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The Jews of Jesus’ time, like Jews today, prayed for the dead. Apologist Joe Heschmeyer looks at how Jesus and the early Church responded to this widespread practice and finds strong evidence that the Lord intended his Church to continue it.
Cy Kellett:
God’s people have always prayed for the dead. Joe Heschmeyer is next. A shocking change occurred when in the 16th century some Christians began to teach that we could not or should not pray for the dead. Jesus never said any such thing, nor did the apostles or the gospel writers, which raises a question.
Cy Kellett:
If the Jews prayed for the dead, why did neither Jesus, nor the apostles ever tell people to stop? We asked apologist Joe Heschmeyer to review the history for us of God’s chosen people, Jewish and Christian praying for the dead. Here’s what Joe had to say. My good friend, Joe Heschmeyer Catholic Answer’s apologist. Thanks for being with us.
Joe Heschmeyer:
My pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
This month, the coming month, the month of November, the Catholics around the world pray for the dead a great deal. That’s one of the themes of the month of November. It starts with All Saints Day and then there’s the Feast of All Souls the day after. Then, we just pray for the dead throughout the month.
Cy Kellett:
You may not know this, Joe, well, I’ll actually ask you if you know this, are you aware that there is some controversy about this Catholic practice of praying for the dead?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’ve heard something about Catholics and Protestants maybe not seeing entirely eye to eye on this matter.
Cy Kellett:
Among many things the Catholics and Protestants don’t see eye to eye about, are you at all squeamish, shy, embarrassed of the Catholic teaching on praying for the dead?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m not squeamish or shy about the Catholic teaching, but I don’t think we actually endorse praying for the dead.
Cy Kellett:
You can’t just say that. Wait, I thought we were doing Catholic apologetics here. Wait, what does that mean, Joe? You’re going to have to explain that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
What I mean by that is that what we’re calling praying for the dead is not, it’s praying for the living. In Matthew chapter 22, the Saduccees approached Jesus, and they have this hypothetical. A man dies having no children. His brother marries his widow and seven brothers do this. Each one dies without ever leaving any children to her.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There’s this notion of what’s called the Levirate marriage, where you marry your dead brother’s wife to honor him and make sure his name lives on. The question they have is in the resurrection to which of the seven men will she be wife? Jesus says, “You’re wrong, because you don’t know the scriptures nor the power of God.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
He explains that they’re misunderstanding the resurrection, but he also explains that they’re misunderstanding the state of those who have died. He says as for the resurrection of the dead, “Have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead but of the living.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s a really important thing and when we’re talking about the saints, whether they’re in purgatory or in heaven, we are not talking about the dead, but the living. That’s a really important point because scripture does forbid consorting with the dead in the sense of using a medium to summon up a ghost of someone who’s not with God.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Someone who’s not in the state of grace. The idea in Christianity is that there’s this thing called the body of Christ, that St. Paul about in 1 Corinthians 12. The body of Christ includes all of those in communion with Christ. He is the head, we are his body. That’s not just true of the church on earth. That’s true in a fuller sense of those who have already departed this world to be with Christ forever.
Cy Kellett:
You’re going to use the words of Jesus to clarify things there, fair enough. In this case, the Sadducees actually didn’t believe in any afterlife. That’s not the dispute we have with Protestants, who of course believe all who are in Christ go on to the resurrected life. This does address that dispute in that Jesus talks about God being the God of the living and not of the dead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The reason I mentioned that is because some of the passages Protestants tend to turn to are just not addressing the situation we’re talking about. They’re just passages describing things like necromancy or witchcraft, which has nothing to do with the conversation. It doesn’t tell us one way or the other about whether we should be praying to saints and asking for their prayers.
Cy Kellett:
We have the example of the New Testament Christians treating the Hebrew scriptures and the Jewish people as prefiguring and preparing for the fullness of the revelation in Jesus. The obvious thing being a circumcision as being a prefiguring of baptism that would come later.
Cy Kellett:
Explicitly that’s what it is, we know that’s what it is because the word of God says that’s what it is. If you would, let’s focus a bit on the Jewish people before Jesus. What was their view of praying for the dead?
