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161 | Can the Saints Pray for Us?
3 Plays1 minute ago
Can we ask saints in heaven to pray for us? This is one of the most requested questions about prayer, and today we're exploring both Catholic and Protestant perspectives with respect and biblical depth.
In this episode, we examine:
✓ What does "saint" really mean?
✓ Revelation 5 & 8: Do the saints intercede?
✓ The Catholic perspective on intercession of the saints
✓ The Protestant response and biblical concerns
✓ Why this conversation matters for unity
Whether you're Catholic, Protestant, or just curious about different Christian perspectives on prayer, this episode will help you understand how believers arrive at their conclusions—even when we disagree.
--- PRAYER SERIES EPISODES:
- Episode 0: We're Back! Prayer Series Announcement
- Episode 1: Can the Saints Pray for Us? (this episode)
- Coming soon: Deliverance Prayer, God's Sovereignty & Prayer, and more!
---
#VerityPodcast #Prayer #CatholicVsProtestant #ChristianTheology #SaintsIntercession #EveryWomanATheologian #BiblicalPrayer #ChristianPodcast #TheologyForWomen #ReligiousDebate
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
We are not alone. We are part of a legacy, part of a family, part of this unseen spiritual reality that I think many Christians need to be reminded about.
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcast, friends. I'm Felicia Masonheimer, and I'm so glad you are here.
New Series on Prayer
00:00:23
Speaker
It's been a little while since our last episode, but we had plenty of time to plan and research for the topic that we are going to be exploring this quarter in this series, and that topic is prayer.
00:00:38
Speaker
Now, we've done mini-series on prayer before. Before Verity Podcast came to YouTube, we did a five-episode mini-series that is still available to you walking through the Acts model of prayer, and we'll still touch on that in this series.
00:00:54
Speaker
But I wanted to build a series that kind of talked about the different angles of the prayer life of a Christian, answering some of the most popular questions that I receive on Instagram regarding this topic. So I asked you, what do you want to know about prayer? And I compiled the top 12 questions when building out this series. So all of the episodes that are coming to you in this series are topics that you all requested today. So I'm really thrilled to be able to share what I found in scripture, what we see across church history with you in this series.
Community Engagement and Resources
00:01:32
Speaker
But before we dive in, i want to thank you so much for subscribing to our YouTube channel, for subscribing to Every Woman a Theologian.
00:01:41
Speaker
This is a new endeavor for us. Every woman a theologian specializes in verse-by-verse Bible studies and resources for women who want to dive deeper into scripture, but we only joined YouTube in the last year. So thank you so much for subscribing, for sharing, for commenting. We absolutely love interacting with you here. And don't forget that if you've benefited from everything that I share here on our channel, we would love to have you check out our bookstore. which is where all of our verse-by-verse Bible studies, our multi-sensory Bible studies, and my books, like Every Woman a Theologian, Every Home a Foundation, and Stop Calling Me Beautiful are all available. You can also grab them on Amazon and read the ratings and reviews. So thank you so much for buying from us, for supporting our ministry, and for subscribing to our YouTube channel and our iTunes podcast.
Intercession of Saints: An Overview
00:02:38
Speaker
All right, this very first episode that we're going to be talking about, we're diving into some controversial territory. And I know that as an interdenominational ministry, we have a lot of different Christians following us, reading what I write, consuming the podcast. And so starting out with a little bit of a controversial episode is going to lead to maybe some hot comments ah on this particular video. But what I want to encourage you to do, wherever you fall on the spectrum of listeners, is I want to encourage you to simply listen to the perspective that I'm going to share.
00:03:20
Speaker
One of the things I try to do as the founder of Every Woman a Theologian is when I'm creating resources, is to share the perspectives of different denominations within Christianity so that you understand how people arrive at a conclusion. This does not necessarily mean that I agree with that conclusion. does not necessarily mean i endorse that hermeneutic or biblical study method or the interpretation of scripture, but it does mean that we are accurately presenting the view.
