Hi Ashley,

Thanks for your question.

As I am sure you know, a Catholic Christian can, and indeed very much should, pray directly to God. Virtually the whole liturgy is directed toward the Holy Trinity. Christ came to reconcile us to the Father, so that we could become friends of God like Abraham; and sons and daughters of God in an intimate relationship with God our Father and Christ our brother.

• Now you asked, why should we ask the intercession of the saints when we can pray
  directly to God?

I am glad, by the way, that you understand it accurately as requesting the saints to pray for us; we don't believe in them as if they were 'demigods' of any sort. Well, the answer is simple:

In other words, since not every believer possesses the same degree of righteousness and not every believer has faith in equal measure, the prayers of a more righteous believer with a greater degree of faith are more effective than our own prayers and which believers are more righteous, and have more faith, than those who see the Lord face to face?

Considered another way, even Baptists ask their fellow church members to pray for them.
Paul asked others to pray for him. Read:

• Romans 15:31
• Ephesians 6:19
• Colossians 4:3
• 1 Thessalonians 5:25, and
• 2 Thessalonians 3:1.

It is no different with Catholics. We ask our fellow church members to pray for us as well, only
we also consider those who are now with the Lord. A good illustration of our belief in this matter is a section of the Confiteor we pray during the liturgy:

We are simply asking the Saints in Heaven to do the same thing we ask of the saints on earth (i.e. holy ones) to pray for us. (cf. CCC 823 of the Catechism)

We believe that through faith, we are all one:

• believers in Heaven
• believers on Earth, and
• believers undergoing final purification

— bound together in what we call the Communion of Saints. Let's turn to Revelation 4 - 5.

Here we see an image of the Heavenly Liturgy: the worship going on in Heaven right now, which we enter into ourselves when we celebrate the divine and sacred Liturgy, patterned after Revelation 5. Here we have the awesome Seraphim always praising and worshipping the enthroned Father and the Lamb. The Lamb Himself is looking as if he had been slain — which means that in the Holy Liturgy of the Eucharist, we are making present the one sacrifice of Calvary, that is, the flesh of the sacrificed Paschal Lamb. The fact that this is the sacrifice is clear since there is an altar (cf. Revelation 6:9), under which are the martyrs — this is why it is a Catholic and Orthodox custom to put the bones of martyrs under our earthly altars, as a pattern of the Heavenly Altar.

Clearly, in the mystical imagery of Revelation, the Lamb's sacrifice is an eternal reality, not a past event. But let's go on. There are the seven torches of fire, the seven spirits of God; these are represented by candles in the Holy Liturgy. Finally, there are the twenty four elders — the Twelve Patriarchs and the Twelve Apostles.

• And what are these elders, who symbolize all the Saints in glory, doing?

They are carrying golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the Saints.
The Elders are offering the prayers of all the holy ones to the One seated on the throne.
Clearly then, the Saints in glory are involved in our prayer: it is not merely a private matter between us and God, for God's Bride, the Church, is also involved!

In Hebrews, Paul gives us another awe-inspiring image of the Holy Liturgy ("acceptable worship, [done] with reverence and awe" — 12:28):

— that is, the Church, the city set on a mountain (Hebrews 11:10, Matthew 5:14) — "and to innumerable angels in festal gathering" — gathered with the earthly church as we celebrate and worship — "and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven," — that is, the Saints who have gone before — "and to a judge who is Lord of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect" — the saints in glory again — "and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel." That is, the Blood of the Covenant, the Eucharist.

Note the parallel with Revelation 5: the twenty four elders (the Patriarchs and the Apostles), the Seraphim and other angels, the Great White Throne of the Father, the altar of God (Revelation 6:9) where the "Lamb looking as if it had been slain" is being worshipped. The slain Lamb and the altar are, of course, the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which transcends all time and which we enter into through the Eucharist. For Revelation 5 is nothing less than what I have identified the imagery in Hebrews as, that is, the Holy Liturgy in Heaven, and when we celebrate the Holy Liturgy on earth, we are mystically present at that very same heavenly worship — with the saints, with again the "myriads of angels" (Revelation 5:11), with the Father, and, most of all, partaking from the altar of God the flesh and blood of the slain Passover Lamb. For, as it says just beyond this in Hebrews, "we have an altar of which those serving the tabernacle have no right to eat" (Hebrews 13:10), that is to say, we eat from this altar in Heaven when we celebrate the Eucharist. "Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast," for children "share in flesh and blood" (Hebrews 2:14). My point being, both here in Hebrews and in Revelation, we see that the holy ones in glory are present with us in our worship.

