Yukon Cornelius said:
To not pray to the aotc? Or Mary? When the disciples ask Jesus how to pray He addresses the Father. Not the Aotc or Mary or anyone or any symbol. It's directly to father.
I would think to argue you should pray to Aotc oe Mary you'd have to support it scripturally no?
"I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time."
1 Timothy 2:1-6 NIV
This says we have ONE mediator. Jesus.
Forgive my ignorance but I don't understand the desire or need to pray to Mary.
Fair. No one is worshipping adoring or praying to the AotC. That would be idolatry. Catholics view Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant through the lens of typology. It's simply a way to understand her role in salvation history. In the OT, no one prayed or worshipped the AotC, but they definitely respected it for its power and they knew it was a means of communication with God. Prayer is not worship because worship requires sacrifice. That is clear from the Bible. No Catholic would ever suggest you should worship or adore Mary. She is a creature just like the rest of us. She also needed to be saved. We believe she was saved proleptically by a singular grace of God. We venerate/honor her as the most sublime of ALL creatures, but a creature nonetheless.
No Catholic or Orthodox christian would ever say that we have any mediator with God the Father other than Jesus. The Catholic Church and Orthodox Church have always believed that Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus alone by which people are saved. Full stop. The Catholic Church has always believed that Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus alone by which people are saved. The Bible doesn't prohibit praying to Mary or any of the saints. The Bible prohibits
necromancy. Prayers to Mary or any of the saints who have gone on to their eternal reward is not necromancy.
All prayers to saints (including the Mother of God) are prayers for intercession with Jesus. If you attend a Mass, you will sometimes hear a litany of saints where the priest will go through a long list of saints by name with the congregation saying "pray for us" after each saint is named. The faith of the Church is that the saints are not really dead, but are fully alive in Jesus Christ, who is life itself (John 11:25; 14:6) and the bread of life who bestows life on all who eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:35, 48, 51, 53-56). The saints are alive in heaven because of the life they have received through their faith in Christ Jesus and through their eating of his body and blood.
The book of Revelation shows the saints worshipping God, singing hymns, playing instruments, making requests to Christ to avenge their martyrdom, and offering prayers for the saints on earth (Rev. 4:10, 5:8, 6:9-11). Because they are alive, more fully alive than we are, we believe that we can go to them to intercede for us with God. We do not need to see apparitions or hear their voices in order to believe they will pray for us in heaven. We trust that the saints will accept our requests for help and will present them to Christ for us.
If you don't want to pray to saints for their intercession that's fine. There is nothing inherently flawed in not praying to saints and Catholics are not required to do so. It is another tool in the arsenal of weapons to help us become saints.
God expects us to pray for one another. We see this in both the Old and New Testaments. In a dream, God commanded King Abimelech to ask Abraham to intercede for him: "For [Abraham] is a prophet and he will pray for you, so you shall live" (Gen. 20:7). When the Lord is angry with Job's friends because they did not speak rightly about God, he tells them, "Let my servant Job pray for you because I will accept his [prayer], lest I make a terror on you" (Job 42:8).
Paul wrote to the Romans: "I exhort you, brothers, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, to strive with me in prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the disobedient in Judaea and that my ministry may be acceptable to the saints in Jerusalem, so that in the joy coming to you through the will of God I may rest with you" (Rom. 15:30-32).
James says: "Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (James 5:16-17). Thus, according to Scripture, God wants us to pray for one another. This must mean that prayer for one another cannot detract from the role of Jesus Christ as our one mediator with God.
Second, the reason that Christians have the power to pray for one another is that each person who is baptized is made a member of the Body of Christ by virtue of the Holy Spirit's action in baptism (1 Cor. 12:11-13). It is because the Christian belongs to Jesus Christ and is a member of his Body, the Church, that we can make effective prayer.
The reason we pray to the saints is that they are still members of the Body of Christ. Remember, the life which Christ gives is eternal life; therefore, every Christian who has died in Christ is forever a member of the Body of Christ. This is the doctrine which we call the
Communion of the Saints. Everyone in Christ, whether living or dead, belongs to the Body of Christ.
From this it follows that
a saint in heaven may intercede for other people because he still is a member of the Body of Christ. Because of this membership in Christ, under his headship, the intercession of the saints cannot be a rival to Christ's mediation; it is one with the mediation of Christ, to whom and in whom the saints form one body.Ultimately, all prayers are TO God and the prayers of a righteous man (saints) praying to God, whether for hiumself or for someone else, avails much (James 5:6). The real ground of disagreement is that Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe the saints in heaven are fully alive and as shown in Revelation Rev. 4:10, 5:8, 6:9-11 are interceding for us.