Vigils Reading – All Souls

PRAYING TO THE SAINTS
by Fr Karl Rahner7

Nothing can come ‘between’ God and us. On the other hand, one of the conditions for this closeness to God is that we should belong to the communion of the saints. But perhaps this still does not make it quite clear how the communion of the saints, which can certainly be effected by means of a specific, explicit act, can take the concrete form of appealing to the saints to ask for their intercession. Although this communion with the saints is included in the official liturgy of the Church, the saints themselves are not addressed directly. Why? How can this still be possible? No clear-cut answer has so far been found to this question, chiefly because we cannot take it for granted that we can address the saints directly simply because they exist, as is attempted in spiritualist gatherings.

The following short anecdote might help us to proceed in our investigations. When I was in Rome during the Council I had the opportunity, together with a group of others, to meet the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth. Our discussion turned to the veneration of the Virgin. I asked Karl Barth whether an individual may ask another Christian to pray for him. After a short hesitation, he replied that the individual should ask his fellow Christian to pray with him. The conversation then moved on to other topics. I admit that for many years I thought Barth’s answer was intentionally evasive, that he wished to avoid the issue of veneration of the Virgin. Now I wonder if we should not pursue his point.

To start with, there is nothing new about the saints’ intercession on our behalf with God. On the contrary it is central to their entire history and to eternal salvation; they rest in God’s presence yet are also joined in perpetual communion with us. Their intercession for us depends of course on the degree of intensity, explicit or otherwise, with which we participate in their act of communion, which in turn reflects on our relationship to God. The saints pray ‘with us’ and thus ‘for us’. Our plea for their intercession is not therefore an attempt to create some new, individualistic kind of spiritualistic communication. The concrete reality of the communion of saints exists already, and through it we worship God. It is the practical realization of this communion which freely embraces a wide variety of religious acts. Hence it can include a petition for intercession, while still remaining essentially the faithful realization of the communion of saints in which we stand before God, and in which we may expect his mercy and help. Seen in these terms, calling on the saints for their intercession in no way interposes ‘between’ us and God.

On the contrary it provides concrete evidence of the fact that God loves each one of us as a unique being. He loves every single being he has created, and forms us into a community in which we can all love one another. We do not invoke the help of the saints because otherwise they would not intercede on our behalf; rather, in their eternal salvation they do nothing but intercede for us. In praying to the saints we show that we believe in this perpetual intercession because it enables us to accept and make use of its beneficial effects.

7
THE COURAGE TO PRAY, by Karl Rahner (Crossroad, NY 1981) pp. 69-71.