00:03:51
Speaker
And that's important to me because as someone who is an Arminian Bible teacher, so often my own views are misinterpreted, misconstrued, and mislabeled online. And so I end up feeling like my personal ah views and understanding of scripture and salvation are really being done a grave disservice. And I wouldn't want to do that to somebody else. So I do my best when presenting different views to go directly to the source.
Exploring Catholic Beliefs
00:04:20
Speaker
so today We're talking about whether or not the saints can pray for us. And that means that we're going to be looking directly at some Catholic texts, Catholic apologists, Catholic writers to understand their perspective. I'm a Protestant, so that means I'm not Catholic, but I want to treat the other viewpoint with as much respect as I can the same way I would hope a Catholic would treat me. So we have a predominantly Protestant audience, um and so...
00:04:52
Speaker
My fellow Protestants, I just encourage you to be respectful in the comments and to respect one another. And I would ask the same of our Catholic listeners as well.
00:05:02
Speaker
So we're going to start with scripture. That's where we always want to start. um I have some verses that I have found and looked up, studied for you for this episode. And these are texts that are used by both Catholics and Protestants in defense of their position on whether or not the saints can pray for us. Starting with Revelation 5, 8, which says, And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
00:05:37
Speaker
and We also have in Revelation 8, another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel.
00:05:54
Speaker
So these two verses are from the book of Revelation, which is the very last book in the canon of scripture. And it's describing this interaction in heaven that is seen by the apostle John in a vision. So Revelation records a series of visions that John received about um the heavenly places, the heavenly mission and the end of all things. And chapters five and eight specifically three times refer to this incense that is or is accompanied with the prayers of the saints.
00:06:29
Speaker
Now, what is a saint? We have to define what a saint is first.
Catholic vs. Protestant Views on Saints
00:06:34
Speaker
Well, a saint is any Christian person, any person who is who has accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, who has been saved by grace and faith, and is on that journey of sanctification with him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
00:06:50
Speaker
So that means that I am a saint and you are a saint. And Catholic tradition agrees with this. So while Catholic tradition also has the saints who have performed miracles, to which they have dedicated saints days, etc., they also believe that the average Christian is a saint as well. So average people, average Christians, they are saints. However, those that we recognize in the Catholic Church, we see in the catholic church as
00:07:23
Speaker
saints who have specific saints days, or if you hear of someone being sainted, is officially a person in heaven officially recognized by the church through canonization. So canonized as a saint who lived heroically holy lives, serving as a role model for believers. So this particular type of saint is what we would call, you know, separate from you and I. There's a separate step there in the Catholic Church. And the word for saint comes from a Latin word, sanctus or holy one. So all of us, because of Christ, are holy. All of us are becoming holy and one day we'll be perfectly holy. Second Corinthians 1.1, Ephesians 1.1, Colossians 1.2, they all refer to Christians as saints. So the writer is saying greetings to all the saints in Christ Jesus. um So this is this is understood both in the Catholic and Protestant tradition. However, the Catholic Church, again, uses the word saint in more than one way. So it's all those who are united to Christ. um It's extended to all Christians. um However, there are also saints who are canonized in Catholic tradition. And that would not be the case in Protestant tradition. So we do not canonize people as saints.
00:08:48
Speaker
So I want to first start out with that information that gives us kind of some definitions that are helpful. And then I want to move into the Catholic perspective on the intercession of the saints. What is the intercession of the saints? This is the idea that you can actually ask people a Christian who is alive with Christ, who that has died on earth, but is alive with Christ, you can actually ask them to intercede for you on a specific subject. You're asking them to pray for you. And I want to start out with this because this is an important theological misunderstanding between Catholics and Protestants.
00:09:26
Speaker
So I live in a highly Catholic area of the country. I live in the Midwest, the northern Midwest. I'm predominantly Catholic, much like Wisconsin and Minnesota and in many of these places. I live in Michigan. And so in areas like this, where you have a large Catholic presence...
