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Why Do Catholics Pray to Saints? (And No, It's Not Idol Worship) · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

• 0:00
  A few months back, my wife asked me a simple question. Why do Catholics pray to saints?
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  Now, I started answering and about two sentences in, I realized I didn't actually have a good
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  clear answer ready. Not a bad one, just not one I could say plainly, the way you'd want
• 0:18
  to explain something you actually believe. That question is the whole reason this show exists.
• 0:24
  And I realized that for multiple private messages, I've never once sat down and just answered
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  it all the way through. So that's what today is.
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  My name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints. This is a special episode. So no Saints
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  story today. No dramatic escape, no martyrdom, none of that. Just me on the porch trying
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  to answer a question a lot of people have asked me and honestly, one I think a lot of Catholics
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  themselves have never fully worked through either. Before I get into it, I want to say something
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  plainly right up front. I am not trying to talk anyone into becoming a Catholic today. If you
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  walk away from this episode desiring to be Catholic, great. If you walk away still not desiring
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  to be Catholic, but you believe in Christ and you believe in God, I'm thoroughly happy either
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  way. That's what actually matters to me. This episode isn't a sales pitch for Catholicism.
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  It's just me trying to explain something honestly, the same way I'd explain it to a friend. Let's
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  start with the word itself, because I think it trips people up more than anything else.
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  When you hear pray to a saint, your brain probably jumps straight to worship. Like you are treating
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  the saint the same way you treat God. And if that was actually what was happening, the concern
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  would be completely fair. And that would be a real problem. But that's not what the word
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  pray originally meant. Centuries ago, pray just meant to ask. You will still catch traces
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  of it in old writing. Someone saying, I pray thee just meant I'm asking you. So when a Catholic
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  says they are praying to a saint, what they mean is I'm asking this person to pray for
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  me, not asking them to grant the request themselves, asking them to bring it to God the same way
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  you'd ask a friend, hey, can you pray for me this week? That's the whole starting point.
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  It's a request for help, not a redirect of worship. Here's the actual belief underneath all of
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  this, and it's simpler than it sounds. Catholics believe that when someone dies in faith, they
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  just don't disappear from the picture. They are still part of the same family of believers,
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  what the church calls the communion of saints. Now, that's just a fancy way of saying Everyone
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  who believes, whether they are alive right now or already with God, is still one connected
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  group, not separate, not cut off from each other. And here's the part that actually matters for
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  our question. The church teaches that the people already with God are more alive, not less.
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  Closer to Him, not further away. So, If you'd ask a living friend to pray for you without
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  a second thought, asking someone who's already with God is not some bizarre leap. If anything,
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  Catholics would say it makes more sense, not less. Think about it this way. You have probably
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  heard someone say about a person they lost, she's still watching over us, or he's still
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  with us in spirit. Almost everyone Catholic or not has said some version of that about
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  somebody they loved. Catholic teaching on saints is really just the same instinct, taken seriously
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  and thought all the way through. If that person really is with God now, then asking for their
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  prayers isn't strange. It's just continuing a relationship that didn't actually end. I'll
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  give you a couple of the actual Bible verses Catholics point to here. since I know some
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  of you are wondering if any of this is actually in scripture or if it's just tradition we made
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  up along the way. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus says, God is not God of the dead, but of the
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  living, meaning the people who have died in faith are described as alive, not gone. And
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  then in the book of Hebrews, there's a line about being surrounded by a great cloud of
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  witnesses. A lot of Christians, not just Catholics, read that as the faithful who have gone before
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  us, still somehow present, still cheering us on. I'm not going to pretend those verses settled
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  the whole argument on their own. Smart, faithful people read them differently, but it's not
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  nothing, and it's not just something the Church invented with no scripture behind it at all.
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  Here's a question I've gotten a lot, and it's a fair one. If God is all-powerful, why bother
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  asking a specific saint at all? Why not just go straight to God? Think about how you already
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  act with people who are still alive. If you are going through something hard, you don't
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  only pray by yourself. You call a friend and ask them to pray for you too. And you probably
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  don't just call anybody. You call the friend who actually gets it. Somebody who's been through
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  the same thing or who you know cares in a specific way about that specific problem. That friend
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  praying for you doesn't add power God doesn't already have. God can hear you fine on your
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  own. But there is something real about having somebody else stand there with you. Especially
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  somebody who understands exactly what you are asking for. Here's how I'd put it. Say you're
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  struggling financially and you're choosing between praying alone or asking Mother Teresa, a woman
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  who spent her whole life kneeling next to the poorest people on earth, to pray for you too.
