PRAYER TO SAINTS: Lynn Gazis-Sax asks a good question: “What does prayer to the saints add to your devotional life, that wouldn’t be supplied simply by prayer directly to God?” I think her summary of the theology behind prayer to saints is fine, so I’ll just address the experiential, “what does it feel like?” side.

The veneration of saints has all kinds of salutary effects, especially on judgmental or impatient souls like mine–click here for a previous post on that subject. (If link is broken–and I apologize, I really don’t know how this software works, I just type and click–go here and scroll down to “There Is No Future in Einstein’s Dreaming.”) But the experience of praying for the intercession of saints is different from the experience of meditating on the lives of saints or being sharply reminded of some event in a saint’s life.

Prayer to saints gives me a very strong feeling of community that has persisted throughout time. This is similar to the way that I think Christians generally feel knit together in community when we ask one another to pray for a sick relative, or a teen facing an exam. Prayer to saints specifically unites us with the Church Triumphant in heaven, and thus is a much-needed reminder that the Church has endured for almost 2,000 wild and woolly and often hideous years. That’s one reason I find prayer to saints especially helpful amid the current priestly-abuse crisis.

Also, there’s pretty much nothing you or I face that a saint hasn’t already undergone. Saints have dealt with everything under the sun, it seems. Simply being reminded of that fact is strengthening; we can call on the prayers of holy men and women who have suffered all kinds of different trials. And this is not true of prayer to Jesus, for the saints have undergone sin and repentance from sin. Just knowing that there are saints who backslid, saints who tried to hedge and escape the Hound of Heaven, saints who screwed up, saints who denied Christ three times, saints who accepted Christ only at the point of death… knowing all that gives me hope for my own soul and the souls of those I love. It reminds me that nothing human is alien to the Church. I’m especially heartened by remembering how many saints faced hostility or condescension from the Church authorities of their day; that helps me to remember that the Church’s claims about herself and her structure have never rested on the personal holiness of her clerics. Perhaps we should say that God works through the Church, but He sometimes has to work around bishops…

Anyway. Saints are more than role models. Prayer to saints also allows me to join in fulfilling God’s plan for their lives. Maybe the example of St. Michael the Archangel will help clarify this point. I’m not sure whether Protestants who have a problem with intercessory prayer to dead holy humans also have a problem with intercessory prayer to angels–my guess is no, but really I have no clue. There’s a basic, simple, but fiery prayer to St. Michael that makes it clear that one of his roles is specifically to defend us against the Devil. Similarly, each of us has a place in God’s plan. We’re generally confused about what that place is; we have to be ready, always, to ditch our preconceived notions and let God surprise us–often unpleasantly! Patron saints are one of the ways that the Church emphasizes this notion that each person has a role to play. Thus when I pray to Elizabeth for assistance in counseling pregnant women, I’m both acknowledging her role as friend and counselor to the Blessed Mother, and acting in harmony with her as she performs one of her roles as intercessor for counselors of pregnant women. (I doubt there’s a specific patron saint for such counselors, but it should really be Elizabeth!)

The main things, in terms of how intercessory prayer feels, are: a) kinship with others who have doubted, suffered, railed against God or the Church, and ultimately trusted and believed; b) a sense of harmony with the Body of Christ, a sense of acting in concert with the saints; c) a strong reminder that God didn’t just swoop into history and then swoop right back out–He has been with us since the beginning of time. Prayer to saints, like the Eucharist in which we do encounter God directly, helps us keep a very “incarnational” faith, in which God’s transcendence never eclipses His presence in our lives.

Other people should feel free to email me about their own experiences of prayer to saints; but check out the email policy to your left before you hit “send.”