Saints Just Like Us
By Caitlin Bootsma
Consultant to the VIRTUS® Programs
It is not just people of other faith backgrounds who wonder why we pray to the saints. You would not be the
only Catholic who has secretly asked yourself, “Why can’t I just pray directly to God?” The short answer is that, yes, of course we could just pray to God. Only God can answer our prayers, He alone is the source of every grace and blessing.
However, in His goodness, God has given us a community of persons—the Church—both here on earth, but also in Heaven. When we “pray to the saints”, we are not actually asking them to help us directly. Rather, we are praying for their intercession. In other words, we are asking them to petition the Lord on our behalf.
Even in the earliest years of the Church, men and women prayed for the saints’ intercession. In the third century, Cyprian wrote:
Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy.
Cyprian brings two things to mind about the power of saints’ intercessory prayer. First, we already pray for one another here on earth. When someone dies and goes to Heaven and is in the presence of God, what could be more natural than to continue to ask for their prayers? Second, he refers to his fellow Christians as “brethren and sisters.” As a kid, did you ever ask a sibling to help you convince a parent to allow you to do something? Do your kids ever send an ambassador to petition you? In a way, we do the same thing with the saints. Knowing that they have already died in the state of grace, we ask them to bring our petitions to God the Father.
Having celebrated All Saints’ Day earlier this month, November is the perfect time to increase our devotions to the saints as well as to share more about the saints with the youth we serve.
It is easy to think about saints as flat figures from books or prayer cards, who simply went around with a pious expression all day long. Of course, the truth is that the personalities and interests of the saints are as varied as our own. Everyone is called to holiness and eternal life with God. Therefore, there are saints who were lawyers (St. Thomas More) and saints who were artists (St. Luke); there were saints who played sports (St. John Paul II) and saints who read books (St. Thomas Aquinas); there were saints who were funny (St. Philip Neri) and saints who were shy (St. Frances of Rome).
I mention the diversity of the saints because it is quite possible that not every saint will inspire devotion with every Catholic. One way to approach forming attachments to the saints is to ask children what their interests are. Do you teach a child who loves to draw? St. Luke is known as a patron of artists and rumor has it that he may have even drawn a portrait of the Blessed Mother! Is one of your children a jokester? St. Philip Neri definitely had a sense of humor—he was even known for walking around town in silly outfits and with his beard half shaved off!
Saints were once struggling through life, just like us. They want nothing more than for us to join them in heaven and they desire to be our friends. When we spend time learning more about them, we may just find that we have found a new role model, a person to look to when we need guidance.
We can ask for the intercession of the saints all year long, but the Church has also designated particular feast days for each one. These feasts can be opportunities to celebrate the life of the saint and to learn more about them. In our house, when it is the feast day of a saint that is important to us, we say a special prayer to them after dinner and then feast upon a special dessert.
Ultimately, saints show us that despite all of the challenges we may encounter in life, eternal life is waiting for us. Even those saints who died horrific deaths for the faith are now experiencing endless joy. So when we are in need of a little encouragement, a little inspiration or—in the case of St. Philip Neri—a little laugh, we can look to our brothers and sisters who have already made it to Heaven.
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