Many years ago, an old friend of Scott’s was begrudgingly investigating Catholicism. Like Scott’s, his family had left the Church when he was a child and found a home in a variety of Protestant communities. He had all of the usual sentiments about Catholicism, and when Scott came back to the Church, he was very displeased.
Fast forward a few years and this friend somehow found himself confronted with a few uncomfortable truths. He discovered that Our Lord left behind not a book, but a Church. The book that hundreds of years later was gathered and held as God’s holy word was gathered and approved as “God’s Holy Word” by a Church, by bishops of that Church who under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration used their authority to approve what went into the book and what was left out.
(Protestants often cite Scripture passages that they say deny the bishops’ authoritative role in compiling the Bible. But why would the bishops have chosen to include texts that non-Catholics would later use to deny their authoritative role?)
Even when someone is able to accept that Christ founded a Church, there are often other issues that they still struggle with: the Eucharist, Mary, and, surprisingly to me, the intercession of the saints.
So, this friend of Scott’s visited our house all of those years ago and asked me why I pray to the saints. I struggled to sound intellectual and nuanced, regretting that Scott wasn’t in the room. It was in vain, and I simply sighed and replied, “I ask them to pray for me for the same reason you ask your friends and family to pray for you. They are alive in heaven, right? They are not truly dead, right? Are they not our brothers and sisters in Christ, and standing before the face of Our Lord? Wouldn’t they seem the most obvious people to ask for prayer?” Something probably even less poetic than that, if possible. But our friend remembers that simple answer as a turning point. In the end, the answer was so very simple, but it changed everything.
In the past few months, this exact question has again come up more than once. Nicolas had the question from a non-Catholic student at his university, and again, his very simple answer left them shocked. And since the reasoning applied to Our Lady as well, they were quite disconcerted.
The unreasonable statement we often hear from non-Catholics, “Why pray to Mary (or the saints) when I can go straight to Jesus?,” while seeming pious in its simplicity, just doesn’t make sense, and isn’t the beautiful design that Our Lord left us with.
Christ left behind a body of believers, and a Church with consecrated leaders. He makes us brothers and sisters, and when he invites us to unite ourselves with him, he brings us into a family. The idea of this sounds quaint, but when we think about it for a moment it opens so many doors of belief. Jesus did not come to earth to save us and leave us staring wide-eyed at an image on the wall. He did not come to establish a solitary relationship – though he is worthy and deserving of it – but to bring us into a family.
Like a child rescued from the streets by a selfless and charitable man, we are picked up and then brought home. That home includes a mother and a father to love, siblings … and, for my own earthly mother’s sake, maybe even a pet donkey. He gives us his father! He gives us his mother! And he gives us one another as a family – spiritually and physically. We love one another without losing any true adoration of God.
Mary truly becomes our mother because she is his mother, and we are his. We seek out her love because he sought out her love, and we love one another because he loved us first. The saints in heaven really and truly love us more than we can love in return because their love has been perfected in the fire of his heavenly gaze.
And that is why we ask Mary and the saints to pray for us. That is why the souls in purgatory need and want our prayers.
November is the month of the Holy Souls in purgatory. Have we remembered to intercede for our siblings, as they will one day intercede for us?
