How Can the Saints Hear a Million Prayers?

[Michie]

*permission to post in full* ​

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That would make them omniscient, right? And then wouldn't they be gods?​

The Catholic practice of invoking the intercession of the saints assumes that the souls in heaven can know our interior thoughts. But for some Protestants, this is a problem, because it attributes to the saints a power that the Bible says belongs to God alone. In 2 Chronicles, we read the following:

Then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men (6:30).

If the Bible says that only God knows the hearts of men, so the argument goes, then the invocation of the saints’ intercession would be a doctrine that contradicts the Bible.

Let’s see how we can meet this challenge.

Continued below.

How Can the Saints Hear a Million Prayers?

Protestants will argue that the saints can't possibly know all the millions of prayers being directed to them at any time. They'd have to be omniscient.

www.catholic.com

 

[fide]

*permission to post in full* ​

​

That would make them omniscient, right? And then wouldn't they be gods?​

The Catholic practice of invoking the intercession of the saints assumes that the souls in heaven can know our interior thoughts. But for some Protestants, this is a problem, because it attributes to the saints a power that the Bible says belongs to God alone. In 2 Chronicles, we read the following:


If the Bible says that only God knows the hearts of men, so the argument goes, then the invocation of the saints’ intercession would be a doctrine that contradicts the Bible.

Let’s see how we can meet this challenge.

Continued below.

How Can the Saints Hear a Million Prayers?

Protestants will argue that the saints can't possibly know all the millions of prayers being directed to them at any time. They'd have to be omniscient.

www.catholic.com

It seems a bit foolish to try to explain "knowing" in heaven using our temporal "understanding" of "knowing". There is no time in eternity; natural human reasoning is different even on earth from the supernatural gifts of the Spirit given to those advanced in prayer, when the seven-fold Gifts, or "spirits" of the Holy Spirit are activated in the soul through advanced prayer, called "mystical" prayer.

Ascetical prayer involves "natural" acts, processes, mental activity especially discursive meditation. But mystical prayer begins with spiritual realities that are infused and become active by the intervention of God. This supernatural activity, beginning with infused contemplation, is a state of intuitive knowing and understanding, radically different from the natural activities of ascetical prayer, for example discursive meditation involving coming to conclusions about truths through human reason and discernment. My point is, ascetical prayer is time-bound and time-grounded, directed toward rational conclusions; mystical prayer is more an event in a timeless moment of intuitive enlightenment. Earthly knowing is temporal, spacial; heavenly is timeless, unbounded.

The saints in heaven live in a reality very different from the constraints "normal" for us here.

 

[RileyG]

It seems a bit foolish to try to explain "knowing" in heaven using our temporal "understanding" of "knowing". There is no time in eternity; natural human reasoning is different even on earth from the supernatural gifts of the Spirit given to those advanced in prayer, when the seven-fold Gifts, or "spirits" of the Holy Spirit are activated in the soul through advanced prayer, called "mystical" prayer.

Ascetical prayer involves "natural" acts, processes, mental activity especially discursive meditation. But mystical prayer begins with spiritual realities that are infused and become active by the intervention of God. This supernatural activity, beginning with infused contemplation, is a state of intuitive knowing and understanding, radically different from the natural activities of ascetical prayer, for example discursive meditation involving coming to conclusions about truths through human reason and discernment. My point is, ascetical prayer is time-bound and time-grounded, directed toward rational conclusions; mystical prayer is more an event in a timeless moment of intuitive enlightenment. Earthly knowing is temporal, spacial; heavenly is timeless, unbounded.

The saints in heaven live in a reality very different from the constraints "normal" for us here.

Well said.

 

[mourningdove~]

It seems a bit foolish to try to explain "knowing" in heaven using our temporal "understanding" of "knowing". There is no time in eternity; natural human reasoning is different even on earth from the supernatural gifts of the Spirit given to those advanced in prayer, when the seven-fold Gifts, or "spirits" of the Holy Spirit are activated in the soul through advanced prayer, called "mystical" prayer.

Ascetical prayer involves "natural" acts, processes, mental activity especially discursive meditation. But mystical prayer begins with spiritual realities that are infused and become active by the intervention of God. This supernatural activity, beginning with infused contemplation, is a state of intuitive knowing and understanding, radically different from the natural activities of ascetical prayer, for example discursive meditation involving coming to conclusions about truths through human reason and discernment. My point is, ascetical prayer is time-bound and time-grounded, directed toward rational conclusions; mystical prayer is more an event in a timeless moment of intuitive enlightenment. Earthly knowing is temporal, spacial; heavenly is timeless, unbounded.

The saints in heaven live in a reality very different from the constraints "normal" for us here.

Sometimes words just cannot really explain things 'supernatural' ...
but you've done a fine job in attempting to do so.

I appreciate your contributions here.
God bless.