00:09:42
Speaker
you also have a large nominal Catholic presence. And what I mean by that is that Catholics who are um not devout, so they might go to mass once in a while, they might um occasionally interact with the religion that they were born into, but they are not devoutly seeking God.
00:10:03
Speaker
They're not walking with God as a general rule. A parallel to this would be when I lived in Virginia, this was common among Baptists. So it's possible to be a nominal Baptist. And I saw a lot of that too. Going to church, um talking about, you know, being a Christian, but no fruit, no personal walk with God, no time in scripture, etc. So being a nominal Catholic or a nominal Baptist or nominal, you know, Christian is possible in any tradition, any denomination. But for those of us who are devout Christians living in a predominantly Catholic area, what we often see are nominal Catholics who will pray to a saint.
00:10:50
Speaker
They'll pray to a saint. They'll ask St. Joseph to help them sleep or, you know, ask a different saint to help them with something, the particular saint for particular things.
00:11:03
Speaker
And what really rubs Protestants the wrong way on this is that we look at 1 Timothy 2, 5, where it says there is one God and there's one mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ. And we go, um why are you asking St. Joseph to do anything for you when you have Jesus Christ?
00:11:22
Speaker
And we tend to immediately go, Catholics pray to the saints. Yeah. So I want to talk about this theological approach because the actual doctrine in the Catholic Church is that the saints are interceding to Christ for you, like a human Christian friend would.
Catholic Perspective on Saints' Intercession
00:11:43
Speaker
And Like I said earlier, in terms of accurately presenting a doctrine or a worldview, it's very important that we do that regardless of what our experience is. So yes, do I have experience with nominal Catholics praying to saints?
00:11:58
Speaker
Absolutely. But the actual theology, the actual doctrine is that you're asking the saint to pray for you The same way you'd ask a Christian friend pray for you. Okay.
00:12:11
Speaker
And we as Protestants, we tend to immediately default to thinking, well, you're, you're asking this, this saint, this human person who is, you know, dead to pray for you. That's not possible. So we're going to start with the Catholic view of this so that we accurately present this. Jimmy Akin, a famous Catholic apologist, states that the saints in heaven are united with God in love, and therefore they love what he loves, his people. So by becoming a heavenly saint rather than an earthly one, that doesn't change their desire or ability to pray. And I think this is something that a lot of Protestants fail to understand.
00:12:53
Speaker
That when they're talking, when we're talking about the saints in Revelation 5 and 8, praying, the prayers of the saints going up, these aren these are people who died, who were martyred, actively praying in the heavenly places. And I think this really, a lot of the confusion about saints and prayer Actually goes back to our view of heaven.
00:13:13
Speaker
I think a lot of Christians, Catholic or non, truly believe that when you die, you're just like dead. Nowhere. You're nowhere until a final judgment, almost like a Protestant purgatory in a way where you're just hanging out until the end of all things. But what we see and with the thief on the cross, when Jesus turns to him and he confesses his belief, he says, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. So we know that when Christians die, when those who believe die, they're actually with the Lord alive.
00:13:48
Speaker
So I want to say the first thing to Protestants who are listening to this. Telling a Catholic they believe the dead can pray for them is is not going to get you very far because they do not Catholics do not believe that the saints are dead.
00:14:01
Speaker
They are alive with Christ. And you should believe that too, because that's what scripture tells us. When a Christian dies, they're alive with Christ. So when the Catholics are talking about a heavenly saint moving from earth to heaven, they're dying, they become a heavenly saint, they're saying they don't stop praying. They were praying on earth, now they're praying in heaven. And that's a fundamental piece of this doctrine.
00:14:25
Speaker
So as Protestants, we want to be thinking, do I believe that when someone, when a Christian dies, that they're alive with Christ? Yes, I should, because that's what we see in scripture. it's what we see in the interaction between Jesus and the thief on the cross. um So do I agree that that, that a heavenly saint, a Christian can still pray?
