Super Dad handles a problem for his budding young apologists.
Scenario:
It’s 7:00 in the morning on a Friday. You and your wife are performing the daily miracle of hustling to get the kids ready for school. You’ve both noticed that one of your boys, Matthew, has not been the energetic, jovial and sometimes even mischievous thirteen-year-old lad you know and love. You ask him what is wrong. He asks if he could talk to you about it after you get home from work. Since you both must leave soon, there is not enough time to explain.
You encourage him not to worry. “Whatever the problem is, son, it is nothing you and I and our Lord can’t handle together.” That one gets a little smile out of him and you give him a hug as you gather your coat and briefcase and head for the door. As you kiss your wife good-bye at the door, you whisper, “We’ll get to the bottom of the problem tonight.” Off to work you go.
Upon returning from work at 5:30 and gathering the troops for dinner, you notice Matthew has brought a Bible to the dinner table. He is quiet throughout supper until finally he asks, “Can we talk now, Dad?” Your curiosity increases as you lead him into your study and sit him down.
After you convey your concern again, Matthew begins to tell you about an Evangelical Protestant in his class at his Catholic school who is challenging everyone concerning their Catholic faith. Matthew had been defending the Faith, but he has run into a few points to which he could not respond. He began to have doubts in his mind and he was afraid to tell you for fear he would disappoint you.
Your Response:
You assure Matthew that he can always come to you with any problem and the only way he would disappoint you would be by not coming to you. “So now, Matt, let’s get down to business,” you say with a smile.
The Problem:
“Well, Dad, he challenged me to prove to him it is biblical to pray to saints. He used Matthew 6:9 where Jesus commands us to pray to the Father. And in Philippians 4:6, St. Paul tells us to ‘let our petitions be made known unto God.’ My friend says we are making gods out of the saints. Then he challenged me with Deuteronomy 18:10-11, which condemns ‘necromancy,’ that is, communicating with the dead. This seems to expressly condemn praying to saints. And finally, he chided us Catholics for going to the saints as mediators when 1 Timothy 2:5 says, ‘There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.’ I must admit that the last few days I have been wondering about things, Dad.”
Your Response:
“First of all, son, it is not a sin to have doubts. But we must remember where to turn if we do have doubts about the Faith. We must always turn to our Lord in prayer and remember: It is the Church that has the final say in matters of faith and morals. And the Bible teaches this Church is hierarchical. The apostles in union with St. Peter (and the bishops in union with the Popes, who are their successors) are given authority in Matthew 18:15-18 for just such a situation as this. The text says if a dispute cannot be settled among the brethren, the Church makes the final decision on the matter.
“But now, Son, we need to respond to the charges made by your friend one at a time. First, he seems to be confused about the nature of prayer; second, about the context of Deuteronomy 18:10 and ‘necromancy’; and third, the mediation of Christ as it relates to the mediation of the saints.”
Step One: The Nature of Prayer
When we say we are praying to God and praying to saints, we are talking about essentially different kinds of prayer. However, we use the same word for both in English. Prayer to God includes worship that is given to God alone. Prayer to saints includes the honor that is their due, but never worship. The problem is, at least in part, semantics. Any good dictionary will tell you prayer can simply mean a petition or entreaty from one person to another. This is what we mean by praying to saints.
In earlier times, English speakers did not have so much of a difficulty here. You could say to another person, “Pray tell . . . ” or “I pray thee, my Lord . . . ” and everyone knew that “pray” simply meant “ask.” In the King James Bible we see many examples of this.
For example, when Bathsheba makes a request of King Solomon in 1 Kings 2:20, she says: “I pray thee, say me not nay.” There was never a question here of whether Bathsheba was worshipping her son! She was not. Nor are Catholics when we pray to saints.
Step Two: The Problem of “Necromancy”
It is true the word “necromancy” means “communicating with the dead.” It is also true that God condemns this practice in Deuteronomy 18:10-11. However, the context of the passage makes it very clear: God is condemning communicating with the spiritually dead through wizards and mediums, not praying to saints.
This is even more obvious when we find, in the Old as well as the New Testaments, believers praying both for and to those who have “died in the Lord,” as well as saints in heaven praying for those on earth. For example, in Jeremiah 31:15-16 we see the deceased wife of the patriarch Jacob, Rachel, interceding for her children (Israel). Jeremiah was written during the time of the Babylonian exile hundreds of years after Rachel’s death, yet the text says her voice was “heard from on high” and her prayers were answered.
In 2 Maccabees 12:39-46, as Judas Maccabeus is surveying the battlefield the day after Israel had engaged in battle, he and his companions come across the corpses of those who had fallen. Finding amulets under their coats, they surmise the deaths of their comrades to be because of their superstition. So what does Judas Maccabeus do? He takes up a collection to provide for a sin offering for the dead and “made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (v. 46).
Though our Protestant friends do not accept the inspiration of 2 Maccabees, it is invaluable for us in understanding the faith of the Jewish people shortly before the advent of Christ. 2 Maccabees was written around 100 BC. This was about the time the sects known as the Pharisees and the Sadducees developed. The Sadducees denied there was a resurrection (see Luke 20:27). The author of Maccabees emphasizes what we know is the truth of the resurrection (see v. 44).
Notice that he uses the then-common practices of offering sacrifice for the sins of the dead and praying for the dead as his proof that there is a resurrection. Later, in 2 Maccabees 15:12-17, we see Judas praying to both Onias (a former high priest who had died) and Jeremiah the prophet (who had died over five hundred years earlier).
