anthony prayed very hard that the psalter would be found. After seeing an alarming apparition of him, the novice returned the psalter. As for interceding to our friends and family members in heaven, these are people one turns to during their life on Earth, therefore it makes sense that one should be able to turn to them in heaven as well.

Protestants often accuse Catholics of idolatry because of our frequent use of statues in prayer. Again, this is simply not the case. The statues are meant to guide us into an attitude of prayer. We do not attribute any divine qualities to the statues and we do not ask things of the statues themselves, that would be idolatry.

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Matthew Bohrn
Senior Web Disciple