00:14:48
Speaker
That's a question to ask yourself. So Jimmy Akin goes on to say, out of love for God's people, God's heavenly saints continue to pray for the saints on earth. So they're not stopping their prayer life just because they moved locations. They are still spiritually united with God more so than ever after death. So they're still praying for the church because we're all one church.
00:15:11
Speaker
Those who are ahead of us, those of us on earth, spiritually, we are all part of one body. And so it makes sense that they would be praying for the rest of Christ's church, especially because they love what he loves.
00:15:26
Speaker
So Achan also points to the book of 2 Maccabees, an apocryphal Jewish book that was included in Protestant Bibles until the 1920s. So this book is a part of, like I said, the apocryphal books or the Deutero canon. I talk about the apocrypha in a previous episode. If you go all the way back several years, of the podcast to the Canon series where I walked through how the Bible was compiled. I did an episode on the Apocrypha, where it came from, how it was used, why Catholics still have it in their Bibles and Protestants don't. But it was in our Bibles up to about the 1920s, and it was still in the Bibles that Luther and Calvin used during the Reformation. In the book of 2 Maccabees, there is a scene that shows the dead high priest, Onias,
00:16:12
Speaker
praying for the Jewish nation. This is in 2 Maccabees 15, 12. And the prophet Jeremiah is also shown doing the same thing in this book. So it's showing them after death, praying on behalf of the Jews.
00:16:26
Speaker
in this book. And this was a Jewish book, keep in mind, um written in that um silent period between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the Gospels. So the understanding in this book is that these individuals were continuing to pray for the Jews after their death in the heavenly places.
00:16:47
Speaker
I would say this is an interesting parallel to um the parable of Lazarus. If you remember this and in the Gospels, the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, 19-31 says, We see this rich man. um He treats this beggar, Lazarus, terribly. And the the beggar dies. and The rich man dies. And the rich man is in Hades, or the grave, where he's in torment. He looks up and he sees Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham.
00:17:23
Speaker
And he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to, to give him, um relief from the fire that he's in. And Abraham replies that he will not. So in this scene, we're seeing some interaction between, this, the, the rich man and Abraham, um, in the afterlife.
00:17:47
Speaker
Now this is a parable. So there's debate over how to understand a parable like this. Is this an actual depiction of what happens after death? Is this simply symbolic um to express a point, different perspectives on that.
00:18:03
Speaker
But it is interesting that we're seeing this um interaction after death in the spiritual realm. And this is coming from Jesus. So That's an interesting thought to consider as well is in regard to the possibility of asking someone who's alive in eternity to continue praying for you.
00:18:27
Speaker
um In Hebrews 11, Catholic authors often cite this passage as evidence that the saints are aware of our struggles on earth. And I'm going to pull it up here.
00:18:43
Speaker
This is called the Hall of Faith. And in this passage, it walks through many different biblical characters, Abel and Enoch, Noah, Abraham, ah Jacob, Joseph, Moses. We have um Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, all listed um in terms of their faith in God. And these are saints. These are the saints who went before.
00:19:12
Speaker
So they're listed describing their faith, describing how they trusted in the Lord. um And at the end, it says in verse 39, these are all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. And God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. So there's this unity here between the saints that went before and the saints that are living now.
00:19:39
Speaker
Catholic apologists will also look to James 5, which says that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And in view of the fact that the souls of Christians who have died and are finally sanctified in heaven are perfectly righteous, their prayers are seen as the most powerful and asking them to pray is advantageous to the Christian.
Praying Through Saints vs. Idolatry
00:20:00
Speaker
So thinking again of of asking them to pray like a fellow believer to pray, because that's the perspective, and this person is fully sanctified, fully righteous, it makes sense in the Catholic theology to ask them to pray.
00:20:15
Speaker
Revelation 5 and 8, which I've already read to you, are cited saying that the baptized Christians ahead of us are praying for us actively as we live on earth. And according to Hebrews 12, 22 through 24, which I will pull up for you, the church on earth and the church in heaven are united spiritually, which I already said, but I'll read this to you. It says, but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You've come to thousands upon thousands of angels and joyful assembly. to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
00:21:00
Speaker
So what's described here is this the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, angels in assembly, the church of the firstborn of Jesus Christ, our names are written in heaven.
