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Hi, Howard —
You asked:
- With all of the rhetoric today about asking
people who are in Heaven to pray for us, is it OK to ask Adam and Eve to
pray for us?
Yes, it is.
You asked:
- Are Adam and Eve presumed to be in Heaven,
as well as other Saints that led sinful lives and then repented?
Adam and Eve are venerated as Saints by the Church. Whether other people
who led sinful lives and then repented are in Heaven, is an open question, unless they
are formally recognized as Saints. All Saints are in Heaven, so if the
person is a Saint, he or she is in Heaven.
Adam and Eve, whose feast day is Christmas Eve, are honored as Saints more in
the East than in the West.
In the West, the understanding of Saints is
that they are models of heroic virtue. That doesn't really describe Adam
and Eve, so they tend not to be venerated in the West. In fact, one would
be hard pressed to come up with anything holy about them; I'm not sure
it's even clear from the biblical text alone that they truly repented.
Hope this helps,
Eric
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