Patron Saint Joseph of Home Sales

[darinhouston]

The situation is not utterly different from asking your pastor to pray for you.

No, the situation is utterly different. (you aren't Catholic, are you?) My pastor is alive, and I can communicate directly with him and ask for his support in prayer. It's a talisman plain and simple if not some form of mild divination.

[kaufmannphillips]

The situation is not utterly different from asking your pastor to pray for you.

No, the situation is utterly different. (you aren't Catholic, are you?) My pastor is alive, and I can communicate directly with him and ask for his support in prayer. It's a talisman plain and simple if not some form of mild divination.

Shall I take the deflection into other issues and the personal query as an indication that I made my point? You really don't have a basic problem with asking somebody other than Jesus to pray for you.

As for the new topics:

(1) It is not utterly different, because the same basic principle is at work: someone is seeking additional prayer on their behalf from a fellow Christian.

(2) Is my religious identity relevant?

(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

(4) Let us imagine that your pastor is on a two-year missionary trip in the deepest Amazonian forest, and has almost no contact with the civilized world. Your cousin is making the long trip to join him for the next eighteen months. Is it wrong to send along a prayer request, though you have no direct contact with him, and will not for a long time?

(5a) Is the practice talismanic, if the practitioner believes in their authentic relationship with the saint, as a member of the same faith community; and in the saint's authentic relationship with G-d? Or in such a case, is the practice relational?

(5b) Is the practice of praying to Jesus talismanic, if the practitioner does not feel like they have an interactive personal relationship with him?

(6) Is the practice of requesting the saint's intercession divination, if there is no request for a revelation or a sign?

[RND]

(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

Big if.

[kaufmannphillips]

(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

Big if.

For some complainants, but not for others.

[RND]

(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

Big if.

For some complainants, but not for others.

Was Satan right then? Is man truly immortal? Or, as the scriptures plainly teach, "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Psalms 146:4

[darinhouston]

As for the new topics:

(1) It is not utterly different, because the same basic principle is at work: someone is seeking additional prayer on their behalf from a fellow Christian.

I guess we'll need to just disagree on that one.

(2) Is my religious identity relevant?

Only for context and my curiosity of who else might have these views of the saints.

(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

I think it's a category error -- even if alive in some sense (even greater sense) in heaven, alive in completely different contexts and locations makes a difference. Also, I'm not so sure there's any time passing from the perspective of those outside our time-space continuum (if that's true) between their deaths and our own. Even assuming they're alive on earth (let's say they're in the Amazon and we're in TX) -- how can I ask them to pray for me?

(4) Let us imagine that your pastor is on a two-year missionary trip in the deepest Amazonian forest, and has almost no contact with the civilized world. Your cousin is making the long trip to join him for the next eighteen months. Is it wrong to send along a prayer request, though you have no direct contact with him, and will not for a long time?

Of course not.

(5a) Is the practice talismanic, if the practitioner believes in their authentic relationship with the saint, as a member of the same faith community; and in the saint's authentic relationship with G-d? Or in such a case, is the practice relational?

I'm not sure how to answer that -- it seems at least delusional to me.

(5b) Is the practice of praying to Jesus talismanic, if the practitioner does not feel like they have an interactive personal relationship with him?

see above

(6) Is the practice of requesting the saint's intercession divination, if there is no request for a revelation or a sign?
kaufmannphillips

Why not? Are they trying to communicate with the dead?

[Jill]

.

[kaufmannphillips]

kaufmannphillips wrote:
(2) Is my religious identity relevant?

darinhouston wrote:
Only for context and my curiosity of who else might have these views of the saints.

Addressing your curiosity, then, I am not Roman Catholic. I myself generally think of expired folks as dead as a doornail until/unless they might be resurrected.

kaufmannphillips wrote:
(3) If the saints are in heaven with G-d, are they not alive?

darinhouston wrote:
I think it's a category error -- even if alive in some sense (even greater sense) in heaven, alive in completely different contexts and locations makes a difference. Also, I'm not so sure there's any time passing from the perspective of those outside our time-space continuum (if that's true) between their deaths and our own. Even assuming they're alive on earth (let's say they're in the Amazon and we're in TX) -- how can I ask them to pray for me?

So what we're talking about here is difference of supernatural imagination. You imagine them alive in a place inaccessible to the present; the Roman Catholic Church imagines them alive in a place accessible to the present; I imagine them as not alive. Plainly, my imagination is the most superior .

kaufmannphillips wrote:
(5a) Is the practice talismanic, if the practitioner believes in their authentic relationship with the saint, as a member of the same faith community; and in the saint's authentic relationship with G-d? Or in such a case, is the practice relational?

darinhouston wrote:
I'm not sure how to answer that -- it seems at least delusional to me.

This is because you theologize differently. But Catholics can hold their perspective too, theologizing in a way that is comprehensible within the Christian mythos.

Catholics have a highly developed sense of the communion of the saints. I'll quote Karl Keating at length here:

"We are not cut off from fellow Christians at death, but are, strangely enough and contrary to our unreflecting thoughts, brought closer. We continue in one communion, the communion of saints.

To fundamentalists the term communion of saints and its allied term, the Mystical Body of Christ, mean nothing. ... It is enough to remind fundamentalists of the image of the vine and its branches. They accept this as a metaphor of our relationship to Christ, he being the vine, we the branches that live through him. They can see that if we are connected to Christ, we are connected to one another, but they tend to forget that those in heaven are not suddenly cut off from the vine. The saints remain as branches, which, if the symbolism means anything, means that they remain related to us.

Paul develops Christ's teaching about the Mystical Body, about the vine and branches. He sees Christ as the head, the members of the Church as the body. the acts of any one member are profitable to all the members. 'There was to be no want of unity in the body; all the different parts of it were to make each other's welfare their common care. if one part is suffering, all the rest suffer with it; if one part is treated with honor, all the rest find pleasure in it. And you are Christ's body, organs of it depending on each other [ref. I Corinthians 12:25-7].' ....

A natural, even a necessary, inference from this teaching is intercessory prayer...."

From this perspective, the unity of the Body of Christ perseveres despite physical expiration.

kaufmannphillips wrote:
(6) Is the practice of requesting the saint's intercession divination, if there is no request for a revelation or a sign?

darinhouston wrote:
Why not? Are they trying to communicate with the dead?

So you do think of them as dead? Keating once more:

"One thing that certainly can be said is that those in heaven are alive to G-d. 'Have you never read in the book of Moses how G-d spoke to him at the burning bush, and said, 'I am the G-d of Abraham, and the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob?' Yet it is of living men, not dead men, that he is the G-d [ref. Mark 12:26f.].' The saints in heaven are more alive now than we are. In the arms of G-d, they are more solicitous of us than when they were on earth."

[kaufmannphillips]

Was Satan right then? Is man truly immortal? Or, as the scriptures plainly teach, "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Psalms 146:4

That scripture was written before the work of Jesus.

Jesus is quoted as describing lots of thinking after physical death, q.v., Luke 16:19-31.

Then we may return to Psalm 146: "Do not trust in princes; in a son of man, in whom there is not salvation."

[kaufmannphillips]

To re-post:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

This does not include other than "Our Father".

Patron Saints?

Is the "Lord's Prayer" a beginning to understanding prayer, or the end to it?