00:21:14
Speaker
And then it talks about the spirits of the righteous made perfect. So that's referring to both to us and those who are eternally with God and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. So this passage is talking about the church on earth and heaven united spiritually. And the Catholic theology says that to ask a heavenly saint to pray is the same again as asking a living Christian to pray.
00:21:38
Speaker
So how would you fall into idolatry then? where Where's the line with idolatry of saints and If you're asking them to pray for you, who doesn't that distract from Jesus? The response here would be the idolatry of a saint is when you pray for something from a saint that God cannot or would not give you. Prayers are supposed to be through saints, not to them. And this is what's often misconstrued in practice, which from the Protestant point of view makes us question, should we be doing this if it so often leads to distraction from Jesus Christ?
00:22:17
Speaker
Here's a quote by Dr. Robert Stackpole, Catholic perspective. One of the things God loves best of all is human beings, the creatures he made in his own image and for whom he gave his life on the cross. The saints in heaven, therefore, must surely see and know all about us on earth because they see us reflected in the mind and heart of the God who loves us, whom they behold face to face.
00:22:39
Speaker
End quote. Okay, so this is my best attempt at presenting a Catholic case for the intercession or invocation of the
Protestant Concerns on Saints' Intercession
00:22:50
Speaker
saints. Again, you might not agree with what I've shared. I've tried to share fairly, i tried to use Catholic sources, but now I'm going to move on to the Protestant perspective on the intercession of the saints.
00:23:00
Speaker
Now, Martin Luther, who was the monk, the Catholic monk, who eventually broke from the Catholic Church, asked it to reform during the 1500s. And when that was not possible, began um his own church, the Lutheran Church. And then out of that came the Reformation and and the schism that led to the other churches, the reformed churches and the Presbyterian churches and the Baptist churches and the Methodist churches and Anglican, all of those things. Um, we have all of that because of the reformation he wrote on the invocation of the saints in his small called articles, specifically in article two on the mass. So I'm going to read you this section. Remember that Martin Luther was a spicy fellow He had a lot of opinions based on his experience within Catholicism, specifically very corrupt Catholicism.
00:23:57
Speaker
And the usage of relics, the the adoration of relics, which are like remnants, physical remnants or items related to saints, apostles, or Jesus Christ that would be um treated as sources of great miracles,
00:24:16
Speaker
People would do pilgrimages. They would collect these. Wealthy people would collect these relics. um And this relics still exists today. So he has strong feelings about this, and that's going to come through in what he wrote in the small cult articles.
00:24:31
Speaker
Of the invocation of saints. The invocation of saints is also one of the abuses of Antichrist. Pause. In Martin Luther's view and the view of many reformers, the church at Rome was the Antichrist.
00:24:47
Speaker
So you will see him referring to it as such. I'm reading what he wrote, so save your strong feelings for Martin Luther, not for me. The Invocation of Saints is also one of the abuses of Antichrist, conflicting with the chief article, and destroys the knowledge of Christ.
00:25:05
Speaker
Neither is it commanded nor counseled, nor has it any example or testimony in Scripture. And even though it were a precious thing, as it is not, while on the contrary it is a most harmful thing, in Christ we have everything a thousandfold better and surer, so that we are not in need of calling upon the saints.
00:25:26
Speaker
And although the angels in heaven pray for us, as Christ himself also does, as also do the saints on earth and perhaps also in heaven, yet it does not follow thence that we should invoke and adore the angels and saints and fast, hold festivals, celebrate mass in their honor, make offerings, and establish churches, altars, divine worship, and in still other ways, serve them, regard them as helpers in need, as patrons and intercessors, and divide among them all kinds of help, and ascribe to each of them that particular form of assistance, as the papists teach and do."
