On the Invocation of Saints

Reflection on Catholic-Lutheran dialogue.

One of the most common disagreements between Catholics and Lutherans is over the issue of ‘prayers to saints’. I put this in quotation marks because each and every one of these terms needs clarifying. Do Catholics pray to saints, (or is it simply a request for prayer)? Do they pray to saints (or is it with or through them)? I will use the Catechism of the Catholic Church to represent the Catholic position, and hopefully this is sufficient for my Catholic readers, as I think this is as fair as possible. I know what it is like for people to make judgements off what they think is my position without reading my confessions. I’ll respond and offer my problems and concerns with this practice from my own thoughts, the Scriptures, and the Augsburg confession. I welcome dialogue in the comments and in response posts.

To clarify what it is we are discussing, this is the account of the practice from the CCC.

“Because of Mary’s singular cooperation with the action of the Holy Spirit, the Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary, to magnify in her the great things the Lord has done for her, and to entrust supplications and praise to her.” (CCC 2682, emphasis added).

“In prayer, the pilgrim church is associated with that of the saints, whose intercession she asks.” (CCC 2692).

“[the saints] contemplate God, praise him and constantly care for those whom they have left on earth.[…] Their intercession is their most exalted service to God’s plan. We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world” (CCC, 2683).

The catechism fails in my view to present a clear concise and consistent terminology or definition of invocation of the saints. Sometimes, it will be comfortable to use the terminology of praying to saints, yet in the clear definitions quoted, it uses more reserved language of requesting intercessions.

Still, since many Catholics do use the word prayer to describe the invocations of departed faithful, I will run with that.

To begin, I will say that I agree with the Catholics on a few points. The saints in heaven do pray for us. This is affirmed by the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.

“We admit that, just as the saints (when alive) pray for the Church in general, so in heaven they pray for the Church in general.” (Article XXI.9)

Further, the saints are also alive with Christ in heaven currently. However, there is no evidence from Scripture that we must invoke them.

In my experience with in person dialogue, and reflection on the state of Protestant/Catholic relations more generally, I have been taking extra care to identify methodological and terminological barriers for understanding each other. The issue with this issue is Catholics, I don’t think, are taking their idea of prayer from Scripture. So, in order to clarify the Protestant concern, I think it necessary to take a look purely from Scripture at what prayer is.

Prayer is constantly discussed in the Bible, but Jesus and his disciples in Luke is the best starting place. The disciples here ask a very simple, straightforward and puzzling question.

Lord, teach us to pray. (Luke 11:1).

Let’s be honest. The disciples should already know how to pray. Presumably they have been praying their whole lives. Eleven chapters into Luke’s gospel, they have been with Jesus a lot. Yet, they don’t know how to pray. Jesus patiently instructs them how to pray, giving them the Lord’s prayer. (The full prayer can be found in Matthew 7). My point is that when the disciples ask him for a very basic thing: “tell us what prayer is and how to do it” Jesus gives them one thing and one thing only. A prayer to God the Father. This prayer is rightly recited by Christians word for word, yet it is also a template for all of Christian prayer. It teaches what goes on in prayer, what sort of things we ought to bring to God:

• Praise and Adoration. (Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.)

• Surrender. (Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven).

• Bringing our requests for daily needs, however trivial. (Give us this day our daily bread.)

• Repentance. (Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.)

• Aid in temptation and deliverance from danger. (Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.)

None of these things can be given to a human being. We cannot worship a human being, we cannot surrender to their will, nor be assured they have the power to give us our daily needs. Neither can they forgive us our sins,¹ and they cannot deliver us from temptation nor have ultimate power over evil. The very nature of prayer excludes its direction to anyone except the Holy Trinity. My contention is that,

If you cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer to a saint, you can’t pray to them at all.

Intercession in General

I don’t have time to delve deep into the Psalms, this is something for another time, so I will move to the objection that arises from what is, likely a harder line than my fellow Lutherans might go. Catholics often will respond by defining prayer as simply a ‘request’, or they might concede that we do not ‘pray’ to saints as such, but simply invoke them.

To the first, it seems very reductionist and unbiblical to speak of prayer this way. The Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer do not seem to be simply a ‘request’ or just ‘talking to God’ but as the CCC defines it, quoting Saint John of Damascus, “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from him.” (CCC 2559). The section continues to describe prayer in terms of man’s relationship to God. The CCC seems to maintain that the address to God is an essential part of prayer.

As to the second objection, I will go to the main argument presented in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession Article XXI.

Since neither a command nor a promise nor an example can be produced from the Scriptures about the invocation of saints, it makes sense that conscience remains uncertain about this invocation. Since prayer should be made from faith, how do we know that God approves of this invocation? Without the testimony of Scripture, how do we know that the saints know about the prayers of each one? … Since the invocation of the saints does not have a testimony from God’s Word, it cannot be affirmed that the saints understand or invocation or, even if they understand it, that God approves of it.

We are commanded by Scripture to pray to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and he promises to hear our prayers. There is a command to pray, and a promise that we are heard. Because of this, we joyfully approach our Heavenly Father and through Our Lord Jesus Christ with the full confidence he loves us and will answer every prayer. Scripture gives us many assurances of this.

“Come to Me, all who labour.” (Matthew 11:28).

“In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of Him shall the nations inquire.” (Isaiah 11:10).

“Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.” (Psalm 50:15).

“Since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:21-22).

Because there exists no command or promise that assures us that God approves of asking the departed saints to pray for us, or that they can hear our prayers we should not do it. Rather, we should do what we are actually commanded to do which is pray to our Heavenly Father, in full assurance that he promises to hear us and grant us our requests. To conclude, I sincerely hope that any Catholics reading this better understand the issues Lutherans have with invoking the saints. I hope I have represented you fairly, though briefly. And I welcome the discussion. I hope that we can reflect on our terminology and make sure we are talking about the same thing.

Soli Deo Gloria.

1. The pastor/priest does not forgive on his own merit or authority, but only that given to him by Christ.