Joe Heschmeyer:
The Jewish people before Jesus and the Jewish people today pray for the dead. If you read the Jewish encyclopedia article on purgatory, there’s a difference in how Jews and Christians or specifically Catholic Christians tend to understand that purgative state, what does that purification look like? What’s the duration?
Joe Heschmeyer:
All of those questions. There’s differences in the details, but the idea that those who die and are in perfect state of purification benefit from our prayers to make them right with God is very much a part of Jewish belief. Now, with the exception, as we mentioned already of groups like the Sadducees.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You will find a diversity of thought, but the predominant view is prayers for the dead. This is encapsulated by this practice still today of what’s called the Mourner’s Kaddish, and that was recited for 11 months from the day of the death. Then also on the anniversary of the death. You pray it for parent, you pray it if you’re Jewish for parents, children, siblings, and in-laws, as well as stepparents.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s that notion that they baked into Jewish religious practice. This is not a few Jewish theologians thought this crazy thing about maybe we should pray for the dead. No, ordinary Jews prayed for the dead. We get a really clear instance of this in 2 Maccabees. Now, 2 Maccabees is accepted as inspired scripture by Catholics and by orthodox.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Typically, it is not accepted as inspired scripture by Protestants. For the purposes in which I’m mentioning it really doesn’t matter whether you consider it inspired or simply historical. Historically, we know it’s true for a few reasons. One, it details the background for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s the only biblical support for this feast of dedication that we know as Hanukkah today. Yet we see Jesus celebrating that feast in the Gospel of John. At the very least, Jesus seems to be endorsing the historicity of this. There’s no real question that the Maccabean Revolt and everything happened, this is pretty widely accepted history, and the details of that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
One of the things that we find is that Judas Maccabeus, the first leader of the Maccabean Revolt. Before one of the big battles, the guys go up and they triumph in battle, but a number of them are slain. It turns out as they’re investigating the body, that those who were slain had these amulets that were devoted to the idols of Jamnia.
Joe Heschmeyer:
They had these superstitious or even idolatrous things, which the text says, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. It was clear to all that this is why the men had been slain. Those who had fallen were those who hadn’t been faithfully following the law of God, even as they’re fighting for the freedom of their side, [crosstalk 00:08:02]
Cy Kellett:
They were hedging it a little bit.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. They got a foot in both worlds. The state of their salvation is legitimately in question. Is God going to say, “You’re a little superstitious, but you are trying to be a monotheist.” Are they just not idolaters of the sort that God’s going to reject you, who knows?
Joe Heschmeyer:
What we do know is what happens in response that it says the noble Judas warn the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin. Then, he takes up a collection among all his soldiers amounting to 2,000 silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Now, that is incredibly revealing just by itself that here’s this leader of the Jewish people, who’s under the impression that the way to handle these situations is to offer alms for the dead, to pray for them, and to offer an expiatory sacrifice for them. More than that, in scriptural author, or if you’re a Protestant, you’d at least say the historical author comments that in doing this, Judas acted in a very excellent and noble way.
Joe Heschmeyer:
As much as he had the resurrection of the dead in view for he wasn’t expecting the fallen to rise again, it would’ve been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. If he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Thus, he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin. That just gives the theological explanation of why did he just do this thing? The answer is basically the Sadduccees are wrong there is a resurrection of the dead. We can help the souls of the faithful departed get ready for it if they die in these impure, but not entirely sinful states.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Some people it’s not a clear rejection of God, but they’re also not clearly a canonizable saint when they die. We pray for them and we offer sacrifices for them. That’s the Jewish precedent. That’s the world of religion into which Jesus walks in the first century.
