Salvation & the Sacraments

The Communion of Saints

The Church is one family in Christ — on earth, being purified, and in heaven — and death doesn't break the bond. So we can ask the saints in heaven to pray for us, just as we ask friends on earth, because they are alive in Christ and their prayers are powerful.

The short answer. The saints in heaven are alive and closer to God than ever. Revelation literally shows them presenting our prayers to God. Asking them to pray for us is what ‘the communion of saints’ means.

The saints in heaven present our prayers

In heaven the elders hold ‘golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints,’ and the martyrs under the altar cry out to God. The saints are aware, active, and interceding.

Revelation 5:8Now when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

Revelation 6:9–10When he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed for the Word of God, and for the testimony of the Lamb which they had. They cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, Master, the holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

A great cloud of witnesses — and they're alive

We are surrounded by a ‘cloud of witnesses,’ and come to ‘the spirits of the righteous made perfect.’ God is the God of the living; in Christ, the faithful departed are more alive than we are.

Hebrews 12:1Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

Hebrews 12:22–23But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels, to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,

The prayer of the righteous is powerful

If ‘the effective prayer of a righteous person is very powerful’ on earth, how much more the prayer of the saints already made perfect in heaven? Scripture even shows departed holy ones interceding for God's people.

James 5:16Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective.

Common objections

“That's necromancy — forbidden in Deuteronomy 18.”

Necromancy is summoning spirits to gain hidden knowledge or power — a pagan manipulation. Asking a saint to pray for you is the opposite: humbly requesting intercession from a member of Christ's living Body. Note that Moses and Elijah, long dead, appear conversing with Jesus (Mt 17:3).

Matthew 17:3Behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them talking with him.

“Why not go straight to Jesus?”

We do — and we also ask others to pray for us, which Scripture commands. If asking a living friend to pray doesn't insult Jesus, neither does asking a saint who stands before his throne. It's the same Body, praying together.

Scripture quoted verbatim from the World English Bible (public domain).

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