Why do Catholics try to use that line when there is so much evidence against it? One needs simply to go to [Prayers to Saints] to see that Catholics routinely ask their saints to do things for them rather than just ask them to “pray for them”. Here’s an example.
[THE PRAYER SAINT ANNE, BLESS MY FAMILY]
“My family is the heart of my life.
It is my little Church.
Saint Anne, guard the members of my family
against all physical and spiritual danger.
That by any definition is praying to that saint. To claim that Catholics don’t pray to saints is laughable given the evidence to the contrary.
Saints have no more power than you or I or the prophets or anyone else. “Yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” This is the teaching of the Catholic Church, and anyone who believes otherwise is mistaken. “Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you” applies to those in heaven in the same way it does to the rest of us, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to ask the faithful departed for intercessory prayer in the same way we ask our friends here on earth to pray for us.
Links don’t work.
Very informative CB. And what a sweet little prayer you picked out for your example that would melt the heart of any true Catholic. You probably have a bunch of them running to their prayer closets now to light a candle. :O)