Question: When I practiced the
Catholic religion, I used to pray to the saints, as did my family and Catholic
friends. Who answered the prayers I got answered and who is still
answering my friends’ prayers as they still have their favourite saint
who never fails them?
Answer: It is extremely dangerous to establish doctrine on the
basis of subjective human experience rather than the Word of God. If
you pray to the saints and you get some sort of answer, you would wrongly
conclude that praying to the saints must be fine. But surely you realize
that there may be other causes for ‘the answer’ other than the dead
saint hearing your prayers. The pagans pray to a multitude of false
deities and they too get 'answers'! Should we then conclude that their pagan
gods are real and that they too answer prayers?
Let me give you a couple of examples from the Bible to expose this
danger. In Acts 14:8-18 Paul and Barnabas went to Lystra. After Paul
miraculously cured a lame man, the people wanted to offer sacrifices to
Paul and Barnabas because they thought that they were the gods Hermes and
Zeus. It was with great difficulty that the apostles restrained the crowd
from sacrificing, telling them to turn from their ‘worthless things’
to the living God who was the source of all their blessings. God “has
not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you
rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty
of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Clearly the people of Lystra
wrongly attributed the goodness of God to their false deities. Sadly, this
tragic mistake is repeated throughout human history and, despite the
evidence pointing to the Lord, many continue in their false religions and
attribute these very gifts to false gods.
Jeremiah 44:16-18 is an even more dramatic example of this sad reality. The
prophet Jeremiah was preaching to the people of Israel and warning them of
the coming judgment from God because of their idolatrous practices. This
is how they argued with him:
As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD,
we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone
out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour
out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our
kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of
Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no
trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven
and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and
have been consumed by the sword and by famine.
They were praying to a pagan deity named the Queen of Heaven instead of
praying to the Lord God, claiming that when they prayed to her they
received all their needs, plenty of food and protection and so on. We know
exactly who gave them the food and the protection but they ascribed them to
a false god. Even worse, instead of repenting of their sins in the face of
the Lord’s chastisement, they reasoned that they got into trouble
because they stopped praying to this Queen of Heaven! The deception is
astounding!
This is exactly what happens when someone rejects the revealed truth of
God. The people of Lystra rejected the truth of God revealed in creation.
The Israelites rejected the truth of God given through the prophets and
the Scriptures. Both were pitifully mistaken in their interpretation of
their religious experiences.
We have God’s truth both in nature and in the written Scriptures. As
a Catholic you have heard the Bible read in Church many times. You noticed
that the prayers of godly people were always addressed to God and that
there is not a single example of Christians praying to dead saints in all
of the Bible. You also know that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach
them to pray, He taught us to address our prayers to “Our Father in
Heaven.”
You know these truths and therefore you are responsible to act
accordingly. If you choose to ignore these simple facts and persist with
the habit of praying to dead saints, then there is nothing to stop you
from being deceived like the pagans and the Jews of old.
I implore you to turn away from this pagan practice and instead seek
the face of God. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall
humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their
wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their
sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).