Posted on 11/30/2004 9:13:08 AM PST by greatful student
BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE GRACES GIVEN TO ST. JUDE!!! I am graduating college in three weeks and helplessly began my novena asking for help with a job, someone to sublease my apartment, and help to find a place to live. I had sent my resume out to any place that sounded remotely appealing and only was able to get 2 interviews-one was canceled bc they hired someone before my interview, and the other decided not to hire anyone for another 3 months. I was frustrated...I began my novena and asked for help. one week later I got offered my DREAM JOB for an unexpected salary in the #1 location of my choice. the company said they had been looking for the perfect person to fill this position for 5 months and this was the first offer! that same day I received 2 calls interested in my working for them. 3 days later, a girl whom my present roommates get along with, decided to sublease my apartment! (almost impossible to find anyone to take your lease over because of all the December graduates). now I had an issue of where and who to live with. I had two options of places I found online with girls I had not met. (a few of my friends are moving up there after their graduation-but that wasn't until may) 4 days later I found out that one of my good friends from school had a townhouse built in the area and is looking for a roommate!!!! (St. Jude added a bonus by making it the cheapest rent I could find!) How can my life get in any more order? I have absolutely no clue-but I do know that when it isn't in order, who to turn to. what I am most happy about is that I let go of my will and told St. Jude to help me be where God wants me to be-so I feel that I am in accordance to Gods will. I prayed that what he wanted for me, to "put that desire in my heart." I am just so thrilled! "work like it depends all on you and pray like it depends all on God" THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ST. JUDE!!!
The latter. It's a quasi-superstitious thing where if someone gets his prayer answered, he is supposed to then publish thanks. Or vice versa. I've seen it where you're supposed to publish something for 9 days straight and then you get your "wish."
Like I said, there are legitimate prayers and saints. And then there is superstitious stuff. There is no magic way to get what you want, be it publishing a classified or burying a statue.
SD
Thanks.... I've always wondered about it and never known who to ask!
Than any others in Heaven, no. No one is saying that certain saints are in a higher class or what have you. The point is whether one thinks that saints have an interest in our lives (and the capacity granted to intervene, to help) or not. We think the former.
Not to be too legalistic, if the final judgement has not yet happened I have some doubt that the Saints have actually arrived in Heaven yet.
If God lives in eternity, then those who are with Him in eternity are outside of our earthly concepts of time. So asking whether they are there "yet" doesn't really translate into eternity. It's a timeless reality.
This includes Street Preachers, Televangelists, Popes, the Bishops of Nicene, Saints and even some authors of the Gospels who were not eye witnesses.
If you don't believe in Popes, the Bishops of the Church assembled in council, or, seemingly, the idea of divine revelation through human channels, why do you call yourself Catholic?
Do you believe Jesus is God?
SD
Well, there are a couple of reasons, but I don't think you'll buy them: 1. My Church teaches they do, based on tradition handed down from Christ and the Apostles, and based on the Scripture versus mentioned throughout this thread. (I know you don't read them the same way the Catholic Church does.) 2. The earliest Christians, the Church fathers, believed in the power and value of the prayers of the Saints. Many quotes from these early Christians are listed below (Source: Catholic Answer Website). I would posit that if these folks, at least one of whom would have been taught directly by the Apostles, believed in the power of the prayers of those in heaven, then on what basis do we argue otherwise? ---------------------------------------------------------
BEGIN CATHOLIC ANSWER EXCERPT
Hermas
"[The Shepherd said:] ‘But those who are weak and slothful in prayer, hesitate to ask anything from the Lord; but the Lord is full of compassion, and gives without fail to all who ask him. But you, [Hermas,] having been strengthened by the holy angel [you saw], and having obtained from him such intercession, and not being slothful, why do not you ask of the Lord understanding, and receive it from him?’" (The Shepherd 3:5:4 [A.D. 80]).
Clement of Alexandria
"In this way is he [the true Christian] always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him [in prayer]" (Miscellanies 7:12 [A.D. 208]).
Origen
"But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep" (Prayer 11 [A.D. 233]).
