THE INVOCATION OF THE SAINTS.
Is it lawful to call upon the saints for their intercession?
If a man may call upon his brothers and sisters for help, and upon pious people yet living for their prayers to God in his be half, as God advised the friends of Job to do (Job xlii. 8), as St. Paul did (i. Thess. v. 25), as non-Catholics themselves do, why should not a man invoke the intercession of the saints in the presence of God, who are our brethren?
But is not the invocation of the saints opposed to trust in God, and to the mediatorship of Christ ?
No; for we do not address ourselves to the saints in any such sense as we would address ourselves to God ; but, confessing ourselves to be sinners, and unworthy to appear before God, we betake ourselves to these friends of God and glorified brethren of ours, that through their intercession, which prevails much before Him, He may be gracious to us, and bestow upon us His favors. Christ is and remains our only mediator through Whom we have access to the Father (Eph. ii. 18) ; the saints are only intercessors who must pray to God for us through Jesus Christ.
Do the saints know of our prayers ?
If the holy angels rejoice over the conversion of the sinner (Luke xv. 10), and offer up the prayers of the saints as pleasing incense before the face of God (Apoc. viii. 3), ought not the same privilege be allowed to the saints, as being the friends of God and of Jesus Christ, and as being partakers of the same glory as the angels? (John xv. 14, 15.) Did not Onias and Jeremias, after their death, know of the sad condition of the Jewish people, and zealously pray for them ? (n. Mach. xv. 12,et seq.) God has a thousand ways of making known to them our prayers.
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Next- Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle-November 30
