In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Tim Staples to discuss the Catholic practice of praying to Mary. Tim explains the key distinctions between prayer to God and prayer to the Blessed Mother, emphasizing the role of the Mass and the nature of intercession in Catholicism.
Transcript:
Caller: The one thing that is really kind of tough for me and my wife is the whole prayer to Mary. And yes, at first I understand, like the Old English prayer is asking. But I’m just trying to understand how can I differentiate between that not being worshiped, if you know what I’m asking?
Tim Staples: Yeah, it’s a man. This is such an important question. I really appreciate it. By the way, both I, myself and Dave are converts. And, man, we can both relate to this, because this was a huge sticking point for me. And here’s the key that I discovered, my friend, is that the way we differentiate is that when it comes to prayer to God, there is as much difference between praying to God and praying to the Blessed Mother or the saints as there is between an orangutan and an orange. Okay? We’re talking about an essentially different reality. And the rule of thumb is to differentiate is I always tell folks, go to a Mass. I give my Protestant friends an assignment. Whenever I’m discussing the faith with them. I’ll say, here’s your assignment. I want you to go to Mass and just sit through it. I know it might be painful, you know, depending upon where they are in their walk, you know, but I say go to the Mass and just listen and think about who the prayers in the Mass are directed to. And then let’s come back and talk about it. And it’s amazing what you will find because the Mass is the highest form of prayer in the church. And the Mass is entirely offered by the priest, of course, in Persona Christi to the Father in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. And any references to Mary or the saints are peripheral. We ask them to pray for us. We almost assume their prayers at times because we know they’re praying for us. But the whole thing is directed to God the Father. And so the key distinction here is the offering of sacrifice. The offering of the sacrifice. And this goes all the way back to the Old Testament. If you offered sacrifice to anything or anyone other than God back in the Old Testament, it was punishable by death, thanks be to God. We don’t do that anymore. Right. But that is blasphemy to offer sacrifice to anyone or anything other than God. The holy sacrifice of the Mass, of course, is offered to God. And so everything else, when we talk about praying to saints, we’re not offering sacrifice to Mary or to the saints. We are basically asking them to pray for us. Now, we honor them. Yes, we do. We honor them like we honor the Blessed Mother. I do more than I honor Dave Matheson. I love Dave. He’s my brother in Christ. But he does not merit the level of honor that we give to the saints in heaven. And why is that? Well, that’s entirely biblical. Because there are essentially two different reasons why we honor saints, and we do that to different degrees. Number one is their office, as you know, brother. Cause you know your Bible, 1 Timothy 5:17, tells us where to give double honor, for example, to the teaching elders. And you’ll see that also in First Thessalonians, chapter 5, right around. What is that about verses 13 and 14, we give more honor. Hebrews 13:17. And there are other places more honor to certain people in the body of Christ than others because of their office, like Mary being the mother of God, like, you know, Peter and the apostles. We see them honored in Revelation 21:14, their names placed in the very foundation of. Of the new Jerusalem in heaven, and all sorts of things like that we could talk about. But we also honor saints because of their personal holiness. Right. A great example of that is the Blessed Mother. What does she say? Under the inspiration of the Holy spirit in Luke 1:48, all generations shall call me blessed. Why? For the Almighty has done great things for me or in me. It’s because of what God has done in them that we honor them. And we could go through a whole litany of Jesus in Matthew 5:19 talks about some being greater in the kingdom of heaven than others in accordance with their works, how they cooperate with the grace of God, and so forth. And so when we pray to Mary and the saints, yes, we honor them, and we honor them greatly. That’s entirely biblical. And it’s really common sense. I mean, we have statues to Thomas Jefferson In Washington, D.C. we honor our Founding Fathers, or at least we used to in this country. But at any rate, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think where the real problem comes in, it’s the kind of honor that we offer to the Blessed Mother can be quite disturbing to our Protestant friends. And I know it was to me. And really, I think this gets, I think, at its heart to a problem we have in our culture. We’ve become a very cold culture. You know, St. Paul talks about greeting one another with a holy kiss, you know, and the ancient people were much more affective. We’re kind of a. I hate to say it, but we come out of a real Protestant sort of foundation here in the United States that’s really devoid of a sense of the communion of saints and the power of the Holy Spirit working through members of the body of Christ and how we honor one another. I mean, you look at Acts chapter five, and they wanted just the shadow of Peter to pass over them and they were healed. Or look at Acts, chapter 19. They were touching handkerchiefs in verse 20. That would be Acts 19, 20, handkerchiefs to Paul, and they would take the handkerchiefs to someone else, and they would be healed just by touching the handkerchief to people. I mean, there was a sense, an understanding of holiness and the power of God at work in members of the body of Christ. That brings a certain amount of reverence with it. But unfortunately, you know, the Protestant movement has greatly sort of sapped all of that out. And it’s kind of just a me and Jesus theology and any kind of love and devotion given to the saints, immediately it becomes idolatry, when really it’s not. Does that help at all, brother?
Caller: Wow. That just makes me feel like my whole perception, because I was raised Protestant, it just makes me feel like my whole perception on prayer and giving to people, due honor has really been kind of warped. Wow. Thank you so much.
Tim Staples: All right, well, brother, stay in touch. In fact, we have a lot of stuff. If you go, as Dave said earlier to Catholic.com and just type into our search engine the Communion of Saints, brother, you’re going to have so many articles you could be reading from now till Jesus comes. And please don’t be a stranger, call back, because I’d love to hear how things are going for you and if we can be of any further service. All right, Brother.