Praying TO Saints

[Christos Anesti]

That test is basically irrelevant to the question of if the saints in heaven can intercede on our behalf when we ask them too. Can you prove that the Saints in heaven are in the exact same state as the person/s on this message board you were trying to send the message too ? Can you prove that the Saints in heaven have the exact same sensory powers as you and I do and that they are not enhanced ? Can you prove that God does not give them a special grace to hear us and then intercede for us? You would have to formulate experiments that could test these things as well to rule out all possibilities.

 

[Livindesert]

That test is basically irrelevant to the question of if the saints in heaven can intercede on our behalf when we ask them too. Can you prove that the Saints in heaven are in the exact same state as the person/s on this message board you were trying to send the message too ? Can you prove that the Saints in heaven have the exact same sensory powers as you and I do and that they are not enhanced ? Can you prove that God does not give them a special grace to hear us and then intercede for us? You would have to formulate experiments that could test these things as well to rule out all possibilities.

So you are saying that Christians who are dead are seprated from the community then given super powers? Sorry but until the second comming we are not ressurected and given new bodies. And I believe they are still part of our community and are alive in Christ while waiting for it.

 

[Christos Anesti]

So you are saying that Christians who are dead are seprated from the community then given super powers?

I don't know if they are given "super powers". How does one see and hear without physical eyes or ears? Are we going to assume they are blind and deaf? If not can we say that we know their vision and hearing is as limited as it is now seeing as how it would be based on some facility that is not tied to physical/material eyes and ears? Obviously that would be speculation but if you are going perform experiments to PROVE that they can't intercede for us you would need to formulate experiments that could test this.

Personally I wouldn't speculate on exactly how they hear us other than to say that God gives them this grace so that the Saints in heaven can help the people of God on earth and continue to participate with body of Christ that is still "down here".

 

[Philothei]

If something is in God's will he will do it. If it is not in God's will he won't. Just trust in God.

I never said that. Prayer does not overide God's will....or we should not pray then at all if anything ....then since God's will will be done anyhow...

I never said I do not trust in Him. either..
Christ knew he will be resurrected... He still prayed to His Father for strenth and he told his disciples to pray for Him to His FAther....
So by saying that the prayers of the saints (small s do not work) are you including also the Apostles?

 

[Philothei]

I don't know if they are given "super powers". How does one see and hear without physical eyes or ears? Are we going to assume they are blind and deaf? If not can we say that we know their vision and hearing is as limited as it is now seeing as how it would be based on some facility that is not tied to physical/material eyes and ears? Obviously that would be speculation but if you are going perform experiments to PROVE that they can't intercede for us you would need to formulate experiments that could test this.

Personally I wouldn't speculate on exactly how they hear us other than to say that God gives them this grace so that the Saints in heaven can help the people of God on earth and continue to participate with body of Christ that is still "down here".

QFT

 

[Philothei]

But only God knows the heart. For His Holy Spirit indwells.

Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3

When Samuel, a prophet of God, was brought up by the power of God (1 Samuel 28:11-19), did he come for the man or to the man? God allowed Samuel to manifest.

Did angels of God in the OT and NT come for the man or to the man? Angels never came for the man.

I do not understand .... If God knows the heart then where is the problem?? We know them through their fruits

for HE says you will "know them from their fruits"

The Saints do not come from US but from God he is the one who gives them His grace and special gifts ....we just experience these gifts(fruits) and we announce them Saints... where is the man doing it?

 

[Faith.Man]

Note that Philothei is EO; we do not have a teaching on "merits" (which, iirc., is RCatholic).

Worship is due only to God
And agreed, all humanity is in need of a savior, the Savior; no-one can save himself or another.

But note that the words translated as "pray" in the NT include words like "ask" (erotaw), and these words are also used in more common ways (some in the NT, and in the Greek language in general).