But they are not only present with us during the Holy Liturgy. Earlier, in Chapter 11, Paul offers models of faith from the Old Testament Saints, especially noting how they were made righteous by their faith working in obedience. In Hebrews 11:10, we see that the Saints looked forward to the city built by God, that is, the "city set on a mountain that cannot be hidden" (Matthew 5:14).

This city is the Church of Christ, built on Mount Zion: it cannot be hidden, that is to say, it is not invisible, but is rather a visible city. Like Christ himself, who has both a divine and a human nature, His Body has both a divine and unseen nature, and a human and incarnate nature.

Thus the Church is not merely the collection of all faithful believers in Christ, it is a city, with government and visible bonds of unity. Paul makes an amazing statement after going through the list of faithful Old Testament Saints in Hebrews. He says of them in Hebrews 11:39:

Only together with us would they be made perfect and only together with God's New Covenant People of God can we be made perfect! Our sanctification (literally "sanctification", — our being made saints) depends on one another! In Hebrews 12:1, he says,

Wait a minute.
<What witnesses?>

The Old Testament Saints.
<Surrounded by a cloud of them?>

Yes! — the Holy Saints of God are present with us even now, not only present, but surrounding us, encouraging us as it were in our race which has been set before us and, I dare say, assisting us — for what other reason do they surround us?

The early Fathers certainly believed in the Communion of Saints, as it is called in the Apostle's Creed:

This also explains the difference between asking the Saints for their prayers, and necromancy: talking to the dead.

1. First of all, necromancy has more of the sense of fortune-telling than merely addressing the dead; in other words, what God forbids in necromancy is seeking a (verbal) response from the dead, not addressing requests for prayer to them.
   
   
2. Second of all, since according to Revelation 5 it is the role of the saints in Heaven to carry our prayers to God anyway, and since Hebrews 12:1 says that the saints are a cloud of witnesses that surround us and says that they are present with us in our liturgical worship, there is no reason to doubt that it is a big deal to believe that they can hear our requests.
   
   
3. Third, the Saints are not dead— they are alive in Christ. Christ said, Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life (John 8:12). Christ by his death destroyed death and the power of death (Hebrews 2:14-15) in order that all who believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). No, the saints are not dead. He is not the God of the dead but of the living! (Mark 12:27)
   
   
4. Fourth, we have Scriptural proof that the Saints who have gone before intercede for us in the presence of God. In Jeremiah 15:1, written long after Moses and Samuel were dead, the Lord says,

"Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people." Jeremiah 15:1

The implication is that Moses and Samuel (whose lives did not overlap, by the way, so this must refer to an after-death act) can intercede before God.

There is another, more direct example of a saint interceding in Heaven:

This book doesn't appear in Protestant Bibles, but it was accepted in the Early Church, and is accepted by Catholics and Orthodox.

If it makes you feel any more comfortable, you can think of it as I did, when I was first struggling with the idea.

We know that the Saints (at least in general) are with Christ and see him face to face; we believe they can pray to him for us; we know from James that their prayer is effective.

The only remaining issue is how to get our requests to them. There is nothing wrong, if we so wish, in praying to Christ, to convey our prayer requests to the Saints so that they can pray to him:

"Jesus, please ask St. Paul to pray for me that I may understand the Scripture he wrote."

From there you can simply abbreviate it, and ask Jesus to consider any prayer of yours in the form:

"St. So-and-So, pray for me" as "Jesus, please ask St. So-and-So to pray for me."

Certainly, there can be no wickedness in that approach.

I hope this helps you to understand the Biblical nature of the intercession of the Saints!

Yours in Christ,

Eric Ewanco