Cyprian of Carthage
"Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy" (Letters 56[60]:5 [A.D. 253]).
Anonymous
"Atticus, sleep in peace, secure in your safety, and pray anxiously for our sins" (funerary inscription near St. Sabina’s in Rome [A.D. 300]).
"Pray for your parents, Matronata Matrona. She lived one year, fifty-two days" (ibid.).
"Mother of God, [listen to] my petitions; do not disregard us in adversity, but rescue us from danger" (Rylands Papyrus 3 [A.D. 350]).
Methodius
"Hail to you for ever, Virgin Mother of God, our unceasing joy, for to you do I turn again. You are the beginning of our feast; you are its middle and end; the pearl of great price that belongs to the kingdom; the fat of every victim, the living altar of the Bread of Life [Jesus]. Hail, you treasure of the love of God. Hail, you fount of the Son’s love for man. . . . You gleamed, sweet gift-bestowing Mother, with the light of the sun; you gleamed with the insupportable fires of a most fervent charity, bringing forth in the end that which was conceived of you . . . making manifest the mystery hidden and unspeakable, the invisible Son of the Father—the Prince of Peace, who in a marvelous manner showed himself as less than all littleness" (Oration on Simeon and Anna 14 [A.D. 305]).
"Therefore, we pray [ask] you, the most excellent among women, who glories in the confidence of your maternal honors, that you would unceasingly keep us in remembrance. O holy Mother of God, remember us, I say, who make our boast in you, and who in august hymns celebrate the memory, which will ever live, and never fade away" (ibid.).
"And you also, O honored and venerable Simeon, you earliest host of our holy religion, and teacher of the resurrection of the faithful, do be our patron and advocate with that Savior God, whom you were deemed worthy to receive into your arms. We, together with you, sing our praises to Christ, who has the power of life and death, saying, ‘You are the true Light, proceeding from the true Light; the true God, begotten of the true God’" (ibid.).
Cyril of Jerusalem
"Then [during the Eucharistic prayer] we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep: first, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition . . . " (Catechetical Lectures 23:9 [A.D. 350]).
Hilary of Poitiers
"To those who wish to stand [in God’s grace], neither the guardianship of saints nor the defenses of angels are wanting" (Commentary on the Psalms 124:5:6 [A.D. 365]).
Ephraim the Syrian
"You victorious martyrs who endured torments gladly for the sake of the God and Savior, you who have boldness of speech toward the Lord himself, you saints, intercede for us who are timid and sinful men, full of sloth, that the grace of Christ may come upon us, and enlighten the hearts of all of us so that we may love him" (Commentary on Mark [A.D. 370]).
"Remember me, you heirs of God, you brethren of Christ; supplicate the Savior earnestly for me, that I may be freed through Christ from him that fights against me day by day" (The Fear at the End of Life [A.D. 370]).
The Liturgy of St. Basil
"By the command of your only-begotten Son we communicate with the memory of your saints . . . by whose prayers and supplications have mercy upon us all, and deliver us for the sake of your holy name" (Liturgy of St. Basil [A.D. 373]).
Pectorius
"Aschandius, my father, dearly beloved of my heart, with my sweet mother and my brethren, remember your Pectorius in the peace of the Fish [Christ]" (Epitaph of Pectorius [A.D. 375]).
Gregory of Nazianz
"May you [Cyprian] look down from above propitiously upon us, and guide our word and life; and shepherd this sacred flock . . . gladden the Holy Trinity, before which you stand" (Orations 17[24] [A.D. 380]).
"Yes, I am well assured that [my father’s] intercession is of more avail now than was his instruction in former days, since he is closer to God, now that he has shaken off his bodily fetters, and freed his mind from the clay that obscured it, and holds conversation naked with the nakedness of the prime and purest mind . . . " (ibid., 18:4).
Gregory of Nyssa
"[Ephraim], you who are standing at the divine altar [in heaven] . . . bear us all in remembrance, petitioning for us the remission of sins, and the fruition of an everlasting kingdom" (Sermon on Ephraim the Syrian [A.D. 380]).
