Catholics are being criticized for their devotion to the angels and the saints. Non-Catholics do not understand why anyone should ask the angels or the saints to intercede for them since Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. The first reading of today explains to us why we can ask the angels and the saints like Paul Miki and his companions, the martyrs we commemorate today, to intercede for us.
This reading from the letter to the Hebrews states: “What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator who beings the new covenant” (Heb. 12:22–24).
Brotherhood
This passage highlights the brotherhood of all the children of God on earth and in heaven. In every Christian worship, we meet with an uncountable number of angels and the saints. We all come to Jesus who is the Mediator of the new covenant. Bodily death does not create any barrier to this holy fraternity. The Church militant remains with fellow believers, who have gone before us and have been perfected by the Lord, one big family of the people of God. Accordingly, St. Paul says, “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:8).
Against this backdrop, we consider ourselves as brothers and sisters in the family of God, who the bible admonishes to pray for one another and to bear each other’s burden (cf. Gal. 6:2; Jas. 5:1). A brother or sister who has gone before us to join the glory above cannot stop praying for his or her brothers and sisters, who he or she left behind here on earth, because he or she has gone into eternity. He or she is, after all, not dead. It is not a passage into oblivion but a passing on to life everlasting.
Faith and Not By Sight
One should not think that such a person has gone forever and has no communion with us anymore. If this were the case, why then is the letter to the Hebrews saying that we have come with them and the holy angels to Jesus at the sacred festival? If there were nothing we still share in common, why should they gather at every divine assembly with us? According to the Cambridge Bible commentary, the passage above describes ‘“the Communion of the Saints above and the Church below” with myriads of Angels united in a festal throng.’ We have the limitation of perceiving what happens in the spiritual realm, except by faith, otherwise we would not have pains believing in our everlasting communion with the saints. But we must remember that a believer lives by faith and not by sight.
Now, if we could request prayers from the brothers and sisters we see, what makes it funny to also request for prayers from the brothers and sisters we can only see with the eyes of faith? If Maurice and Catherine, who are fellow Christians here and now, could pray for us at our request, Saint Pio and Blessed Michael Iwene Tansi, who have been made perfect, can equally pray for us, if we request.
