Prayers to God, Prayers to Mary

Prayer to souls in heaven, especially Mary, does not usurp the authority or role of Jesus. Nor is it worship as due to God alone. It actually manifests God's designs. Scripture depicts God fathering a family, not creating a race of mere servants. Adam was the first son of God (refer to Luke's geneology) and God assigned him to be the steward of creation, but by his rebellion he lost that sonship (sonship means eternal dwelling with God) for himself and all his descendants (because we can't inherit what our parents don't have) . But God had a salvation plan and that plan resulted in Adam's rebellion being undone by Jesus' obedience (even to the point of death on a cross). Now every person can become adopted into God's family as His son or daughter (aka "justified"). This is how we gain entrance into heaven. (Otherwise we will be relegated to eternal separation from God.) We are now a big family, whether toiling on earth or triumphant in heaven. In a healthy family, siblings interract and help eachother. That's what it is when we pray to the saints in heaven. They are our elder siblings. Those such as the Apostles, for example, are currently greatly rewarded in Heaven for their service and obedience while on earth. They are some of God's greatest creatures, because they so cooperated with His grace that they accomplished great things. Since God glorifies them, He is pleased when we honor them because we are only acknowledging and honoring God's own handiwork in men (as opposed to the man's own inherent qualities, which are shabby).

Non-Catholic Objections to Praying to Heaven-Dwellers:

Objection 1) Scripted prayers to Mary use allegedly worshipful terminology.

(Note: historically the term "worship" has had a slightly different meaning than we commonly use it today. While we most commonly use it to mean worship of God as due to Him alone, it used to mean also merely honoring when it was in the context of creatures, as opposed to context relating to God. In my commentary I will use "worship" in our modern sense of "as due to God alone".)

Let's take a closer look, and compare with a prayer addressed to God Himself.

Here are a couple Marian Prayers... (Many can be found at http://www.marypages.com/PrayerstoMary.htm)

Hail Mary, Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women
And Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, To thee do we send up our sighs, Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, And after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Amen.

At first glance those two prayers maybe can be perceived as worship. But looking closer reveals there is no idolatry or worship of a false god in them...

The "Hail Mary" is mostly directly from Scripture. "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you: blessed are you among women" is Luke 1:28.  "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb" is Luke 1:42.  "Holy Mary, Mother of God", while not a direct quote, is implicit in Scripture... She is holy, since she is in Heaven. She is the Mother of God because Jesus is God (ie Luke 1:43). The remainder of the prayer is asking her to pray for us. All of us earthly Christians request prayers of eachother. It's no different to seek a sibling in Heaven to pray for us.

The "Hail Holy Queen" is simply another petition for Mary to pray for us. The phrases used in the prayer to describe her are not worship, but acknowledgement of God's grace working in and through her. (That's what God can do to and through any meager human who cooperates with His grace.) She is "holy Queen" because her son is the King. (Scripture depicts that in the Davidic dynastic tradition the queen of the kingdom was the king's mother, not a wife. David's kingdom was the Kingdom of God (aka Kingdom of Heaven) manifested on earth. Jesus is heir to David's throne and is the King of Heaven. Therefore, the present queen of Heaven would be His mother, Mary.) This is not ascribing to her divine power or characteristics. She is not treated as if she is the source of grace and salvation... only One is that and He is Jesus Christ. She is implored as "our life, our sweetness, our hope". This is in the context of  her role in God's salvation plan, as the human gateway through which God Incarnate entered the world. Jesus came to us through her and if it weren't for that, she'd be just another human creature, not the mother of God. She has no inherent value beyond what any other human creature has. But by God's grace and her willing cooperation she has been glorified by God Himself. We obey Him when we honor her.

She is called an advocate and intercessor. That's not worship. Even you or I can be an advocate and an intercessor, if we pray for someone else. (There is only one true Mediator, but there are many intercessors. Intercessor = one who prays for another. Refer to 1Timothy 2:1. Paul exhorts people to intercede for others.) We then have "eyes of mercy" when we do so, because it's a merciful act, to pray for someone.