Cy Kellett:
This might be slightly off topic, but I wonder if your impression is like mine, and you’re much more knowledgeable on this than I am. I will accept whatever you say on this. My general impression that praying and sacrificing for the dead are almost universal human undertakings. That most parts of the world in most times and places this care for the dead has been common.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Aquinas talks about what’s called the natural virtue of religion. The basic ideas is even if you don’t have the gift of divine revelation in the sense of special revelation, you don’t have a Bible, you don’t have someone preaching inspired by the holy spirit, you have what St. Paul describes in Romans 1, the evidence is already there for you that you have enough you can say yes or know to.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Now, you could always use with more, which is why revelation is a gift, but no one is totally without revelation. Romans 10, St. Paul says the same things, “Have they not heard?” He says and then he says everyone’s heard, the voice of God goes out to all the world. One of the things that we find is we find these cross-cultural cross religious practices.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There tends to be things like blood sacrifice. Some notion that the gravity of sin is such that it has to be paid for with blood. We’ve lost a sense of that in the west, since Christ’s death is the atoning death. We can become numb to the severity of sin and the natural consequences it has. We should tune into the fact that all these other people seem to be in on this thing.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Likewise, when we see all these prayers for the dead, when we see offerings made to ensure a healthy afterlife for the dead, we should treat that with some seriousness and say it could be that this is a manifestation of that natural virtue of religion could be that this is an evidence that God has spoken through the hearts of many people around the world, even before we get to the layer of special revelation.
Cy Kellett:
What else can you tell me about the Jewish roots of the Christian practice of praying for the dead?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I would suggest said it goes both ways. One of the reasons I say it goes both ways is I want to bring in another thing. Potentially, a very big topic, but I want to at least acknowledge it. I’m also going to look at 2 Maccabees for this. Before I was looking at 2 Maccabees 12, now I’m going to look at 2 Macabees chapter 15, Judas Maccabeus there’s another battle.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Beforehand he has a dream, which he says was a vision worthy of belief. In it, the former high priest Onias and Jeremiah, the prophet appeared to him in the dream. Onias introduces him basically to Jeremiah because Onias knew him in life. He was a recently departed high priest. Jeremiah was already old, he died a long time before.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Jeremiah says, stretches out his right hand and gives Judas a golden sword and says, “Take this holy sword, a gift from God, with which you will strike down your adversaries.” Now, make of that dream, what you will, but I think it reveals a few things. One, it reveals this understanding that the holy are in a place where they know what’s going on earth and they’re interceding for us.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We see that intercession in a really profound way. Onias is interceding for Judas to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is interceding for him by giving him this gift from God. He goes and wins the battle. The consequences prove themselves that God really does work a miraculous victory after this. That’s purely a matter of historical record.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We ha we have on the one hand, we pray for those who are in purgatory. In the other hand, we ask for the prayers of those who’ve gone before. We already have even before we get to Christianity, even we get to the idea of the body of Christ, this idea within Jewish thought of bidirectional communication in the sense of we can pray for them, they can pray for us.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We can intercede for one another that we’re not just totally cut off from those who have died. That’s again, the world in which Jesus lives and operates. I think it’s important to understand that because he doesn’t rebuke or reject, or condemn any of that. He seems to affirm and re-entrench that idea instead.
Cy Kellett:
You’re saying, for example, we could say, well, Christians should follow kosher laws because there’s Jewish roots of kosher laws. Except, we can’t say that because there’s an explicit instruction from Jesus himself to Peter take and eat where he reverses the kosher laws. You’re saying there’s none of that from Jesus in terms of this Jewish belief.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m saying a couple things. First, obviously, if you think 2 Maccabees is inspired scripture, it clarifies the question of, is it good to pray for the dead explicitly? Even if you don’t, if you’re a Protestant who rejects 2 Maccabees, I think the questions you should be considering are a few.
Joe Heschmeyer:
First, on what basis am I sure 2 Maccabees isn’t inspired? Either that the text isn’t inspired or that the underlying events themselves aren’t inspired because from the appearances, the Jews overthrew a much more powerful Greek empire than what appears to be a miraculous deliverance. How do I know 2 Maccabees isn’t inspired?
Joe Heschmeyer:
If you go with Jewish practice, how can you use Jewish practice to contradict Jewish belief and prayers for the dead? The Jews don’t actually agree with Protestants on this issue. It’s a weird place to try to pick and choose which parts of Judaism to accept and reject. It doesn’t seem like a very principle position. Now, maybe someone has a better version of that than I’ve heard. [crosstalk 00:15:53]
Cy Kellett:
In that case, they’d be right about the canon of scripture, but they’d be wrong about the practice of praying for the dead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You’d be taking a Jewish canon developed after the time of Christ to reject a Jewish prayer practice that existed before the time of Christ and still continues on to this day. It’s a very strange argument. Then at the very least, even if you say, I don’t think 2 Maccabees is an inspired scripture, you should at least say, but I have to admit historically that Jews did pray for the dead then as now.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The burden of proof is on me as a Protestant to prove that this is something that Jesus or the apostles, or even the early Christians, that’s contrary to what we believe as Christians that’s something different. Like the kosher laws, it’s a great example. We know that we’re not to follow kosher laws because it’s very clear from the New Testament.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If the new Testament was silent, the presumption would certainly be that you keep going in the ways that you were brought up, that you keep going in the Jewish vision of things, without some reason to turn aside, to do something different instead.
