Does it make sense to pray to saints?

Grace and peace to the saints, that is, the invisible church, the body of Christ.

Today I am asking a question: Does it make sense to pray to saints? It was the question I posed to my wife one of the first times we hung out together, when she was still a Roman Catholic. Asking that question seemed to mark a turning point (from what I could tell) in her conversion to Protestantism; it sparked a moment of visible doubt in her. This is because the question must be logically answered with a no, and it doesn’t take much thinking to come to this conclusion.

Some background: The Roman Catholic system is a hierarchical system that sees us - the laypeople, common folk - at the bottom of the pyramid, and progressively goes up through all sorts of various positions such as priests, bishops, arch bishops, cardinals, the pope, saints, the virgin Mary, etc. and eventually making its way to God Himself. The general understanding amongst most Roman Catholics is that the higher up the pyramid you go, the closer to God you get. Delivering your prayers to those who are closer to God (veneration) gives you a better chance to have those prayers answered. To those who haven’t thought too deeply about this concept, it makes some amount of sense. But it is not hard to shoot it full of holes.

Now there are all sorts of angles to be taken on this, let alone the fact that it is incredibly similar to henotheism - the belief that while there is one God, there are other lesser gods that are worthy of our worship and who are able to answer our prayers (while God is busy with other more important things). But the question of “does it make sense to pray to saints” is ultimately a theological question, and more specifically, anthropological. What we know about humanity and our own finite existence must be considered here. If humans are in fact finite, then what change takes place in death that allows us (or certain humans who are blessed) the ability to receive prayers, and to do so in what would seem to be an infinite manner? For example, let’s take one of the most popular saints: Saint Patrick. Let’s consider how many people must say prayers to Saint Patrick, not just at any given time, but on the one and only Saint Patrick’s day. How many do you think that would be? In the millions? Now let’s also consider how much time there is in a day, in seconds - 86,400. Even if Saint Patrick only received 1,000,000 prayers on his famous day, he would be receiving, on average, a prayer every 0.08 seconds. In order for Saint Patrick to do anything about all of these prayers, he needs to be something more than human - he needs to be a god. He needs to shed the limitation of finite existence and put on the infinite ability of fielding the requests of many, many people at once. But he IS only a man, and a dead one at that; alike all the other saints.

Does glorification alone solve this issue? The simple answer is “no”. It would be correct to conclude we do not become infinite or no longer subject to the constraints of time just because we have passed from this life to the next. Only God can be described as atemporal; humans, whether having been just created as Adam was, procreated as we are, or glorified as we one day will be, are finite beings limited to the temporal existence God has created for us.

For there is One alone who is God, One alone who is infinite, One alone who is able to hear our prayers and answer them. While it is good for us to share each other's burdens and pray for one another, this is something entirely different than praying to those who are deceased as if we can somehow communicate directly with them. Our understanding of who God is, and in retrospect, who we are, tells us that prayers delivered to men, whether alive or glorified, is a misguided and dangerous practice. Let our prayers be to God, and to God alone.

In Him,

Joel Senders