This prayer (as well as all Marian prayers) is not to be a replacement for prayer to God. We pray worshipfully and petitionaly to God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit, but we also seek others (in this case, Mary in heaven) to pray for us. Someone who prays to Mary and the Saints, to the exclusion of praying to God Himself, is violating Church teaching and God's designs, and should stop praying to them entirely, concentrating on God alone, until their priorities are adjusted.

Now, by way of comparison, let's take a look at a prayer addressed to God Himself, a prayer from the Catholic Mass, called The Gloria...

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will. 
We praise you, 
we bless you, 
we adore you, 
we glorify you,
we give you thanks for your great glory, 
Lord God, heavenly King, 
O God, almighty Father. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us;
you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High, 
Jesus Christ, 
with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Now THIS is worshipful and adoring of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the THE SOURCE of all grace and salvation!!! The Gloria exemplifies the worship and adoration Catholics give to God alone. No other being receives such worship and adoration from Catholics! Saints are venerated and angels are honored but none of them are worshiped as God is duly worshiped.

Compare any Marian prayer to The Gloria. You will find that Mary receives great veneration and honor, but not worship as due to God alone. This means that someone's contention with this practice is only whether it is "biblical" to pray to bretheren in Heaven at all. Which leads us to Objection 2...



Objection 2) Contact with the "dead" is prohibited in Scripture.

That is true, mostly. The story of Saul is an example of what this directive prohibits: seeking to glean supernatural (actually, preternatural) information from a source other than God, such as spirit. Saul didn't have an answer from God so he went to a witch to bring up the spirit of Samuel. This is the kind of contact with the dead which is prohibited by Scripture. (Today, this includes tarot cards & ouija boards & "fortune tellers"). But a Catholic praying to the souls in Heaven is nothing like this episode. We pray to the saints to get them to add their prayers to our own prayers to God, not to acquire supernatural information. It's no different than when I ask my fellows on earth to pray for me.


Objection 3) Departed souls can't hear us, they're "asleep" until the final judgement.
This concept of "soul sleep" is false doctrine. Those who have died in the friendship of Jesus are consciously enjoying the heavenly benefits of membership in God's family (or soon will be, after their individual purging of imperfections). Scripture depicts them actively worshiping God (Rev___) and witnessing earthly events (Heb 12:1).


Objection 4) Catholics kneel or bow in proximity to a statue or image of Mary as they pray for her intercession. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, God prohibits making graven images or bowing to them.

The critic of this Catholic practice feels that it is worshiping an idol (which is unarguably prohibited). But kneeling or bowing to someone is not de facto worshipful. Many societies today feature bowing as a sign of respect, and that's not worship. Scripture also features bowing as a way of honoring (Jacob bowed to Esau, etc.). Our Critic might point out how in the New Testament when a man (Peter or John) bowed to an angel, the angel said "don't do that!". However, the context of those pericopes shows that the man was bowing to worship, not merely to honor.

Related to this Objection is the charge that the Catholic Church deleted the 2nd Commandment (which prohibits making idols) and rearranged the numbering to get back to ten commandments. This is just plain bogus. The fact is, Scripture does not give us the numbering of the Commandments. It just tells us what all the Commandments are. The two numbering schemes in question (Protestant & Catholic) go back to Origen & Augustine. Most Protestants/Evengelicals/Bible-Christians & Eastern Orthodox Christians use Origen's enumeration. The Catholic scheme is Augustine's numbering. (Most Lutherans also use Augustine's numbering, which makes sense since he was an Augustinian monk before his revolt.) The details supposedly deleted by the Catholic Church are fleshed out in the Catechism section on the 10 Commandments.


Additional Information...

Saints: Holy Siblings
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/sts.html

Mary, Holy Mother
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/m.html

Mary, Ark of the Covenant
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/ma.html

Communion of Saints
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/any-friend-of-god-is-a-friend-of-mine


The Woman clothed with the sun: ( Ap. 12)  by Bernard J. Le Frois

Marian Typology in the Fathers and the Liturgy  by Bernard Capelle