I have a dear friend who has stood by me in some of the hardest times of my life. We’ll call him John… because that’s actually his name. John and I developed a sincere friendship many years ago when I was going through a very hard time. He was a fellow Christian who listened to me, gave me wise advice, and at other times, when he couldn’t think of anything wise to say, just stood by me, listening and praying for me. In other words, a true friend.
We were both protestants when we forged our friendship and we respected each others’ understanding of Scripture. When I began my return home to Catholicism, John was one of the first to know. One day, when I told him I am no longer simply “leaning towards Catholicism” but rather have recommitted fully to being a Catholic Christian, he had an immediate question for me.
“All doctrines?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Even praying to Mary and the saints?”
Purgatory didn’t really faze him so much. The Pope? Well, every denomination has its leadership, he supposed. The Deuterocanonical books? Just a difference of opinion. But praying to Mary and the saints? This was clearly another matter.
To the typical Protestant, praying is pretty much equated with worship. You pray to God and God alone because, in Protestant theology, prayer is addressed to whom you worship. I’d say there are a few key objections that the average Protestant immediately has regarding prayer to Mary and the saints. John would be no different:
- Why would you pray to (a.k.a. worship) someone other than God?
- Are you supposed to talk to dead people?
- Isn’t Christ the only mediator between the God and man?
- Why pray to someone else when you can (and are indeed invited to) direct prayers directly to God Himself?
I can (obviously) give the proper Catholic response to all four of these common objections. And I will – in brief – provide those Catholic responses. But I fear that those responses won’t really be enough to help a Protestant understand the full picture. The responses may indeed settle some initial fears that the Catholic is doing something entirely pagan… but the responses won’t really paint the picture I’d like to paint in this article. I’d like to take a bird’s eye view and look at this practice from a larger perspective.
So first, let’s (briefly) address these 4 objections – then I’ll get to what I’d like to present as the main point of this article regarding prayer to Mary and the saints.
Objection #1: Why would you pray to (a.k.a. worship) someone other than God?
Protestants speak of prayer only in terms of praying to whom you worship – and that is God. But Catholics use a literal definition of the word “prayer” – and that is, to ask or present a sincere hope or request. If you’ve ever been party to a lawsuit, you’ve seen court filings that are called “prayers.” These are the requests that a plaintiff makes to the court. Praying is not worship… praying is making a request. In fact, there are two words we should understand: Dulia and Latria. Dulia is honor paid to the saints. Latria is worship given to God alone. We give dulia to the saints when we venerate them. We give latria to God when we worship Him. So, in sum…. in your definition of “prayer” is “to worship,” then no, Catholics don’t pray “that way” to Mary or any saint. But we do give dulia, or honor, to them when we venerate them or pray.
Objection #2: Are you supposed to talk to dead people?
Protestants are usually appealing to Deut. 18:10-11 and Isaiah 19:3 when they talk about this admonition. What’s forbidden in passages such as these is conjuring up the dead through wizards and mediums – to manipulate the spirit world. These passages have nothing in common with someone asking for the intercessory prayer of a brother or sister in Christ who is in the presence of the Lord. To “bunny trail” here, I’d hope anyone can see the difference between 1) someone conjuring up the dead through a medium for some personal gain and 2) a widow grieving at the gravesite of her recently deceased husband and crying out, “Oh, I miss you so much.” There is much more evidence against this objection – but I’ll leave that for another time, perhaps. For now, let’s move on to the next objection.
Objection #3: Isn’t Christ the only mediator between God and man?
Yes. He is. And the Bible says so. And we are also, in the Bible, called to participate in this mediation by the prayers of saints – because it pleases God. We aren’t doing the work of the Mediator – that’s Jesus. We pray to the Mediator. And we can also ask an angel or a saint who has passed on to the presence of the Lord to pray to the Mediator for us, as well.
Objection #4: Why pray to someone else when you can (and are indeed invited to) direct our prayers directly to God Himself?
Have you ever asked someone to pray for you when you go in for a medical test? Why? Why not just pray to Jesus yourself rather than talking to a friend to pray for you? See the absurdity? We know that God wants us to pray for one another. We know that God hears the prayers of the righteous. This doesn’t stop when we pass on to the afterlife and are in the presence of the Lord. We are simply asking the saints and the angels to join us in prayer and to pray to the Father for us.