John Chrysostom
"He that wears the purple [i.e., a royal man] . . . stands begging of the saints to be his patrons with God, and he that wears a diadem begs the tentmaker [Paul] and the fisherman [Peter] as patrons, even though they be dead" (Homilies on Second Corinthians 26 [A.D. 392]).
"When you perceive that God is chastening you, fly not to his enemies . . . but to his friends, the martyrs, the saints, and those who were pleasing to him, and who have great power [in God]" (Orations 8:6 [A.D. 396]).
Ambrose of Milan
"May Peter, who wept so efficaciously for himself, weep for us and turn towards us Christ’s benign countenance" (The Six Days Work 5:25:90 [A.D. 393]).
Jerome
"You say in your book that while we live we are able to pray for each other, but afterwards when we have died, the prayer of no person for another can be heard. . . . But if the apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, at a time when they ought still be solicitous about themselves, how much more will they do so after their crowns, victories, and triumphs?" (Against Vigilantius 6 [A.D. 406]).
Augustine
"A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers" (Against Faustus the Manichean [A.D. 400]).
"There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, when the names of the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God, where prayer is not offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for the dead who are remembered. For it is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought ourselves be commended" (Sermons 159:1 [A.D. 411]).
"At the Lord’s table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps" (Homilies on John 84 [A.D. 416]).
"Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ" (The City of God 20:9:2 [A.D. 419]).
END OF CATHOLIC ANSWERS EXCERPT ---------------------------------------------------------
We can ask lots of things, but it is a variation of the old "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there..." God is omnipresent and hears every word spoken and those in your heart and mind even before they are spoken. thankfully!
I don't disagree that God hears our every word. But for whatever reason, He has set up a system whereby the more the prayers, and the more people praying, the more powerful the prayers are. Right? I mean, we have to agree on that point. God clearly set up a system where you praying for me and me praying for you somehow is a good thing. That being the case, why wouldn't the prayers of the Saints in heaven also be joined with the prayers of the Saints on earth to be delivered to the Lord?
Thanks for your thoughtful response. While I don't agree that there is any value in praying to saints - regardless of Catholic church teaching or early church quotes - I really wondered why you thought it had value. Thank you for sharing. I too believe we are encouraged to pray for one another... I just don't see any scriptural basis for praying to a dead saint... and I wondered if you knew of any I had overlooked.
And I wondered why you and others believed that saints already in heaven (as opposed to us physically alive saints) could hear you if you talked to them.
I wish you the best, AMPU
Then why are you Catholic? I don't ask to be confrontational, but it doesn't seem logical to belong to a religion and not embrace it entirely. Do you recite the Creed?
Let's give the kid a break. It is a requirement of the Novena to publish your thanks. I have had many prayers answered by St. Jude.
Bless you. Be sure to follow through with good will given the wonderful opportunities presented to you.
EXACTLY!
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Dead humans have Christ like powers bump.
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I recite the Nicene Creed quite often. More importantly I understand and believe it. Please point out where anything I have posted is in contradiction with it.
Amen. Just give me Jesus.
Sad that people worship and pray to dead humans!
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The Nicene Creed mentions "the communion of saints". That's why I ask.
Truth hurts. No matter how you parse it up, the Roman Catholics worship and pray to dead humans. It's just plain sad. But you can get out, too.
Just give me Jesus!
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Actually, I meant the "Apostles Creed". Sorry.
>>>but why do you think saints (who are dead) can hear you - or have more "pull" with God than you?
I would be especially curious as to any Biblical passages that you point to that teach praying to saints or give an example of someone praying to a saint. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any.<<<
I'd be interested, too.
psst - there is no other mediator between God and man but the risen Christ Jesus.
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>>>We are to pray to God alone.<<<
Yes! Through the blood of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not to mention we are to worship God alone.
Your posts are a joy to read.
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>>>I do not feel the need to pray to a saint when a prayer to an omnipotent God is an option.<<<
Option!!!!!!!!???????????????
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