The faith described in Maccabees is the faith in which Jesus was raised. In Luke 9:28-31, we have proof. Our Lord ascends a mountain with Ss. Peter, James, and John. There, he is transfigured before them, and Moses and Elijah appear to him “talking with him” (Luke 9:30a). They speak about his death.
Remember: Matthew’s friend claimed “communicating with the dead” is condemned! Well, here our Lord is communicating with the dead! Just check Deuteronomy 34:5. Moses died! Jesus is praying to saints. Aren’t Christians supposed to imitate the Christ?
A real key to understanding why we can pray to saints is found in Luke 20. Here, Jesus is dealing with the Sadducees that we mentioned before, who denied the resurrection. In verses 28-33, they attempt to trip up our Lord and prove the resurrection to be untenable.
They use Deuteronomy 25:5-6, where Moses commands that if a man’s brother dies with a wife and no children, he must “raise up seed” for his brother. The Sadducees ask what if seven brothers all marry the same wife? Whose wife will the woman be in the resurrection?
Jesus’ response is twofold. First, he declares marriage to be only for this world in verse 34. This is why we believe marriage to be “until death do us part.” More important, however, is his second response to these Sadducees. He says those who die in the Lord “cannot die . . . they are equal to the angels. . . . But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him” (vv. 36-38).
Jesus uses Moses’ words to demonstrate that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead! They are alive and well in the spirit! When Catholics pray to saints, we are not praying to the dead (the spiritually dead as in Deut. 18:10-11), but to those who are alive in the spirit. We use the language “Masses for the dead” and “prayers for the dead,” but it is understood that we are talking about those who have died in friendship with God.
Step Three:
Finally, you need to straighten out the confusion surrounding 1 Timothy 2:5: “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” First, notice the context of 1 Timothy 2:5. In the first two verses, St. Paul commands “supplications, prayers and intercessions to be made for all men. . . .” Intercession is a synonym for mediation in the New Testament. Hebrews 7:25 refers to Jesus as our one unique intercessor. Yet, here all Christians are called to be intercessors (or mediators)!
Then notice the first word in verse 5: “For there is one God and one mediator . . .” And then in verse 7 he says, “For this I was appointed an . . . apostle.” Apostle is another synonym for mediator; it’s defined as “one sent with the authority of the one who sent him.” That is the definition of a mediator. In short, St. Paul says we are all called to be mediators, for Christ is the one Mediator and for this reason He was called to be a Mediator of His love and grace to the world!
Is this a contradiction? No! Show Matthew that the Bible also declares: “But you are not to be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher [Greek didaskolos], and you are all brethren.” Yet James 3:1 and Ephesians 4:11 tell us we have many teachers (didaskoloi) in the Church.
The key is to understand that the many teachers (and mediators) in the body of Christ do not take away from Christ as teacher and mediator: They establish that role on this earth in him. They are and we are members of his body. We can say with St. Paul in Galatians 2:20, “It is not I, but Christ who (teaches or mediates) in me . . .”
Now turn to 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. This is the text that refers to Christians as “the body of Christ.” We are so intimately joined one with one another that in verse 21, the text reads, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” Then add the fact that we are so radically one with Christ that He can say in Matthew 25:40: “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
The question is, does this intimate union with Christ and with one another cease when we die? No! In fact, it becomes more radical! The saints in heaven are closer to us than when they were on earth because it is Christ that makes us one. They are free from all sin (which hinders our prayers; see Matt. 17:21, 1 John 3:22, Ps. 66:18) and are experiencing a union with God (and therefore with us) beyond anything we can fathom.
They are truly “like him” for they “see him as he is” (see 1 John 3:2)! As “partakers of the divine nature” (see 2 Pet. 1:4) in the fullest sense, they have gifts and powers beyond what “eye has seen or ear has ever heard” (see 1 Cor. 2:9). If we could ask them to pray for us when they were on the earth, of course we can ask them to pray for us now!
Finally, the New Testament presents to us very plain examples of the mediation of the saints in heaven. First, consider Hebrews chapter twelve. This chapter is preceded by the great “hall of faith” chapter wherein the lives of the Old Testament saints are recounted. Then, the inspired author encourages a persecuted church (see Heb. 10:32-34) to consider that they are “surrounded” by this “great cloud of witnesses.” He then contrasts the Old Testament “church” with the New:
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire . . . darkness . . . gloom . . . and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. . . . But you have come to . . . the city of the living God . . . and to innumerable angels . . . and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven . . . and to . . . God . . . and to the spirits of just men made perfect . . . and to Jesus. . . . (Heb. 12:18-24).
Notice, he says “But you have come to . . . and to . . . and to . . . and to . . .” In the same way we “come to” God and Jesus, we also “come to” the angels, our brothers and sisters on this earth in the Church, and to “the spirits of just men made perfect.” Those are the saints in heaven. We come to them all by way of prayer!
The book of Revelation gives us an even better description of the mediation of both the angels and saints in heaven. In Revelation 5:8-14, “the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints . . . the elders fell down and worshipped.” Notice these elders are offering the prayers of the saints. This is the same ministry of mediation we see the angels performing in Revelation 8:3-4 and the martyrs in Revelation 6:10.
Matthew is elated. As he scribbles down the last Scripture references you gave him in his notebook, he looks as though he will burst with excitement. He says with a smile, “Thanks, Dad. I look forward to Monday morning! It’s a bummer I have to wait all weekend before I can use this stuff!”
As Matthew walks out of the room you realize you have just experienced a first. It is Friday night during the school year and your son just wished it were Monday! You have seen and heard each of your children wish for Friday and freedom from school, but never have you seen any of your children so excited about going to school!
Tim Staples can be reached at Catholic Answers
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