The Communion of Saints

In my period of alienation against Catholicism, there were few things I disliked more than devotion to Mary and veneration of the saints.  I saw these practices as pure distractions from the centrality of the Messiah and the message of the cross.  Quite honestly, although I now accept the Church's teachings about them, I still think that many Catholics go overboard with these practices and live a Christianity that is out of balance with the Word of God. 

Still, I do believe that if approached in a balanced way, the communion and intercession of saints is a beautiful and biblical part of our inheritance in Messiah.  Protestants generally acknowledge the communion of saints between ourselves here on earth, and the future communion of saints in heaven when we will all be with God.  In the meantime, however, they seem to assume an invisible dividing wall between the saints on earth and the saints in heaven.   We are to have no communication whatsoever with those who are already with the Lord, and they are certainly not concerned with our earthly existence.

I don't think such a view is biblical.  It is commonly defended from Old Testament commandments forbidding us to contact the dead, such as: "There shall not be found among you anyone...who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead" (Deut. 18:10-11).  One must really force such a passage, however, to use it to condemn asking the saints for their intercession.  First, the context is clearly one of witchcraft, sorcery and clairvoyance, with the goal either to conjure some supernatural powers that are not from God, or to get information about the future.  Neither of these applies to the Catholic practice of praying to the saints.  Second, the commandment forbids to "call up the dead".  Asking saints for their intercession to God is not calling them up.  Catholics do not, and should not, expect them to appear to provide us with some kind of divine revelation.  

Another objection to the practice of praying to the saints is usually based on 1 Timothy 2:5: "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus".  Indeed, Yeshua is the only mediator, and all of our prayers go through Him.  But what happens when a friend of mine is in need and asks me to pray for him?  Should I rebuke him and tell him: "How dare you bypass Christ's only mediation and come to me for prayer.  You can pray to God yourself through Yeshua!".  I don't think so.  We all know that it is biblical and good to pray for each other.  It does not cross anyone's mind that we are violating Christ's role as mediator when we do this. Why should it be different with our family in heaven?  I cannot imagine that, if I were to die tomorrow, I would instantly lose all concern and interest for my friends and family on earth.  On the contrary, having attained perfect holiness and seeing our Lord face to face, would I not be in an even greater position to uphold those I love in prayer before Him? 

In Luke 16, the rich man suffering in Hades remembers his brothers and prays for them.  There is triple evidence for Catholic beliefs here:  not only is he dead, he is not even in heaven; despite this, he still intercedes for his brothers.  In addition, he does not pray directly to God but to Abraham.  Can even souls in purgatory pray for us?  It could be a plausible hypothesis, judging from this passage.  The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to the rich man's house to warn his five brothers.  Interestingly enough, Yeshua did raise a man called Lazarus from the dead (John 11).  Coincidence?  Maybe, or maybe not.  The text does not say that this account is actually a parable.  It is in any case odd that Yeshua would use the name of a close friend in this context.

In the book of Revelation we see the 24 elders bringing the prayers of the saints before God (Rev. 5:8).  An angel does the same a little later (8:3).  In chapter 6 we have another example of saints "who had been slain for the word of God" now praying to God for vindication (6:9-11).  We also read in the book of Hebrews that we are constantly surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses - the saints of the past (Heb. 12:1).  A witness is by definition someone who sees.  If such a cloud of witnesses surrounds us, it must mean that we are not cut off from them, but that they who preceded us on the way to heaven are cheering us on as we run towards the finishing line!  The Bible is clear: By coming to "Mount Zion and to the city of the living God", we have also come to "an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven", and to "the spirits of just men made perfect". (Heb. 12:22-23)

Catholicism and Idolatry

The Catholic use of images and statues is a great stumbling block for Protestants and Jews.  Catholics are commonly accused of engaging in idolatry and violating the second commandment: "You shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourself a carved image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them" (Ex. 20:4-5).  This is a serious and legitimate charge that needs to be addressed.

It should first be said that the Catholic Church has always condemned idolatry.  Consider this passage from the Catechism: "The first commandment condemns polytheism.  It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God.  Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of ‘idols of silver and gold, the work of men's hands.  They have mouths, but do not speak, eyes, but do not see.'  These empty idols make their worshippers empty: ‘Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them.'...Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God.  Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons, power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc.  Idolatry is a perversion of man's innate religious sense."[13]

Since the Church clearly condemns idolatry, how then can the use of statues and images be justified?  From the Bible, says the Catechism:  "Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the Ark of the Covenant, and the cherubim."[14]

The reason for the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man is explained in Deuteronomy: "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb...beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure..."[15] God could not be represented physically in the Old Covenant because He revealed Himself to Israel in an absolutely transcendent form.  In the Incarnation of Christ his Son, however, God showed mankind an icon of himself. Paul said, "He is the image (Greek: ikon) of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation (Col 1:15)." Christ himself is the tangible divine "icon" of the unseen, infinite God of the universe, who has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men.[16]  Therefore it has now become possible to make an image of what we have seen of God.

"Christian iconography expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words".[17]  Pictures and statues are merely aids that help us to recall the great characters of the Gospel story, just as we would keep a picture of a loved one in our wallet to recall him or her.  It is therefore a fallacy to put the Catholic use of images in the same category as the worship of the golden calf at Sinai.  No Catholic worships statues, considers them to be God, or even thinks that they have special powers.  Therefore, I have no problem with the representation of Christ, Mary or the saints as a way of recalling their lives and examples.  They came in the flesh and can be artistically represented.  In all honesty, however, my dislike for the veneration and kissing of statues remains.  Although not acts of worship or even of honor to the statue itself, these gestures are so easily misunderstood that I believe Catholics would be better witnesses of their faith by refraining from them.