Why do Catholics pray to Mary for intercession instead of Jesus? And what verse in the Bible says to do so?

Question

1 Timothy 2:4-6 (KJV)
4Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
5For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
6Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

Romans 8:34
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

This is not a stab at Catholics, just something I have always wondered about.

Thanks to those who gave genuine answers. I see a lot of really good points. I have a hard time with this because I don't believe that we go immediately to heaven when we die, I believe we are asleep until the resurection as described in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17. So I don't really understand how those who are sleeping can pray for you, or with you. I believe that the saints and the Virgin Mary sleep like everyone else. I fully understand asking fellow Christians to pray for you or with you, but interceding and mediating are different that praying for. The definition of intercede as defined by dictionary.com is this:
1. to act or interpose in behalf of someone in difficulty or trouble, as by pleading or petition: to intercede with the governor for a condemned man.
2. to attempt to reconcile differences between two people or groups; mediate.

Again, not trying to offend. This just may be one of those things I never understand.

Answer 1

first - thank you for understanding that we pray for Mary to interceed for us to Her Son.

in Luke the angel Gabrial came to Mary - Hail Mary full of GRace, the Lord is with thee.
also during the presetnation in the temple SImeon told Mary that "your soul too a sword shall pierce that you will know the thoughts of many".

then....Catholics ask the Saints to intercede in prayer for us, much in the same way that you would ask another Christian to pray for you. Catholics believe that the prayers of a rightous person have much more influence (with Jesus) than that of a non-righteous person. In a sense of calling your father to ask permission to go somewhere, only to have your mother/sister answer the phone. Knowing full well that you would need your father’s permission, they in turn would go ask him for you. Scripturally speaking, the saints are not only not dead, but living in the presence of Jesus and God. 

Mk 12:26-27 ... "not God of the dead, but of the living."
Jn 15:1-8 ... vine and its branches.
1 Cor 12:25-27; Rom 12:4-5 ... body of Christ.
Eph 6:18; Rom 15:30; Col 4:3; 1 Thess 1:11 ... intercessory prayer.
Jos 5:14; Dan 8:17; Tob 12:16 ... veneration of angels united with God (Mt 18:10).
1 Cor 13:12; 1 John 3:2 ... saints also united with God.
Lk 20-34-38 ... those who died are like angels.
2 Mac 15:11-16 ... deceased Onias and Jeremiah interceded for Jews.
Rev 8:3-4; Jer 15:1 ... saints' intercession.

one thing to understand about Catholics.... we are Christians first and foremost - we know fully that it is only through God's Son Jesus Christ who came in the Flesh to dwell among us to die and ressurect that will offer us Salvation. We are taught to honour our mother and father. God is the Father of Jesus Christ, Mary His Mother. Jesus is our Brother and SAviour - His Parents are also ours.


Answer 2

What most Catholics do not even realize is that the tradition of praying to Mary or for that matter any Saint is complicated both historically and theologically,

The history behind it was answered some what
Theologically a Catholic is praying to Mary to intercede for them with Her Son who then intercedes with the Father. Same for any Saint, the Catholic does not ask the saint or Mary to intercede directly on their behalf but for them in turn to pray on their behalf. It is very much like asking a Friend to "pray for me".

The problem is most Catholics don't know this.

Answer 3

Praying to Mary and the Saints is not specifically ordered in scripture, but it is part of Catholic doctrine. Catholics do not believe that Mary or any other Saint will answer their prayers; basically, they are asking Mary to pray for them ... just as a Protestant might ask for the prayers of their church family. Revelation 8:3-4 illustrates the Saints in Heaven offering up prayers to God.

"And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God"

Answer 4

Praying to Mary, the saints and the angels can sound like trying to get "friends in high places" to run interference for you. Although people sometimes seek such "friends" in order to get a speeding ticket fixed, buy merchandise at a lower price or have some problem resolved, for Catholics that is not what devotion to the saints represents.

God alone is the source of all grace and blessing. Saints do not "fix" things for us apart from God or convince God to do X rather than Y. At Vatican II, the bishops taught that the holiness of the Church "is shown constantly in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful and so it must be" (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, #39). Those "fruits of grace" are seen in the lives of saintly disciples, whether canonized or not.

Jesus was fully divine and fully human. As a human, Jesus could be only one gender, live at one time in history, grow up in one human culture, etc. Saints help us to see holiness as possible for ourselves because saints include men and women, married and single people who lived at various times in human history and in various cultures. Saints remind us that, no matter what sacrifices we may need to make in order to cooperate with God's grace, we are not the first people to make those sacrifices. If we ask our friends on earth to pray for us, why not ask our friends in heaven to do the same?

Cheers :-)

Answer 5

No. I do not recall the scripture (per se), so I will give the scriptural high lite.
Adonijah wanted something of the King (Solomon). So he asked the mother of the King (Bathsheba) to ask (intercede) the King on his behalf. (P.S. I am not Catholic at this time either).
Just because that is not the way I currently do things; does not mean it is wrong.
Further, is that scriptural 'old testament' and thus done away; in my current dividing of the word of God; NO.

Answer 6

We pray to Jesus for mediation not intercession.

Jesus taught us to pray for each other:

Give US this day our daily bread.
Forgive US our trespasses,
as WE forgive those who trespass against US.
And lead US not into temptation,
but deliver US from evil.

