Why do we need the saints? What do they provide that Jesus Christ does not? This was the question fundamental to our classroom discussion. Catholics and (Mainline) Protestants do admittedly share a lot of the fundamental foundations of Christianity. Both branches believe in Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who was the second Person of the Holy Trinity. He died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins of everyone (or just the elect according to Calvinists). There exists both heaven and hell, and God will sort between them like wheat and tares, with some going to the Kingdom of Heaven and some condemned to the "furnace of fire", the “wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:36–43). The Christian proposition appears simple: By accepting Jesus Christ as our savior, we can be saved!
Thus, we return to our central question. Given that both Protestants and Catholics believe in a personal God that we can directly pray to, why would we ever need to cultivate a relationship with a saint (or saints) and ask them to pray on our behalf? We could just talk directly to Jesus and tell Him that we want to emulate Him as best as we can and that we want to be saved. I see three main reasons behind cultivating a devotion to the saints. First, it provides a more complete understanding of what the Church is and who are its members. Second, we earn the petition of someone who is in heaven alongside Christ Himself. Third, it provides an opportunity for us to grow in holiness by modeling their holy but human life.
First, a reflection on saints—or "holy ones"—provides a better understanding on what Christ's Church actually is. We see many times in the New Testament that the Church is one body (1 Cor. 12:12-27, Rom. 12:5, Col. 1:18, Eph. 4:16,), According to the Catholic Church, there exists three components of this Church. There is the Church Militant / Pilgrim, who is composed of Christians on Earth fighting against sin; the Church Penitent / Suffering, composed of the souls in Purgatory; and the Church Triumphant, composed of those who made it to heaven. Thus, the divide for Catholics is not between living and dead; it is between followers of Christ and those who do not believe in Christ. This is further corroborated in the Gospel of Luke, where he writes that "[H]e is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." (20:38). While it may feel like death to us, the souls of holy people do not just disappear from existence. Death is not the end of the journey for Christians. We are (hopefully) rejoicing in eternal life with Christ.
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| The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, fresco by Andrea da Firenze in Santa Maria Novella, c. 1365 |
The second reason is that something particularly potent about the saints' ability to intercede on our behalf. This is seen in the writings of early Church fathers, like St. Augustine, where he writes that “God does [the miracles] while [martyr-saints] pray and assist (City of God, bk. 22, ch. 10). Anslem of Canterbury (1033-1109) corroborates this viewpoint in his ten recorded prayers to saints. These prayers demonstrate the power (potentia) of the saint in heaven being able to provide greater spiritual health than during their time on earth—given that now they are finally in full union with Christ. (Fulton Brown, “Anselm and Praying with the Saints”, 120). Professor Fulton Brown explains the relationship between the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant, and God well through her Trinitarian analogy: “As with three persons of the Trinity, so with the three people of prayer: God moves the sinner to repentance through the saint; the sinner moves the saint to intercede for him through God; and the saint moves God to have mercy on the sinner. It is, as it were, a triangularity of agency—God moving the sinner who moves the saint who moves God—as much as of presence or identity.”
Protestants are right that Christ is perfect in every way. He is the best model of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. However, no Catholic believes that any saint is better than Christ. Christians are saints because they have been sanctified in Christ (Rom. 1:7, Phil. 4:21-22). However, the myriad of saints provides us with a plethora of examples of how to live out a Christian life, in both broad and specific contexts. St. Maximilian Kolbe showed what it meant to love your fellow man, St. Joseph demonstrates the virtue in being a hard-working man, and St. Francis of Assisi highlighted the beautiful role of poverty in worship. While none of these men can ever compare to God Incarnate, they provide us with examples on how to follow Jesus Christ. Surely, if we had more people in the world emulating the holy ones in heaven, they would be a lot closer in the road to becoming united with Christ. What is particularly nice about cultivating a devotion to one of these saints is that it still allows us grow in virtue and grow closer to God without having to directly face God ourselves. Thus, God can best be understood as the Sun. It can be difficult to look directly at Him because His holiness is incomparable. However, we can best appreciate Him through a refraction—special solar viewing glasses-like the saints. The saints exist as a bridge to get us to better understand God. None of these saints are as perfect as God. However, that is that exact drawing point. Veneration and asking for petitions from the saints brings us closer to the saints and God, not just closer to the saints at the expense of God. Of course, Catholics still need to cultivate the individual and personal relationship with God directly. However, prayer to the saints should be seen as an aid, not an impediment in that journey.
For any of my Protestant friends reading this who still have some qualms about asking the saints to pray for us when we can just “go directly to God”, I bring up one final analogy. Have you ever asked anyone on Earth to pray for you or had someone ask you to pray for them? What is the purpose of that? Could the person requesting prayer not just have gone directly to God? While Christianity is about having a personal relationship with Christ, it is equally about being in community with the greater spiritual Church. There is something truly beautiful about the communal aspect of prayer and Christianity overall. For the holy ones that departed before us and are now in heaven, why would they be cut off from us, divorced from the world outright? After all, God is the God of the living, not of the dead.
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| Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, fresco by Raphael in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, 1509-1510 |
- Alejandro Ignacio
Very nice accounting of the various ways thinking about the saints helps us understand our relationship with God and the Church. I think it is especially easy to get caught up in the "one-on-one" thinking of "praying to God directly" and forget that it is the faith "of the Church" that sustains us in prayer. I am still wrestling with the idea of intercession, although I am happy you found my reading of Anselm's prayers persuasive! The problem is not exclusive to praying through the saints: it is a problem of praying at all, when God knows what we need before we ask. And yet, Jesus tells us to ask. I like the idea of the saints as special viewing glasses for the Sun—without the glasses, it is impossible to see the eclipse until it is full, at which point we see only darkness (hmm...). There is much to ponder here!
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