This week, a dear friend shared: “I believe that the saints (Mary preeminent among them as the first recipient of the Gospel and as a prime example for all Christians of how to bear Christ within themselves) are alive with Christ and rejoice to aid God’s work on earth. We can ask for the intercessions and help in our own faith journey, in much the same way as we can ask help and intercession from our own friends and fellow believers.”

One of the many things I’ve learned from this friend is that the practice of praying to saints, properly understood, is about veneration, not adoration. In other words, it is about giving honor to certain revered and departed saints; it is not about worshiping them. In acknowledging this important clarification, however, I still have a serious concern with this idea of praying to the saints. To best convey that concern, I will address three related questions below using Scripture along with some helpful guidance from one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, N.T. Wright:

Where do the Christian departed go at death?

“I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” (Philippians 1:23, ESV)

"Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed…” (1 Corinthians 15:51, ESV)

“All the Christian departed are in substantially the same state, that or restful happiness. Though this is sometimes described as sleep, we shouldn’t take this to mean that it is a state of unconsciousness. Had Paul thought that, I very much doubt that he would have described life immediately after death as ‘being with Christ, which is far better.’ Rather sleep here means the body is ‘asleep’ in the sense of ‘dead,’ while the real person—however we want to describe him or her—continues.” 171

Surprised by Hope, 171.

Is it proper to pray to or ask Mary (or any of the other saints) to go to God on our behalf?

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…” (1 Timothy 2:5, ESV)

"So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most." (Hebrews 4:6, NLT)

“We should be very suspicious of the medieval idea that the saints can function as friends at court so that while we might be shy of approaching the King ourselves, we know someone who is, as it were, one of us, to whom we can talk freely and who will maybe put in a good word for us. The practice seems to me to call into question, and even actually to deny by implication, the immediacy of access to God by Jesus Christ and in the Spirit, which is promised again and again in the New Testament. In the New Testament it is clear: because of Christ and the Spirit, every single Christian is welcome at any time to come before the Father himself. If you have a royal welcome awaiting you in the throne room itself, for whatever may be on your heart and mind, whether great or small why would you bother hanging around the outer lobby trying to persuade someone there, however distinguished, to go in and ask for you? To question this, even by implication, is to challenge one of the central blessings and privileges of the gospel… Explicit invocation of saints may be, in fact—I do not say it always is—a step toward semipaganism of which the Reformers were rightly afraid.”

Surprised By Hope, 173.

What about praying with and for departed saints?

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1, NLT)

"And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you no read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead but of the living." (Matthew 22:31-32, NRSV)

“Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the ‘communion of saints.’ They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because they had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should—not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God’s joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?”

Surprised By Hope, 172.