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  Either way, God is the one who answers. Nothing changes there. But doesn't it feel different
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  having somebody who actually understands exactly what that struggle is like standing there praying
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  right alongside you? That's the whole idea behind asking a specific saint instead of just anybody.
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  It's not about extra power. It's about who actually gets it. This is also where the whole idea
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  of a patron saint comes from. You have probably heard that phrase almost two dozen times alone
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  in my episodes, even if you have never thought about it much. It's not some official assignment
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  like, A saint gets a handed a department to manage. It usually comes from something specific
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  in that saint's actual life. A saint who spent years caring for the sick becomes someone people
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  turn to for healing. A soldier who died for his faith becomes someone soldiers turn to
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  for courage. It's the same logic as calling your friend who's been through a divorce when
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  you're going through one yourself, instead of calling a friend who's never been married.
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  Not because one friend is more powerful than the other, because one of them actually knows
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  what you are carrying. Now, let's deal with the actual concern directly, because I don't
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  want to dance around it. Some people look at the statues of saints or candles or people
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  kneeling and saying a specific saint's name, and they see worship. They think that looks
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  exactly like what the Bible warns against. Here's the distinction the church actually makes,
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  and it's not something made up to dodge the question. This is old, worked out teaching.
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  There's a real difference between honoring somebody and worshiping them. You honor a war hero.
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  You honor your grandparents. You don't worship them. Worship means treating something as God,
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  as the source of everything, deserving of your whole life. Honor just means respect, admiration.
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  looking up to somebody. Catholic teaching says saints get honor, never worship. A statue of
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  a saint works basically the same way a photo of somebody you love works. It's a reminder.
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  You don't think the photo itself has some magical power. It just helps you picture the person
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  and that helps you talk to them the same way it does with anyone. There's actually an old
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  fancy set of words for this exact distinction. if you ever run into it. The worship owed
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  to God alone is sometimes called Latria, and the honor given to saints is called Dulia.
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  You don't need to remember those words. I only mention them so you know this isn't a modern
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  workaround. The church drew this exact line a very long time ago, and it's never moved.
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  I know some of you are thinking about a specific Bible passage right now, and I want to address
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  it directly instead of dancing around it. The Ten Commandments include a command against
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  making graven images, carved statues, and bowing down to them. That's the actual verse
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  behind the idol worship accusation, and it's a fair verse to bring up. Here's the Catholic
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  answer to that. That commandment is about worshiping an image as if it were God itself, or as if
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  the object had power on its own. Nobody kneeling in front of a statue of a saint believes the
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  statue itself can do anything. It's a visual reminder, the same as a photograph on your
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  wall or a flag you salute. You are not worshipping the fabric. You are honoring what it represents.
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  The statue isn't the point. It's a reminder of a real person. The same way a photo of your
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  grandfather is a reminder of him, not an object with power of its own. Now, this one comes
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  up constantly, and I think it's actually one of the most human versions of this whole question.
