From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. (dfsiemensjr@juno.com)
Date: Sat Jun 21 2003 - 14:57:11 EDT
On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 08:17:46 -0400 George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
writes:
<in part>
>
> Certainly the idea of Mary as co-mediatrix is wrong even if
> carefully
> formulated, even more so in much popular piety. (I recently heard a
> prominent lay Roman
> Catholic in my area give a rationale for praying to the Blessed
> Virgin as, "If you get
> in trouble with Dad, the best thing to do is go talk to Mom.") But
> simply the idea of
> asking a departed saint to intercede with God for one, as I might
> ask you to pray for
> me, doesn't _in itself_ introduce the problem of idolatry. One
> difficulty with the
> practice is that it assumes that those who have died are able to
> hear such prayer. We
> simply don't know that & there are serious reasons to doubt it, &
> "whatever is not of
> faith is sin."
>
>
Something else came to my mind when I received an offer to pray for me to
St. Something-or-other if I only sent a gift to the monastery. Romans
8:26f: "We do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself
intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who
searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." If a member of
the Holy Trinity is interceding for me, why should I call on a deceased
creature, a clearly lesser being. The reason for asking living Christians
to intercede is the example of Paul's requests for prayer (Ephesians
6:18f; Colossians 4:2f; I Thessalonians 5:25), James' command (James
5:13-16) and the enumeration of some for whom we all should pray (I
Timothy 2:10-3). But it is clear that our access to the Father and the
intercessory work of the Spirit is through Christ (Ephesians 2:18).
Dave
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