I apologize for the unintended slight on my part. I was a Roman Catholic and that is what I am most familiar with. I am now a non-denominational fundamentalist (or conservative) Christian (>20 years) who looks only to the Bible and prayer for answers to life's tough questions. If you believe I do not have a broad enough background to provide meaningful responses on this topic, I will withdraw without taking any offense.

 

[Thekla]

I apologize for the unintended slight on my part. I was a Roman Catholic and that is what I am most familiar with. I am now a non-denominational fundamentalist (or conservative) Christian (>20 years) who looks only to the Bible and prayer for answers to life's tough questions. If you believe I do not have a broad enough background to provide meaningful responses on this topic, I will withdraw without taking any offense.

I am not offended, but thank-you Faith.Man !

I really can't claim to understand much about the RC, and as merits are completely unfamiliar territory (not EO), it seemed important to clarify

I can only offer my opinion, but I see no need for you withdraw here ... and perhaps we can all learn something.

God bless your journey in Christ +

 

[bbbbbbb]

Saints are not gods they do not get their authority from themselves. They are vessels of grace from God they are fullfilling His will. They do intercede for Him and are His messengers. The reason that God allows for His mercy to abound in His saints is obviously so we believe in His Glory...Just like the blind man found his sight. Moses was able to show the 2 snakes to others so they may believe... Was Christ using magic or Moses using withcraft to do a trick?? Shall we say why Moses was given that special gift to perform that miracle/craft with the snakes?

Nope we do not since it is in the Bible... Christ also performed many mirales he told his Apostles they also will do miracles and they did... Peter healed many many from diseases... Did Peter stopped listening to people praying to him to intercede to God??? Or is it wrong to do so?? Do we also pray to God?? Of course we do ... But Peter is a saint as he was doing God's will also... It is the same with st. Christopher. He was a man of faith and miracles probably were attribute to him maybe with people who were travelling as he does has the reputation of a saint that one prays for good and safe travelling. I think that way we are reminded that a certain saint (like us) can attain salvation and can intercede to God for us....

Saints are already 'perfected' in the eyes of God...They have finished the "good fight" and they have received their award to live with God in heaven. It is mostly like praying to someone to intervene who as a human had a similar experience like us... or his "life" reflected or affected by a peticular issue...For example St. Paraskeve is a saint for the eyes. She was a medicine lady in her time (Roman) and she was put to death for beng a christian. She used to perform miracles healing people.Praying to St. Paraskevi who she she had the fruit of the spirit in healing those with eye illments remind us the fruit of the spirit that God has given to all of us...Since she is familiar to that type of struggle she would inercede to Her Master and Lord for our petition.

I hope that works for the OP

Thank you for your good attempt to address the OP. However, when, at the very end you make the statement that "she would inercede to Her Master and Lord for our petition" you fall back into the basic belief that saints intercede and prayer to them are for their intercession. The OP specifically set aside that form of prayer. It asked if it was right to pray to saints for them to do things on our behalf other than intercede. Thus, it is good to think that St. Paraskevi can be asked to personally heal eye ailments?

 

[bbbbbbb]

Perhaps, per the OP (can we ask Saints for help) we should also be asking

can we ask saints for help ?

Why should we ask a fellow Christian to assist us, when we can just ask God for the asistance ? Wouldn't asking a fellow Christian for help also indicate a diminished trust in God ?

Thank you, Thekla, for addressing the key question of the OP. In response I will ask you if you ever ask another Christian you have never met, but who you have heard about on the internet, to come and help you with some need, knowing that they live in another part of the world. I, myself, do not, but ask those I know to be physically present and willing to help me. I cannot say the same for disembodied saints who are physically unable to assist me.

 

[Thekla]

Thank you, Thekla, for addressing the key question of the OP. In response I will ask you if you ever ask another Christian you have never met, but who you have heard about on the internet, to come and help you with some need, knowing that they live in another part of the world. I, myself, do not, but ask those I know to be physically present and willing to help me. I cannot say the same for disembodied saints who are physically unable to assist me.

