Catholic Saints and the Bible

The Psalms

Christian prayer. David leads us into the heart of what it means to pray in the Psalms. Christians of every ilk can admit that. In Psalms 103:20 we read, "Bless the LORD, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word!

Is David talking to the angels in this prayer?

In Psalms 148, David continues in his heavenly salutation, "Praise him all his angels, praise him all his hosts."

There are the angels again. Who are the hosts? In the Hebrew language, the word is masculine and denotes a mass of people gathered for a strategic purpose. What is their purpose?

In Revelation 5:11, we get a glimpse of this company, "I looked again and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless in number". In this passage there are three categories of beings: (1) angels, (2) living creatures, and (3) elders.

We already know that David speaks directly to the angels in prayer. However, if he invokes the "host" in prayer, he is also invoking the living creatures and the elders.

Just a few versus before (Rev 5:8) and in Revelation 8, we are informed that the angels and elders in heaven bring before God the prayers of the "holy ones" (Saints). In a recent post, I talked about the nature of how the early Church viewed their departed brethren. In the light of Christ's victory over death, the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit to understand the Sacred Tradition and Scripture it had received, taught that the Saints were in heaven and that we needed their prayers. Further, it was not until the end of the world and the creation of the new heavens and earth that all would be united in heavenly bliss. Until that time, those in heaven would play a strategic intercessory role in the Church.

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:21 says that the "eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you'". Just because our brothers and sisters are in heaven--out of site and out of mind, maybe--we still need them. Even more, because they are perfectly united to Christ in heaven, their prayers are most effectual (James 5:16, "the fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful").

"But, they are dead, they cannot do anything," one might argue. Besides the evidence above that they are doing something, Jesus said that "God is not the God of the dead but the living" (Mark 12:27). Remember, "we walk by faith not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). Death is not the end of anything eternal, but only the end of what is temporal. In Christ, death has been disarmed from delivering its fatal blow. So, should we cry when someone dies? Of course. We cry on this side of glory, but it is on that side of glory that they deliver the tears to the throne of God.

If you don't believe that we can ask the Saints for prayers, that they aren't in heaven praying for us, or that as Christians we cannot know either way, I hope you are willing to at the least admit that (1) it isn't against Christian sensibilities, (2) that there is evidence in the early Church for it, and (3) that Sacred Scripture isn't void of any direct or indirect references to it.

Though in the face of such evidence, I hope you would prayerfully ask your departed brother and sisters in Christ for their prayers and that you would ask Christ to forgive you for ignoring them. And, that you would consider coming home (or back home) to the Catholic Church.