Again, there are many great apologetic resources to dive into these theological arguments – and I would encourage you to read them. But the point of this article is to present the bigger picture… a bird’s eye view, as I mentioned. Let’s look at some early church prayers – giving dulia (more properly, hyperdulia, to Mary):
Sub Tuum Praesidium (circa 250): “We fly to thy protection, O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin.”
St Gregory (died in 270AD): “Mary, you are the vessel and tabernacle containing all Mysteries. You know what the patriarchs did not know; you experienced what was not revealed to the Angels; you heard what the prophets did not hear. In short, everything that was hidden from preceding generations was made known to you; even more, most of these wonders depended on you.”
The Hail Mary (based on Bible passages, earliest form from the 300s): “Hail, Mary, highly favoured: the Lord is with You; blessed are you among women, and blessed the fruit of your womb, for you bore the Saviour of our souls.”
St Ephram the Syrian (306-373): “O Immaculate and wholly-pure Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Queen of the world, hope of those who are in despair: You are the joy of the saints; you are the peacemaker between sinners and God; you are the advocate of the abandoned, the secure haven of those who are on the sea of the world; you are the consolation of the world, the ransom of slaves, the comfortress of the afflicted….
O great Queen, we take refuge in your protection. After God, you are all my hope. We bear the name of your servants; allow not the enemy to drag us to hell. I salute you, O great mediatress of peace between men and God, Mother of Jesus our Lord, who is the love of all men and of God, to whom be honor and benediction with the Father and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
St. Athanasius (died in 373): “It is becoming for you, O Mary, to be mindful of us, as you stand near Him who bestowed upon you all graces, for you are the Mother of God and our Queen. Come to our aid for the sake of the King, the Lord God and Master Who was born of you. For this reason you are called ‘full of grace.’ Be mindful of us, most holy Virgin, and bestow on us gifts from the riches of your graces, O Virgin, full of grace.”
St. John Chrysostom (349-407): “Hail, O Mother! Virgin, heaven, throne, glory of our Church, its foundation and ornament. Earnestly pray for us to Jesus, your Son and Our Lord, that through your intercession we may have mercy on the day of judgment. Pray that we may receive all those good things which are reserved for those who love God. Through the grace and favor of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, to Whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be power, honor, and glory, now and forever. Amen.”
And while these are prayers, we also have educational and instructional writings from early Church fathers who teach about Mary as one to whom we honor in prayer (dulia, not latria – actually hyperdulia when referring to Mary). We find the same with other saints besides Mother Mary. Origen, writing in 233, taught that Christians believe deceased saints pray to God for us. St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote, in 253, “Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another.”
Furthermore, there is the “argument from silence.” That is, you don’t see in any of the early centuries of the Church a single instance of the Church Fathers, bishops, etc. ever correcting those who are praying to Mary and the saints. No one chastises them and tells them to pray only to God. And keep in mind, the early church was adamant about eradicating any heresy from the Church. Irenaeus, for example, from the earliest days of the Church was an early Church Father who wrote a massive book called Against Heresies. This mindset of eradicating heresy is at the heart of what we call Church Tradition.
The bird’s eye view I’m trying to show here is simply this… that from the time of the formation of the Church all the way through to the 1500s, Christians prayed to Mary and the saints. It wasn’t until the 1500s – with the Reformation – that things started to change. For those of us living in Protestant America in the 2000s, it’s easy to think of the world and Church history from a modern day perspective. But this is true theological liberalism. The traditional view and teaching of the Church – the entire Church worldwide and universal – for over 1500 years, was that Christians pray to Mary and the saints. Remember – we do not worship them… but we can pray to them (make requests). If the thought of praying to Mary (or any saint) seems unnatural to you, it’s likely because you are only seeing the world from a relatively new, and theologically liberal / modernized perspective. To believe otherwise, in essence, is to believe that virtually every Christian who ever lived from the early Church age all the way to the relatively recent 1500s practiced sorcery and divination. Modern reformers like to say that they reformed the church back to how it was before the Catholic Church corrupted it. But I’d suggest that any sincere study of the early Church and the early Church Fathers reveals that the early Church WAS the Catholic Church. Nearly every doctrine that the Reformation age dropped or changed can be proven to have been a part of the original apostolic Church. The establishment of bishops, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and yes, even prayers to Mary and the saints… these were all a part of the Church, believed in by virtually every believer, from the Church’s earliest days all the way to just a relatively short time ago.