(Darn! Now MY wife will be wanting one.)
Yes, I'll concede that probably no one asks him for intercession. But I might ask the janitor to pray for me. Do I think the janior greater the Luther?
It's interesting. We think the saints are with us. We think that asking is asking, whether you call it "prayer" or "bidding" or "requesting" or "asking".
It seems inceasingly arbitrary. God is here and always accessible to the faithful, why post on Free Republic? Why not just tell HIM what we think? Why be concerned with what other humans, alive or dead, think?
We are told it's "sad" that we think we "need" to pray to saints, but yet Protestants gather in places to pray together and to observe ordinances and read the Bible and discuss it and do all manner of things that aren't directly and simply addressed in one-on-one communion with God.
The more I look at it, the sillier it seems. I talk to God and try to listen to Him. I talk or write to you and try to "hear" what you say. I pray for you, and I hope at some point during this conversation you have prayed for me.
I like to say that for us "catholic" is not just an 'extensive' attribute of the Church, but 'intensive'. All activities which are not intrinsically sinful fall under God's purview, and just as a stranger might turn out to be an angel, so any event may turn out to be one of grace-bearing communication between any of us and God.
SO, (struggling here) I am less troubled by what looks like a sense of discontinuity, than it seems some Protestants are. I have many friends and acquaintances. Some have died. Some I never met before they died. Some haven't died yet. They're all my friends. In such a wide circle of friends, there are some before whom I feel very humble (and shy) indeed and some whom seem to radiate holiness. But I have also prayed in a sally port with a check forger who saw the cross on my shoulder boards and asked me to pray with and for her. I didn't feel like she was worshipping me. It was more like she was feeling, "OH! At LAST! Somebody to pray with!" And also standing at a holding cell or even using an intercom to pray with a bad guy who is about to be tried, or listening to a prisoner talk about his faith as I shackled, cuffed, and chained him up, having looked in his mouth and asked him to raise his tongue to make sure he was hiding nothing there, and having patted him down prety intrusively.... I've found a lot of holy places.
So, I also have occasionally prayed before a statue of Our Lady. I didn't think she was "there". I thought, and think, she is here.
We don't ask Saints who have gone to heaven to pray for us. We do ask people here on earth.
Why did they put the flowers there? Because they loved him. Because they wanted to do something to remember him.
They don't pray to Luther.
Why do Christians get together and pray and discuss? Because the Bible tells us to. The Bible doesn't tell us to pray to those who have already gone to glory though. But we shouldn't forsake the assembly of ourselves together here, we should pray for one another here, and we should edify one another.
"What do you think of the flowers in front of the tomb"
They look pretty good and well taken care of. At night, Heinze Luther,( friends call him Heinzy) the great, great, great, great, grandson of Martin and Katharina von Bora, under their will, has to leave flowers, preferably yellow if in season, on their graves and any statutes or memorials to them in Bavaria, in order to collect the small stipend left in trust. At least that's the rumor.