www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Praying to Saints

Again, we have to be more careful than admitting that praying to saints involves are full knowledge that what we mean is simply intercession!

In the eastern tradition, probably more than in the western one, saints are dwellingplaces of God, they are his station. God has stopped in them, makes his abode in them, and they each according to measure have become, what God is by nature, gods by grace.
Therefore, we do not simply ask their prayers, we also pray to them, we even glorify them according to measure God has glorified them beforehand.
That is why we have services said in and to the name of the saint. That is why we have churches build in and devoted to the name of the saints.

"Pray to Our Lady the Mother of God, to the angels, and to all the saints, as you would pray to the Holy Ghost Himself; or rather as you would pray to the Holy Trinity, Who sanctifies them and rests in them."
-St. John of Kronstadt

Dave:

I look at praying to saints this way. St. Paul tells us we need to pray without ceasing. But I stop and work or sleep or do other things. When I pray to a saint for some intention that I have been praying for, it's a bit like asking that person to pick up where I leave off when I stop and go on about some other business.

In the Communion of Saints that we mention in the Symbol of Faith, we are all picking each other up when we pray. When we pray for one another's intentions, as we do on this board, we're doing the same thing. One of us asks for prayers and when that one is no longer praying for the intention asked for, someone else picks up the slack at another time.

The Communion of the Saints isn't limited to people who are still in pilgrimage. We have a company of relatives--by Baptism--who are continuously asking the Father for what we have asked for when we are about our other earthly business. The best part is that they have no distractions, no other business to make them stop constant prayer.

I, for one, look forward to that day when I can pick up the slack for someone still in his pilgrimage and who needs someone to pray for his needs and intentions while he goes about his work.

Bob

Here is something to knock the socks off everybody ~ the Worship of the Saints!!

Semantics come into it. Speakers of British English can still speak of the worship of the Saints without falling into the error of adoring them.
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"Worship"?

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