Praying to Mary & the Saints
As a Catholic, you may have heard the charge that praying to our Blessed Mother and the saints is wrong because prayer is reserved for God alone. As Catholics, we know that we offer prayers of adoration or confession to God alone. However, the kind of prayers that we ask of the saints are requests for help – for their prayers to God on our behalf.
The scripture passage often used by non-Catholics is 1 Timothy 2:5, which says, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus..." Another reference is the prohibition of conjuring up the dead for purposes of gleaning information from them (Deut. 18:10-15). The problem, as always, is the failure to understand the Scriptures in their proper context.
First of all, Jesus is our only mediator because only his blood is the perfect sacrifice before the Father for our sins. However, we are all called upon to be intercessors (James 5:16, 1 John 5:16). A common charge against praying to the saints for intercession is that they are dead and cannot hear us. This is a denial of 1 Cor. 12:12-27, which tells us that we are all parts of the Body of Christ. In Mark 12:28 and Luke 20:38, Jesus tells his critics that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” In God – ALL are alive. In Hebrews 12:1, St. Paul tells us that “we are surrounded by so a great cloud of witnesses.” The Transfiguration of Jesus is proof that the “dead” are indeed alive (Matthew 17:1-9,
Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36).
Secondly, we Catholics are not trying to get information from our brothers and sisters in Heaven. We are simply asking for their prayers.
If we are indeed all parts of the Body of Christ, then asking a saint in Heaven to pray for us is the same as asking a person here on earth to do the same. In fact, the only difference is that those in Heaven have been made perfect and righteous because nothing unclean can enter Heaven
(Rev. 21:27). “The fervent prayer of a righteous man is very powerful” (James 5:16). Although, we on earth have not yet been made perfect, we are called upon to intercede for each other.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.biblechristiansociety.com/apologetics/two_minute#14
http://www.catholic.com/library/Praying_to_the_Saints.asp