A very important Catholic book tells us that the central purpose of the Gospel is to make us participants in God’s divine nature. As Christ is perfect, so shall we be. As he is powerful by the Holy Spirit, so shall we be. As he is love, so shall we be. As he is mediator between God and man, so shall we be.
That book is the Bible, and it spells out in no uncertain terms the glory for which each saved soul is destined in Christ. So 2 Peter 1:4 says God “has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature.” Likewise, Paul tells us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:29)
Thus, in Christ, we participate in the very life of God, and those who do it best of all are the ones who have obtained perfection in heaven at the right hand of God. Thus, we shall join his symphony of prayer and do whatever Christ himself does, including intercede for those on earth.
“But,” someone might say, “according to 1 Timothy 2:5 there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”
True. And Jesus is also the one Son of God and the one High Priest. (see John 1:14, Hebrews 8) Yet he shares that sonship, priesthood and mediatorship with us. In other words, the prayers of us saints, whether living or dead, totally derive from and depend on Christ.
We know this from experience. Suppose I ask you to pray for me. Am I thereby repudiating Christ as my intercessor before God? No, I am doing his will (and so are you) by recognizing that, as a child of God, you are called to imitate him in this role as in all things. In short, the principal Pray-er is not us, but Christ himself, seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us and adoring his Father who gives us — out of sheer love — the gift of participating in the eternal conversation between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
As on earth, so in heaven. As Jesus spends his love interceding for us at the right hand of the Father, so all the blessed dead do too. For God has shared his communal nature of love with them and with us alike. As God is one in love, so we, both in heaven and on earth, are one in him also.
That is why the Mass — the central act of Catholic worship — is offered to God in the context of a body which includes not only the people next to you in the pew but angels, archangels, martyrs, apostles, prophets and the Blessed Virgin, and all those who have died in God’s friendship. It opens with a prayer asking “blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.” It proceeds to prayers both to and for the dead. Its consummation is holy Communion, uniting all in Christ, living and dead.
It is this and nothing less that the church, following her Lord, holds out to us as we grapple with the mystery of suffering and death. It is this and nothing less that we are declaring when we state our faith in “the communion of saints and life everlasting.” It is this and nothing less that is meant by Paul’s statements that we in Christ are parts of the same body, members not only of Christ, but of one another. (see Romans 12:5) Such a bond, forged from such a love, cannot be broken by a little trifle like death. (see Romans 8:38-39) For love is stronger than death.
Northwest Catholic - September 2016