00:26:01
Speaker
end So, what Luther's pointing out here, i want to highlight a specific section. Note that he says, although the angels in heaven pray for us, as Christ himself also does, as also do the saints on earth and perhaps also in heaven.
00:26:20
Speaker
See, Luther's not denying that the saints in heaven could or may pray for us. This is important because many Protestants will deny that completely. But even Luther left room for the fact that they do. What he took issue with was the entire system that had been built up around the saints.
00:26:41
Speaker
And he lists this out here. He says, we should not invoke them, adore them, fast, hold festivals, celebrate mass in their honor, make offerings, make churches, altars, divine worship, serve them, regard them as helpers, divide among them all kinds of help. He's saying we have basically diluted this worship across all these human people instead of keeping it centered on the person of Christ. And even though the Catholic theology says that the saints are worshiping Christ alongside us and they're simply interceding alongside us functionally, it often turns into adoration of the saint themselves. And that is what Luther was opposing. So Luther's primary objection to the invocation of the saints is that it destroys the knowledge of Christ.
00:27:29
Speaker
Destroys the knowledge of Christ. And um we're going to talk about that at the end, kind of summarizing why he thought that. But he also cites a couple different passages for this. Matthew 15, 1 through 9 is one particular passage that we're going to look at first.
00:27:47
Speaker
And in this passage, Jesus is talking about worship that God did not authorize. Here's what he says. Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? Why don't they wash their hands before they eat? Jesus replied, And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
00:28:13
Speaker
But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is devoted to God, they are not to honor their father and mother with it. Thus, you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
00:28:25
Speaker
You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain and their teaches are merely human rules. so what we see here is that this worship that they had authorized, you know, they said they added on these extra rules that you need to follow in order to please God. um This worship was not authorized by God. they They were missing the point. They were no longer centering their worship on God himself, but they were skirting around the law of the Lord um by making up their own rules. And so what's being seen here is worship that does not please God. Worship that is made by man in the name of God that does not please God. And this is one of the texts that Luther points to. um Galatians 1, 1 through 9 another passage
00:29:19
Speaker
And in this passage, written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Galatia, um he says, Paul, an apostle, sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers and sisters with me, to the churches in Galatia, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for forever and ever. Amen.
00:29:47
Speaker
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. So this particular passage also used Luther to suggest that the intercession saints—
00:30:07
Speaker
and so now i say again if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted let them be under god's curse so this particular passage is also used by luther to suggest that the intercession of the saints the mediation of the saints is another gospel. So it's it's not the gospel of Jesus Christ where he is the one who saves and intercedes, but that it is a gospel that pulls in extra helpers, so to speak, in the intercession process. Now, we know that Luther's experience in the particular system that was built up around this, much like the money changers in the temple, in in the Gospels um was what enraged him so much. And he's not denying that the saints might pray for us, but he's pointing out that by saying we need to go through these people and there need to be masses for them and there need to be these specific things devoted to them and there's just this whole system devoted to these people who are not Christ that this
00:31:11
Speaker
smacks of another gospel. Romans 8 tells us that both Christ and the Holy Spirit actively intercede for us. And Luther even adds the angels to this and states that the saints pray for us as well, as Revelation says. But what he disagreed with and what most Protestants disagree with is the idea of asking them to pray, asking those who are alive with Christ to pray for specific things versus going directly to Christ.
00:31:39
Speaker
um Denominationally, Protestants, non-Catholics, can be a bit divided on this. So Anglo-Catholics, so Anglican Catholics, they might be more comfortable with invoking saints, but other Anglican traditions might not. um Evangelical traditions descended from Baptist and Methodist influences would object to the intercession of the saints, usually citing 1 Timothy 2.5, that there is only one mediator.
00:32:08
Speaker
So where do we go from here? How how do we move forward from here on this topic of prayer and the saints? Well, number one, we know without a doubt that the angels, Christ, the Spirit, they're praying for us and very possibly the heavenly
Unity Among Christians
00:32:24
Speaker
saints as well. I would say Revelation 5 and 8 make a very strong case for the fact that the saints in heaven are praying for us.