Intercessory prayer is when you pray for others or others pray for you.

Catholics share the belief in the Communion of Saints with many other Christians, including the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopal, and Methodist Churches.

The Communion of Saints is the belief where all saints are intimately related in the Body of Christ, a family. When you die and go to heaven, you do not leave this family.

Everyone in heaven or on their way to heaven are saints, you, me, my deceased grandmother, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.

As part of this family, you may ask your family and friends living here on earth to pray for you. Or, you may also ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Andrew, or your deceased grandmother living in heaven to pray for you.

Prayer to saints in heaven is simple communication, not worship.

And prayer to the saints is optional not required.

With love in Christ.

Answer 7

Because Jesus never gives a definitive answer. And he did appear to delegate a little authority when he said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." He even remarked that forgiving sins is a lot easier than curing the sick and infirm. In the early Church, the subject of forgiveness didn't arise until Christ delayed his return long enough for it to be a problem. Under threat of persecution, many Christians apostasized, then tried to rejoin the faith community later. Those who stuck the persecution out were a little perturbed and wouldn't permit readmittance without a public confession and some serious penitence. The employment of priests and private confession was considered a gracious adaptation after the threat of persecution faded. As for praying to saints, this grew out of the persecution as well. You may recall a passage in which Paul reassures grieving Christians that their friends and families who have died will not miss the general resurrection. Martyrs came to be seen as heroes, exemplars and continuing members of the community of "saints", both worthy of honor and capable of continuing to pray for others. In 2 Timothy 1:16-18, Paul expresses prayers for one Onesiphoros, to whom he refers in the past tense. In 2 Timothy 4:19, he sends greetings to the "house" of Onesiphorus, implying that Onesiphorus is dead, and that prayers for the dead were common in his day. There are also Old Testament passages about prayer for the dead, or there were until Martin Luther cut several books out of the Bible. (2 Maccabees 12 is pretty unambiguous.) And if the living saints could pray for the dead, it was a natural development to assume the dead saints could pray for the living, since they were all of one communion. The early Church thought as a community, not with the individualistic, "vertical" spirituality of later years. "I" am not "saved", "we" are the "body of Christ".

Answer 8

The Catholic Church, unlike other christian churches has always been a polytheistic (many gods) religion.

Any mention of the Communion of Saints by Catholic apologists, pr agents and spin doctors is totally irrelevant to this question. So too is any argument that Mary is just considered one of the more important saints of the church.

+++Mary Mother, of "God"+++

Catholics firstly worship Mary above all others as "Mother of God".

In fact, it is the key line in "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee, blessed art you amongst all women...Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now.."

Recently, some Catholic spin doctors around the world use different wording, but the Hail Mary prayer was standard for almost 1700 years!


(431 CE) The Christian church through the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus presided by St. Cyril of Alexandria and Emperor Theodosius II did claim as church doctrine that Mary, may be officially worshiped as Mother of God.

+++Mary as a Goddess+++

Catholics worship, Mary as Queen of Heaven and a Goddess in her own right. That is precisely how she is viewed and many, thousands of churches have statues of Mary with a crown in recognition of this official catholic position.

The symbolism is significant as Mary has become the Astarthe and Inaana previously worshipped by the founder of Christianity, Paul of Tarsus.

+++Lesser Gods of the Catholics+++

Catholics since 1871 also worship the Pope as a Living Deity (God) on Earth being infallible and therefore above all human law and all other human beings.

Jesus was human and never considered himself infallible, so today Pope Benedict is technically a more powerful God under the pantheon of Gods and saints of the Catholic Church.

Of course, such concepts are strenuously denied. So too are 20 centuries of crimes against humanity
See: The Almanac of Evil.
http://one-faith-of-god.org/final_testament/end_of_darkness/evil/evil_0190.htm

I'll let you decide who is telling the truth.

Answer 9

Fundamentalists challenge the Catholic practice of asking saints and angels to pray for us. But the Bible directs us to invoke those in heaven and ask them to pray with us.

Thus in Psalm 103, we pray, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will!" (Ps. 103:20-21). And in Psalm 148 we pray, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!" (Ps. 148:1-2)

Not only do those in heaven pray with us, they also pray for us. In Revelation, John sees that "the twenty-four elders [the leaders of the people of God in heaven] fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5:8). Thus the saints in heaven offer to God the prayers of the saints on earth.

Angels do the same thing: "[An] angel came and stood at the altar [in heaven] with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God" (Rev. 8:3-4).

Jesus himself warned us not to mess with small children because their guardian angels have guaranteed intercessory access to the Father: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 18:10).

Because he is the only God-man, Jesus is the only Mediator between man and God (1 Tim. 2:5), but this in no way means we cannot or should not ask our fellow Christians to pray with us and for us (1 Tim. 2:1-4), including those Christians in heaven, who have already had their sanctification completed, for "[t]he prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (Jas. 5:16).

**

Any more questions. . . let me know.

Answer 10

we don't pray to mary we ask for her intercession like when you ask a family member,friend or your pastor to pray for you. the practice of catholics is all over scripture. if you are genuinly interested then use these catholic sources to put you curiousity to rest

www.scripturecatholic.com
www.catholiceducation.org
www.newadvent.org

try a catechism of the catholic church aswell it should pretty much cover all you want to know.