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  Can you ask somebody who has never officially declared a saint, like your own grandfather,
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  for his prayers if you believe he's with God? The honest answer is yes, with one small detail
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  worth knowing. There's a difference between what you do privately on your own and what
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  happens out loud in an official church service. Publicly, en masse, the church only invokes
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  people it's officially certain are in heaven. That's what it means for someone to be canonized,
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  to be declared a saint. That's the church putting its full certain stamp on it. But privately,
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  on your own, at home, in your own heart, Catholics have always asked for the prayers of people
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  they simply believe are with God, even without any official declaration. That goes all the
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  way back to the earliest Christians who prayed for the help of the people They'd personally
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  known and lost long before anything like an official process even existed. So yes, if you
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  believe your grandfather is with God, you can absolutely ask him to pray for you. It's the
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  exact same kind of a request you'd make of any canonized saint. The only difference is the
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  church hasn't officially confirmed his address, so to speak. You were trusting your own hope
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  and faith on that one. instead of resting on an official church declaration. I actually
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  think this is one of the most comforting parts of the whole thing once you sit with it. You
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  don't need a formal process to keep talking to the people you have lost. You don't need
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  permission from anybody to believe your grandfather still cares about you, still prays for you,
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  still shows up for you in whatever way somebody with God is able to show up. The Church's official
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  list of saints isn't a wall keeping everyone else out. It's just the small group the Church
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  has looked at very closely to say with full confidence, yes, we are certain about this
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  one. Everybody else you love and believe is with God is still fair game. Nobody's stopping
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  you from asking. I want to say something here that I think matters, and it's very much in
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  the spirit of what this whole show tries to do. separating what's actually true from what
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  just sounds convincing. This is real disagreement between Catholics and a lot of our Protestant
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  brothers and sisters. It's not just a misunderstanding that clears up the second somebody explains
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  it well enough. Most Protestants who reject praying to saints do it because of a specific
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  verse. In Paul's first letter to Timothy, it says there is one mediator between God and
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  mankind, the man Christ Jesus. The mediator basically means go between, somebody standing
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  in the middle connecting two sides. A lot of Christians read that verse and conclude Christ
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  is the only go between we are allowed to use, nobody else. Not because they think Catholics
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  are worshipping statues on purpose. They just read the Bible differently on this one specific
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  point, in good faith. This is actually where the split really happened, historically. About
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  500 years ago, a monk named Martin Luther and the other early reformers looked at some of
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  the ways ordinary Catholics were practicing devotion to saints at the time, and they were
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  troubled by it. They felt like, in practice, plenty of everyday believers really were treating
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  saints as a kind of shortcut around God, whether or not the church's official teaching allowed
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  for that. That's a fair criticism of how some people actually lived out their faith. even
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  if it's not a fair description of the actual teaching. Reasonable people can look at the
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  exact same practice and worry it's being misused, even while agreeing on what it's technically
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  supposed to mean. I'm not going to pretend that disagreement isn't real or that everyone secretly
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  agrees once it's explained clearly enough. They don't. Good, sincere Christians land in different
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  places on this. I think the Catholic reading makes sense, obviously, or I wouldn't practice
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  it, but I respect that plenty of people who love Jesus just as much as I do land somewhere
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  else. All right, let me bring this back to the porch the way I do every week, even without
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  a saint story today. Here's what I keep coming back to. At the bottom of all of this, the
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  theology, the honor, the history, the arguments, praying to saints is really just an act of
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  trust that love doesn't stop working just because somebody died. That's it. That's the whole
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  thing underneath all the explaining. You ask a saint for prayers, the same reason you do
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  to ask a friend, because you believe they still care. and because carrying something together
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  feels different than carrying it alone. I think that's actually a beautiful thing to believe,
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  even if you land somewhere different than I do on the teachings. And I meant what I said
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  from at the start. I'm not trying to win an argument today. I just wanted to finally give
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  my wife and anyone else who's ever asked me this a real, honest, complete answer. instead
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  of the two sentence version I gave her the day this whole show started. I'll say this too,
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  because I think it matters more than getting every detail of the doctrine right. However
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  you land on this, whether you end up agreeing with the Catholic view or staying right where
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  you started, I hope you walk away from this episode actually understanding what Catholics
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  believe and why. That's really all today was. One honest explanation from me. to you. If
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  you believe in Christ and you believe in God, we are standing on the same ground, even if
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  we don't agree on every single detail of how to get there. That's enough for me. It is now
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  time for the closing prayer. Lord, thank you for every person who's ever loved us and prayed
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  for us, whether they are standing next to us right now or already home with you. Thank you
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  for a faith big enough to hold real disagreement without losing real love. For anyone listening
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  who sees this differently than I do, keep us both close to you and close enough to each
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  other to keep talking honestly about it. Amen. Well, that's today's special episode. If you
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  have ever wondered about this yourself or you know somebody who's asked you the same question
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  my wife asked me, send them this one. And hey, if you haven't already, go ahead and hit that
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  follow or subscribe. Also, I'd love to know what you thought of this one. Was it helpful?
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  Did it feel different in a good way or a weird way? And here's the real question. Do you want
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  me to keep doing these special episodes every once in a while? Or was this a one-time thing?
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  If there's something about faith or Catholicism specifically that you have always wondered
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  about and wanted me to tackle on an episode like this, shoot me in an email or find me
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  on X. Both are linked right now in the show notes of this episode. Everyday Saints will
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  be back this Thursday in two days with a regular episode. A new saint like always. I'm John
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  O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the porch with me and I will see you Thursday.