Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.
- Thread starter Xeno.of.athens
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Don't you think it's a little bit strange that people will ask, why don't you pray to Jesus directly as if praying to or through the Saints excludes Jesus from the transaction. Yet we don't have trouble understanding that asking a friend to pray for us doesn't exclude Jesus. Paul wrote to the Christians in the different churches to pray for him in his trials and he offered to pray for them in their trials. Why should we behave differently? Why should we not be asking for the prayers of those who have gone before us and who are now in heaven in the presence of God, able to intercede very directly for us, and knowing very clearly the difficulties that we face? I can't help but think that the reformers in their zeal to jettison everything to do with the Catholic Church jettisoned a great many things that are absolutely important and Central to being a Christian. So I for one will continue to pray for the deceased and to the Saints, asking for their intercession with the Lord our God on my behalf and on behalf of those whom I love. May God have mercy on our souls.
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Jipsah
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Not strange, just dumb. "Them Catholics don't pray to God, they just pray to them statues of saints. " Simple ignorance.
Yeah, and it's weird. They say they believe that the blessed dead are alive in Heaven, but if you talk about asking them to pray for you then those same departed saints are dead-dead. Kinda schizophrenic, innit?
All the Prots do that too, but in their reckoning "that's different".
Agreed.
Amen.
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A quote from The Faith of our Fathers by Cardinal Gibbons
That the practice of praying for the dead has descended from Apostolic times is evident also from the Liturgies of the Church. A Liturgy is the established formulary of public worship, containing the authorised prayers of the Church. The Missal, or Mass-book, for instance, which you see on our altars, contains a portion of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church. The principal Liturgies are the Liturgy of St. James the Apostle, who founded the Church of Jerusalem; the Liturgy of St. Mark the Evangelist, founder of the Church of Alexandria, and the Liturgy of St. Peter, who established the Church in Rome. These Liturgies are called after the Apostles who compiled them. There are, besides, the Liturgies of St. Chrysostom and St. Basil, which are chiefly based on the model of that of St. James.
Now, all these Liturgies, without exception, have prayers for the dead, and their providential preservation serves as another triumphant vindication of the venerable antiquity of this Catholic doctrine.
The Eastern and the Western churches were happily united until the fourth and fifth centuries, when the heresiarchs Arius, Nestorius and Eutyches withdrew millions of souls from the centre of unity. The followers of these sects were called, after their founders, Arians, Nestorians and Eutychians, and from that day to the present the two latter bodies have formed distinct communions, being separated from the Catholic Church in the East, just as the Protestant churches are separated from her in the West.
The Greek schismatic church, of which the present Russo-Greek church is the offspring, severed her connection with the See of Rome in the ninth century.
But in leaving the Catholic Church these Eastern sects retained the old Liturgies, which they use to this day, as I shall presently demonstrate.
During my sojourn in Rome at the Ecumenical Council I devoted a great deal of my leisure time to the examination of the various Liturgies of the schismatic churches of the East. I found in all of them formulas of prayers for the dead almost identical with that of the Roman Missal: “Remember, O Lord, Thy servants who are gone before us with the sign of faith, and sleep in peace. To these, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light and peace, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Not content with studying their books, I called upon the Oriental Patriarchs and Bishops in communion with the See of Rome, who belong to the Armenian, the Chaldean, the Coptic, the Maronite and Syriac rites. They all assured me that the schismatic Christians of the East among whom they live have, without exception, prayers and sacrifices for the dead.
Now, I ask, when could those Eastern sects have commenced to adopt the Catholic practice of praying for the dead? They could not have received it from us since the ninth century, because the Greek church separated from us then and has had no communion with us since that time, except at intervals, up to the twelfth century. Nor could they have adopted the practice since the fourth or fifth century, inasmuch as the Arians, Nestorians and Eutychians have had no religious communication with us since that period. Therefore, in common with us, they received this doctrine from the Apostles. If men living in different countries drink wine having the same flavour and taste and colour, the inference is that the wine was made from the same species of grape. So must we conclude that this refreshing doctrine of intercession for the dead has its root in the Apostolic tree of knowledge planted by our Saviour.
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- Nov 28, 2003
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I can't find the word "exclusively" in the verse you quoted. Perhaps you have a different translation?
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Just not possible based on Romans 8:24. Never mind Paul asks for people to pray for him with intercessory prayer.
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