Blessed Seelos, intercede for this woman, we PRAY you.
The rest of you: pray does not mean 'worship', it means 'entreat'.
Asking a Saint to pray for you is perfectly reasonable, just like asking FReepers to pray for you.
See for instance Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."
Really?
Show me the word "Saint" in his post and everything...
[i]See for instance Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” [/i]
Everyone who is saved is a Saint...this scripture does not refer to just those who were “declared” saints by the Catholic Church....
I am a Saint..these prayers are from me and all other saved people who have prayed to God.
Jesus was asked once how we should pray..He said “Our Father who art in Heaven”....So, we should only pray to God not anyone else.
“Asking a Saint to pray for you is perfectly reasonable, just like asking FReepers to pray for you.”
Except that you can communicate directly with FReepers and FReepers can communicate with God through Christ and engage in intercessory prayer. A middle-man fantasy “saint” (a powerless dead guy) is neither necessary nor effective, so why waste time? Pray directly to God through Jesus. (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. I Tim. 2:5)
Every born-again Christian is a “saint”. In the Bible, there is no higher-level guy who was decreed to be a saint, e.g., Paul, Stephen, etc. ALL Christians are saints, which is clear in Paul’s epistles. He wrote to, and referred to, “the saints” who were ALL the members of The Church, not just some of them — not just the cool ones or wo were extra spiritual.
We believe in adhering to the U.S. Constitution literally. Why can’t we give the Bible the same respect? Does Thomas Jefferson deserve more respect than God? What made the early popes believe that they had power over God to change His words and make up funky new stuff?
Revelation 5:8 says NOTHING about praying to “saints” or even that saints are “in Heaven.” It specifically says the prayers from the saints (all of those in Christ, not some loony Catholic-certified crud) are in those bowls.
That reference does NOTHING to help your case. Where does it say there are heavenly saints to even converse with, let alone “pray to?”