Cy Kellett:
Like the praying of the Psalms, for example that’s the common Jewish practice, Jesus continues it. Then, it just continues in the Christian Church to where we pray the Psalms all the time now. Jesus never said stop praying the Psalms, but about the kosher laws he specifically did. There would have to be evidence of him overturning a Jewish practice or if it’s not overturned.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I mentioned this because a lot of Protestantism operates on this very incoherent principle in terms of the burden of proof, which is basically that Protestantism enjoys a presumption and Catholics have to prove Protestantism wrong or incomplete when historically, Catholicism is a thing that comes along first.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If I came along and said, “I accept Matthew, Mark, and John, and don’t accept Luke.” You need to prove from scripture that the Gospel of Luke is inspired. It would be a totally valid response to say, “No, no, you’re the one making the change. The burden of proof lies with you to show why Luke shouldn’t be in the canon.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Two, if I’m going to say, “The early Christians were wrong on prayers for the dead, the Jews were wrong on prayers for the dead.” I need to have a heck of a great case from scripture showing that this is not compatible with the Christian message because the presumption at least would have to be in favor of the Jewish and early Christian practice of praying for the dead.
Cy Kellett:
Then, let me ask you this. What about positive evidence in the New Testament or from Jesus himself or the apostles about that might support, admitting Joe, I grasp what you’re saying about we didn’t make the change. You made a radical change. We don’t have to defend a non-change, you have to defend a change.
Cy Kellett:
Accepting all of that, can we in fact defend using New Testament teaching, especially the teaching of Jesus himself that yeah, we are supposed to pray for the dead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think there’s a few places I would look. One of those places is the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Some of them called Lazarus and Dives in Luke 16. If you remember, there’s a rich man, he has a beggar outside of his door, named Lazarus. After they die, Lazarus goes up to what’s called the Bosom of Abraham.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The rich man goes into Sheol, into someplace of suffering. Now, the difficulty with using this to talk about purgatory is Jesus is not extremely clear. We understand that the holy man, Lazarus appears to be in some state of limbo, meaning Jesus hasn’t opened the gates of heaven.
Joe Heschmeyer:
They are not fully enjoying the beatific vision and the full experience of the presence of God in the way the saint sing glory today, because Jesus is going to do that and he hasn’t done that yet. Likewise, it’s not entirely clear where the rich man is. He’s certainly in a place of suffering, but he still seems to have some kind of sense of charity for his brethren.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Then the final thing that complicates it is how much is Jesus giving us a very accurate vision of the afterlife at all, and how much of this is narrative for some reason or another. I want to acknowledge all of the difficulties with using this text, but still point out that we see this. We see the rich man and Lazarus is described as being in Hades in torment.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The difficulty with St. Hades is that was a catchall term or both the hell of suffering. He appears to be in a state of suffering in one way, shape, or form. Anyway, he sees Abraham and Lazarus. He calls out, “Father Abraham have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger on water and cool my tongue for I’m in anguish in this flame.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Abraham hears him and responds to this prayer and he says, “Son, remember that in your lifetime, you received your good things and Lazarus unlike manner evil things, but now he has comforted here and you were in anguish. Besides all this, between you and us, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Now, let’s unpack that. First, we see that there’s some spiritual awareness between Hades and this place of perfect peace with Abraham. Second, there’s even some communication possible there in some way, shape, or form. Again, how much do we make of this is a good question. Then the third thing to note is that there is this chasm making it impossible to go from one to the other.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s an important difference from the second half, because the second request the rich man makes he says, “Then I beg you, father to send him to my father’s house to try to warn his brothers.” Abraham says, “They’ve got Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” Then the rich man says, “No, Father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead they’ll repent.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Abraham then says, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” Now, what’s critically important about that is that there’s no sense in which it’s impossible for those in the Bosom of Abraham to know what’s going on with the brothers of the rich man, or even to interact with them.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The chasm being described between heaven or the bosom of Abraham and Hades. There’s no such chasm between the bosom of Abraham and earth. It’s possible for them to intercede. Apparently again, this is from just the way Jesus tells this parable in Luke 16. He doesn’t take the time and say, “Let me explain all the layers and parts of the afterlife to you.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
He certainly seems to operate within this view that those who have died and are in a state of rest, the faithful departed can interact with us and do care about us. There’s a reason why the rich man thought he’d be able to get this special favor from Abraham, which is that Abraham wants the guy’s brothers to be saved. Abraham just knows their hearts are so hardened they would refuse even someone who rises from the dead.