00:32:31
Speaker
And this should encourage us that we're not alone. There is a spiritual war that's being fought in the heavenly realm by those who went before us, um by the angels, by by the Lord. um And we have the Trinity fighting for us And that is such a beautiful thing. We are not alone. We are part of a legacy, part of a family, part of this unseen spiritual reality that I think many Christians need to be reminded about.
00:33:01
Speaker
What we do not see, what Protestant Christians cannot get on board with is the idea that we should be invoking the saints to pray. So even if we take the second Maccabees, um passage into view here, no one was asking Jeremiah or Ananias to pray.
00:33:20
Speaker
They were choosing to do it of their own. We don't have any evidence that that we're to ask the saints to pray. We know that they are, but we are not to go to them to ask them to pray.
00:33:32
Speaker
They're praying in unity with Christ who clearly articulates what they should pray and how, but we're not told to invite them into that prayer. I do want to rearticulate that the saints are not dead. They're not dead people. We're not praying to our dead ancestors. That's not what's happening here. Not in Catholic tradition and not in any Christian tradition. The saints are not dead. They're alive with Christ. And so using that language, talking to Protestants here, um using that language to talk about the intercession of the saints is unhelpful.
00:34:04
Speaker
Luther says that the invocation of the saints raises itself against the knowledge of God. And I would paraphrase this, and maybe this is what he meant, but I would paraphrase this by saying it distracts from the knowledge of Christ. The time we spend invoking a saint could be spent invoking Christ. And I know from my Catholic friends, from studying Catholic theology, reading Catholic resources, which I've done a lot of, that they do both. A devout Catholic does both. They ask Mary to intercede and they ask Christ to do his work. But it seems, from the Protestant's perspective in looking at Scripture, including the Apocrypha, that
00:34:43
Speaker
it is best to simply go to Christ himself. And so the time that we spend invoking a saint could be spent invoking Christ, drawing in closer relationship with the Holy Spirit. And since so many Christians, Catholic, Protestant, otherwise, have such an underdeveloped theology of the Holy Spirit, I think it's worth considering if praying to or through the saints is really helping them to flex the muscle of walking by the spirit, or if we are diluting our devotion by seeking the saints.
00:35:17
Speaker
So that said, The saints' stories are worth knowing. They're worth studying, reading about, celebrating. All Saints Day is one holiday that our family celebrates every year. We celebrate it on All Hallowed's Eve, October 31st, even though All Saints Day is on November 1st. And that day, it's given for all the saints. It's for all the Christians. Martin Luther still had it on his church calendar, All Saints Day, commemorating the people who came before us in the faith, commemorating those alive today, remembering them. And that's why I've taught on All Saints Day. We have resources on All Saints Day to teach you how to celebrate it. Every year, it's what we do. We don't observe the cultural Halloween.
00:36:01
Speaker
We just celebrate All Saints Day. And that's a great way to integrate the celebration and honor for those who've come before us in the faith without centering them in a mediator role.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:36:15
Speaker
And that's for, again, the whole church. the The church calendar is for the whole church. it It gives us a rhythm to follow throughout our lives and and a way to remember um the people who who came before us and can inspire us in our own walk with Christ.
00:36:34
Speaker
I hope that this episode was helpful to you. And if you're Catholic and you listen to this, I want to thank you for listening through, even though as a Protestant, I arrive at a different conclusion than you. I appreciate that we have a Catholic audience and that you follow along with every woman, a theologian, Protestant listeners. I'm thankful for you as well. I hope this gave you some more clarity on how to have conversations around this topic and to understand different viewpoints with respect.
00:37:01
Speaker
I hope you'll stick with me for the rest of this series. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel. Subscribe to us in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you have further questions about prayer, you are more than welcome to email our team at felicia at feliciamasonheimer.com. We answer your emails as regularly as we can, and we're happy to help you find the resources to continue your discipleship journey and your walk with Christ.
00:37:29
Speaker
I'll see you next time on Verity Podcast.