That the blessed above still should and do pray for us below
3 min • Digitized on May 8, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 74
By St. John Henry Newman
Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life? or had Christians similar duties to their brethren departed?
From the witness of the early ages of the Church, it appears that they had; and you, and those who agree with you, would be the last to deny that they were then in the practice of praying, as for the living, so for those also who had passed into the intermediate state between earth and heaven.
Did the sacred communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants of heaven itself? Here too you agree with us, for you have adopted in your Volume the words of the Council of Trent, which I have quoted above. But now we are brought to a higher order of thought.
It would be preposterous to pray for those who are already in glory; but at least they can pray for us, and we can ask their prayers, and in the Apocalypse at least Angels are introduced both sending us their blessing and presenting our prayers before the Divine Presence.
We read there of an Angel who “came and stood before the altar, having a golden censer;” and “there was given to him much incense, that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the Throne of God.” On this occasion, surely the Angel (Michael, as the prayer in Mass considers him), performed the part of a great Intercessor or Mediator above for the children of the Church Militant below.
Again, in the beginning of the same book, the sacred writer goes so far as to speak of “grace and peace” coming to us, not only from the Almighty, but “from the seven Spirits that are before His throne,” thus associating the Eternal with the ministers of His mercies; and this carries us on to the remarkable passage of St. Justin, one of the earliest Fathers, who, in his Apology, says, “To Him (God), and His Son who came from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good Angels who follow and resemble Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we pay veneration and homage.”
Further, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only Angels, but—“the spirits of the just” into the sacred communion: “Ye have come to Mount Sion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament.” What can be meant by having “come to the spirits of the just,” unless in some way or other they do us good, whether by blessing or by aiding us? that is, in a word, to speak correctly, by praying for us, for it is by prayer alone that the creature above can bless or aid the creature below.