Not the specific scenario you describe; I have used the internet to ask a monastery to pray for a family member in need.

However, in my view, help is help. And asking for help falls under the word/s used in the NT that are translated "pray". So, I find it hard to delineate the sorts of help we ask for into "physical and non-physical".
Our chief embodiment as Christians is Christ's body.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Philothie, thanks for the info on St. Paraskeve. About 5 minutes ago I asked her to pray to our Lord for the healing of the 7th nerve palsy in my son's left eye.

This is a good example of missing the point of the OP. The OP never asked whether it was right or wrong to do what you did. It did ask, in the case, if it would be right to ask St. Paraskevi to heal the seventh never palsy in your son's left eye. What do you think?

 

[bbbbbbb]

I don't know if they are given "super powers". How does one see and hear without physical eyes or ears? Are we going to assume they are blind and deaf? If not can we say that we know their vision and hearing is as limited as it is now seeing as how it would be based on some facility that is not tied to physical/material eyes and ears? Obviously that would be speculation but if you are going perform experiments to PROVE that they can't intercede for us you would need to formulate experiments that could test this.

Personally I wouldn't speculate on exactly how they hear us other than to say that God gives them this grace so that the Saints in heaven can help the people of God on earth and continue to participate with body of Christ that is still "down here".

Please consider the possibility that their sight and hearing may be just as good as any other saint's. That is, that what they see and hear is limited to the finite nature of their being as opposed to the infinite nature of God's being.

 

[Faith.Man]

We never claimed that praying to the saints either excluded praying to Jesus or it is mandatory... either...

This is good, but the Roman Catholic Church I am more familiar with would say the same thing.

Maybe it is true maybe not.. To be honest the synaxaria (collections) of saint's lives are lost into the centuries ... We beleive them as the little archeological (or sometimes a lot) sources point to them... We know about St. Paraskevi through "stories" and each generation of course by the time things get added on. All agiologists (who write the life of a saint) are aware that there is the human element in telling the story. We believe in that what it was written for at the end of he line there were actually some who did know about the saint and since we have "modern" era saints who were miraculous in their lives on earth we know for sure that the same (through tradition) criteria used to announce a saint. For example Ptrotomartyr Stephen. His story is in the Bible. We have tons of accounts though like Stephen's written somewhere else. The accounts are so very similar though even if they are not accounted in the Bible... The fathers could not canonize all these writtings...but that does not mean that the accounts of martyrs were not valid.

The removal of saints I grew up praying to because they were only legends started me to doubt and question a lot of what I had been taught. I won't bore you with my transformation from Roman Catholic to Fundamentalist Christian, but it wasn't a straight path.

But we ask each other to pray to God for us this is not intercession?

Yes, you are absolutely correct. But when we do that, as the Bible commands, we are doing that to and for other people who are alive. I even pray for my dogs. When one of my dogs became parallized because of a household accident, my wife and I laid hands on him and I knew he was going to be alright. Being only 4 pounds, I held him over paper so he could urinate and do his other business. He had to be hand fed. Over the weeks, I saw his recovery little by little. My wife was a skeptic in the beginning, but saw complete recovery in about one year. When he finally died, full of years, I thanked God for allowing us to have him as long as we did.

so when you have your pastor (since you are protestant) praying for you he is not intercessing to God? Christ did not ask for his Apostles to pray for him in the Gesthemane? Why did he said to them to pray to his Father for Him? Why did Christ said 'whenever one or two are gathered there I am in their midst"?

We are told to pray for each other and in groups to God are we not. The saints are called upon when we pray so we do pray in unison (unity?) with them. Why would that be different?

We believe they are alive and living with God in Heaven in the bosom of His Father...

