Invocation of Saints remains a point of division between Protestants, who reject the practice, and Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Anglocatholics. The practice traces back to the sixth century linked to venerating martyrs at whose graves believers assembled to pray in times of need mindful of their courage and holiness.
There is always more in Christianity. Even at a graveside Christians sense more to come from the God who brings being out of nothing, Jesus from the tomb and promises the same for us. My faith journey is enriched by ‘revisiting’ Christ’s resurrection Sunday by Sunday, year by year, renewing trust in that promise in Scripture and the reality of the risen Lord Jesus exposed to me in the eucharist. As a member of the Church of England I am forever finding more, discovering new riches in ‘the ancient church of this land, catholic and reformed’. Brought up more reformed (‘Low Church’) I have grown to be more catholic (‘High Church’) and a humbling faith crisis made me see my vision of God must stay open to enlargement. That enlargement, I have come to see, is nothing I can do alone. Rather through God-sent companions on earth and in heaven I seek ‘the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ (Ephesians 3:18-19). That scriptural image teaches that our grasp of God is attainable only ‘with all the saints’. We cannot be held to God in Christ without holding to the companions God gives us in this world and the next and that is the context of praying to Saints capital S (canonised) which is part of my Christian discipleship.
How do we see heaven? Historically it has been seen as a realm above us, part of a three-decker universe. First cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was proclaimed by the Soviet leadership to have announced, “I went up to space, but I didn’t encounter God” though no such words appear in the verbatim record of his conversations with Earth stations during his epic 1961 spaceflight. It is alleged he was and remained to his death a faithful Orthodox Christian, counter to the official atheism of the Soviet state. Cosmology has moved on with enormous strides since the flight of Gagarin. In the 21st century we see beyond a three-decker universe to what has been called a multiverse with many dimensions but this does not contradict Christian faith in an overarching dimension of heaven. We just have new symbols of our passing at death into eternity. One such symbol is the saving of ‘the file of our life’ into the ‘cloud memory’ of God drawing analogy with contemporary information technology. In the old spatial analogy heaven was far away. New analogies bring heaven closer. Scripture draws on the ‘cloud’ image which serves our grasp of what the Book of Common Prayer calls ‘God’s whole Church’, the part ‘militant here on earth’ with the part beyond death through which ‘we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’ (Hebrews 12:1). Invoking the prayers of those witnesses now passed on is a hallowed practice built on the proximity of heaven to earth through the risen Lord who holds the militant, expectant and triumphant parts of his Church together especially at the altar. ‘Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name; evermore praying thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory’.
In my experience praying to the Saints has been a discovery built from pondering scripture texts especially in Ephesians that encourage believers to see themselves, as God sees them, in an eternal perspective. ‘God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us… raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places’ (2:4,6) and this makes for proximity to all beyond death who are similarly seated on that spacious throne. Mary and Francis are seated with us on that throne so it is natural to speak to them. This is part of veneration of ‘the cloud of witnesses’, to be distinguished from worshipping God, which is part of ‘the praise of his glorious grace [such as the gift of the Saints] that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved [Christ]’ (1:6). The proximity of heaven to earth is evident in the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels when he says ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance’ (Luke 15:7). In his story of the rich man and Lazarus the poor man in Luke 16:19-31 Christ describes conversations across divides in the world to come. That the dead are as alive as God is alive is affirmed by him most strongly in Mark 12:27. Union with the living God produces holiness, one of God’s distinctive qualities, and this in New Testament understanding has validity beyond the grave. St Paul writes ‘For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain’ (Philippians 1:21) and ‘Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died’ (1 Corinthians 15:20). In Revelation 8:4 we read ‘the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel’.
Invocation of Saints remains a point of division between Protestants, who reject the practice, and Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Anglocatholics. The practice traces back to the sixth century linked to venerating martyrs at whose graves believers assembled to pray in times of need mindful of their courage and holiness. Such traditions go back further to when, before the Edict of Milan in 313, Christian worship was in houses and cemeteries rather than the church buildings which appeared after that edict. Relics of very special Christian dead came to be venerated, primary relics of bones and secondary relics of materials placed in contact with these like oil or pieces of cloth, often with miraculous outcomes. Biblical precedent lies in 1 Kings 13:20-21 where a dead man thrown into the grave of holy Elisha comes to life after touching his bones. In Acts 19:11-12 we read ‘God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them’. The cult of relics linked to devotion to the Saints introduced a commercial element corrupting its godly origin. This was rejected in protest at the Reformation with its egalitarian emphasis challenging loss of a vision of God accessible to all, rich and poor. Praying to Saints had developed an hierarchical aspect – approaching Kings through courtiers – untrue to God in Christ who is near and accessible to all who call upon him. A text often quoted against the practice is 1 Timothy 2:5 ‘there is one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus’. Christian doctrine of intercession nevertheless sets the prayers of saints in heaven and earth within Christ’s mediation between God and the world. They and we are supplicants in a different sense to that of Christ.
All this – and more to come! Christianity has a forward vision, guaranteed by the resurrection as first fruits of the transformation of humanity and the cosmos, looking to the day God will be all in all. The accompaniment and prayer of the Saints, like crowds in the stadium cheering runners on, speed Christians forward on the journey of faith. They are not our destination but they are part of it so invoking them needs careful consideration. As prayer addresses what is unseen, scriptural warnings against spiritualism have some force. Prayer to God is to One who is absolute and incomparable to lesser beings though, enlisted as co-workers through the ages, they be close to his heart, his friends and ours. My own friendship with Saints links to the impact upon me of reading their testimonies. Though the Church of England authorises no public prayer to Saints in private I use the Hail Mary and supplement Night Prayer (Compline) with the age old Marian anthems. I follow these with an invoking of favourite Saints with an eye to the aspects of my discipleship they impact – St Michael (battling on), St Francis (looking to Jesus), St Vincent de Paul (serving others), St Richard Rolle (the Holy Spirit), St Philip Neri (joyfulness), St John Vianney (being a good priest), St Bernadette (steadfastness), St John Bosco (learning from young people), St Therese of Lisieux (spiritual confidence), St John Henry Newman (Christian unity) and St Seraphim of Sarov (inner peace and world peace). At Compline we recall Christ’s death and burial and naturally think about those we love but see no longer who await us beyond this world. Lists of dear dead for prayer conclude well with the invoking of favourite Saints with an eye to our common aspiration that: ‘when Christ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure’ (1 John 3:2-3).
Canon Dr John Twisleton 20th July 2022