Cy Kellett:
This suggests a view, even though with all the caveats you gave us, a view of the afterlife in Jesus’ own telling that it does not exclude a relationship between us and those who have gone on.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes. There’s plenty of times where Jesus says these things. He talks about the one who doesn’t forgive not being forgiven in this world or in the next that notion, or the guy who needs to repay this tremendous debt, there’s this slow sense of some afterlife repayment. Jesus uses a lot of these figures. He never says, “Let me just explain purgatory to you.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
He seems to be relying on an understanding that both he and his listeners have, that there’s some purgative state after death, and which is why there can be sins that aren’t forgiven in this life or in the next, things that might still need to be paid off that are going to be paid off. The jailer who’s not going to release you until you’ve paid back every cent.
Joe Heschmeyer:
All of those ideas reflect a certain vision of the afterlife. Let me give an analogy. If Jesus gave a parable about reincarnation, we would be shocked, right? We’d say, “Well, reincarnation is contrary to what Judaism and Christianity seem to teach.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Even if there are some narrative elements going on here in the different parables that he’s giving, the fact that the parables seem to include purgatory or something like it would be incompatible or pretty shocking if purgatory didn’t exist, if it was actually contrary to the message that Jesus was trying to present.
Cy Kellett:
Anything else did you want to point to in the new Testament?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Plenty of other places, actually. One of the places in 2 Timothy chapter one, where you have Onesiphorus. St. Paul talks about praying for him and his family. He says, “May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus who often refreshed me. He was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched me eagerly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Now, he doesn’t explicitly say Onesiphorus is dead or has died. It’s pretty clear from the text. He’s speaking of the guy in the past tense, and he’s praying for him that he’ll find mercy on the day of judgment. That again, it stops one step short of being the explicit evidence that a lot of Protestants are demanding.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s also pretty clear, there’s a reason he is talking about the guy’s family. Why he’s talking about the guy in the past tense, why he is talking about the next thing, it looks he’s going to be facing is judgment day. All of that. In the notion, if all of that is true, if the guy is dead, which it certainly appears that he is from even just like a neutral reading of the text, Paul is praying for him that he’ll find mercy.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Meaning what he doesn’t do is the Protestant thing. He doesn’t say either the guy is right with God and he’s in heaven or he isn’t right with God and he’s in hell, either way, my prayers aren’t going to change that. He doesn’t do that. He does something pretty different than that. The other place I would turn, a couple other places.
Joe Heschmeyer:
One of them is actually not about praying the dead or praying for those who’ve gone before us explicitly, it’s 1 Timothy 2, when he just talks about praying for everyone. There’s this notion that within the body of Christ, one of the things that we are meant to do is pray for one another. He asks for our prayers and of course, we go to one another for prayers.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There’s a reason I think it’s important to draw this out that people will often say, “Well, isn’t this inefficient? Isn’t praying to the saints inefficient? Isn’t praying for the souls of purgatory inefficient?” The answer is, “Yeah. Very, very inefficient. All of prayers are inefficient.” Matthew chapter six.
Cy Kellett:
So is an Italian meal. A lot of the best things are inefficient. You take your time with them.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Italian anything you could have literally put in any noun at the end of that sentence and it was going to be accurate. It’s an Italian line.