Since I am not a member of any church, at the moment, I do not have a Pastor, but I understand the point you are trying to make. I guess I would have less of a problem praying to "Saints" no longer in this world if there was Biblical support for this practice. Now I realize you can't use the OT, so Biblical support for this practice should be in the NT. I also realize that there are a lot of early church writings out there, but they haven't been raised to the level of the Biblical Canon. But I also know there's a difference between the accepted books of the Bible for Protestants and Roman Catholics. I did a quick study of EO Canon but admit to being a little confused.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Not the specific scenario you describe; I have used the internet to ask a monastery to pray for a family member in need.

However, in my view, help is help. And asking for help falls under the word/s used in the NT that are translated "pray". So, I find it hard to delineate the sorts of help we ask for into "physical and non-physical".
Our chief embodiment as Christians is Christ's body.

I think one of the difficulties in this discussion is understanding the distinction the OP attempted to make between praying for intercession versus praying for actions and things. When you asked the monastery to pray you were asking them to intercede for that family member in need. Had you asked them to write a check and mail it to that family member, that would have been the sort of thing the OP was addressing.

An extreme example might be the gambler who prays to a saint for success in his endeavor (hoping, for example, to win enough money to pay the huge medical bills of his dying daughter). If he was asking the saint to intercede with God for success that would be one thing but if he were to ask the saint himself to give him success that would be another. In either case, if he did not win we would say that it was not God's will. He might say that it was evidence that the saint failed him.

Your last statement can be understood in several different ways but I assume you mean Christ's body to be the Church in this case.

 

[Thekla]

I hope the following account, which is from memory, might help.
This happened in Russia, I think.

A young girl was walking alone, and was attacked by an older man who intended to molest her. In panic, she cried out to the Theotokos, who appeared and instructed the man to not harm the girl. The man, stunned at this, released the girl and later repented of his behavior.

 

[Thekla]

I think one of the difficulties in this discussion is understanding the distinction the OP attempted to make between praying for intercession versus praying for actions and things. When you asked the monastery to pray you were asking them to intercede for that family member in need. Had you asked them to write a check and mail it to that family member, that would have been the sort of thing the OP was addressing.

An extreme example might be the gambler who prays to a saint for success in his endeavor (hoping, for example, to win enough money to pay the huge medical bills of his dying daughter). If he was asking the saint to intercede with God for success that would be one thing but if he were to ask the saint himself to give him success that would be another. In either case, if he did not win we would say that it was not God's will. He might say that it was evidence that the saint failed him.

Your last statement can be understood in several different ways but I assume you mean Christ's body to be the Church in this case.

As the last statement, yes, it is the body of Christ as Church I mean. In our association with Him (as He opens not only the physical ears from deafness, but also the spiritual ears of the heart) we become balanced.

For the first part, I think my previous post may help ..

 

[Jpark]

I do not understand .... If God knows the heart then where is the problem?? We know them through their fruits

for HE says you will "know them from their fruits"

The Saints do not come from US but from God he is the one who gives them His grace and special gifts ....we just experience these gifts(fruits) and we announce them Saints... where is the man doing it?

There is no problem. I came here as an uneducated fellow.

Yes, that is, by their life-style, character, teaching, and influence.

Yes, the Saints come from God. But remember, Satan can work miracles too. Discernment is to be exerted.

What I am saying is that we must be careful. For there is controversy concerning prayer to angels. In a similar manner, the Saints do not come for us, but to us.

I will be leaving now.

 

[Livindesert]

I hope the following account, which is from memory, might help.
This happened in Russia, I think.

A young girl was walking alone, and was attacked by an older man who intended to molest her. In panic, she cried out to the Theotokos, who appeared and instructed the man to not harm the girl. The man, stunned at this, released the girl and later repented of his behavior.

This is proof of what other than some inventive story telling? I mean I know some people who could not have kids untill they became Evangelical. So you want to be Evangelical because a miracle happened? I doubt it

 

[Thekla]

This is proof of what other than some inventive story telling? I mean I know some people who could not have kids untill they became Evangelical. So you want to be Evangelical because a miracle happened? I doubt it

Glory to God that your friends were able to have children