Cy Kellett:
Go ahead, please. This is one of my favorite points you make about praying for the dead about the inefficiency of it and that argument.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Matthew six, Jesus when he’s presenting the Lord’s prayer, preface it by saying that the father knows what you want before you ask for it. He doesn’t then say, “Therefore, you don’t need to pray because he already knows the right answer.” What could you possibly teach the all-knowing God, he then says this then is how you are to pray.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If we’re operating from this modern Western principle of what’s the least overhead and the most efficient way to get to the goal I’m trying to get to, then we just aren’t in a good place to understand prayer at all. If it’s just what’s the quickest way God can find out what I want? Well, he already knows it so that question is meaningless.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The objection from inefficiency just misunderstands prayer, just misunderstands a relational dimension of prayer that in praying and in asking for things, we’re cultivating a relationship with God and in praying for one another, we’re cultivating a relationship with our neighbors, likewise, and asking them for their prayers.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Now that point is true whether your neighbor has died and is in the presence of the living God or whether your neighbor is just standing in your living room. In either case, that humbling aspect of saying, “I could really use prayers for this.” Has a tremendous spiritual benefit by opening us up in that spirit of basically humility, away from that deadly spirit of pride and self-reliance.
Cy Kellett:
Beautiful, Joe. It seems to me that our natural sense is that we should pray for those who have gone on. We shouldn’t make sacrifice for them. This is certainly not challenged by anything in Jewish scripture. As a matter of fact, it seems to be an explicit part of Jewish tradition in practice even until today.
Cy Kellett:
There’s nothing in the New Testament that seems even to lean in the direction of stop praying for the dead. As a matter of fact, if it all seems to lean much more into the idea that it’s an assumed part of Christianity and of Jesus’s own worldview, one that he doesn’t challenge.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Amen. I think maybe two other things to add to that. One, is that a lot of the objections to praying for the dead come from a misunderstanding of what we mean by the word prayer. A lot of Protestants use the words prayer and worship interchangeably. In the scriptural sense, worship means sacrifice.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Worship is something like the Eucharist. An honor given only to God. It’s divine honor that’s of a different kind, not a different degree, but a different kind of thing than praise or prayer. Prayer is to request something and praise is to give honor. On Mother’s Day, if you say like, “You’re the best mom, but please don’t understand me to be worshiping you.” That’s silly. It’s a silly anxiety that isn’t biblical [crosstalk 00:30:19]
Cy Kellett:
My mother wouldn’t appreciate it either. What are you muddying this up for?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. I gave birth to you and you’re going to give an asterisk next to you’re the best mom. It’s not going to go well. You’ve ever read the poem The Lanyard by Billy Collins? There’s a great image of that where he makes a lanyard for his mom at summer camp and then says, “Basically, I was convinced that we’re even at that point.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s the same thing. Don’t put the asterisk just say, “You are the best and no amount of words I can give are going to repay this debt.” I find this when he talks about the virtue of piety, he says, you’re never going to repay that debt to God, to your country, and to your parents. That is an important, healthy and humble sense.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I get and I actually really appreciate the Protestant desire to avoid anything that feels like idolatry. Anything that feels like we’re putting something in a place only God should be. I think I would say to that only that their anxiety there, even if it’s well-motivated is unbiblical in the sense that God has made glorious in his saints.
Joe Heschmeyer:
As we see in 2 Maccabees, you can hate idolatry and pray for the dead because that’s what Judas Maccabeus does. He prays for the dead because they tinkered with idolatry and he was worried. Then the very last thing I’d say. Some of the New Testament evidence I presented so far was a little more speculative. It’s either Jesus’s parables or is this offhand comment by St. Paul.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I want to add to that also the image of heavenly worship that we get in the book of Revelation. In Revelation chapter eight, you see an angel who comes and stands before the altar of God with the golden censer. He’s given a lot of incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It says in verse four, “The smoke of the instance rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.” Why do I mention that? Because it shows that there is an angelic intercession with our prayers, that whether you understand the saints to be the saints in heaven or the saints on earth or both, there’s an intercessory dimension where God’s not worried about efficiency, he’s adding middlemen.
Joe Heschmeyer:
He’s adding angels that maybe you weren’t even praying to, the angels are still serving as messengers, which is literally what the word angel means. They’re offering this up as worship that God delights in bringing others into the beautiful dynamism of prayer. That’s the actual biblical image. God isn’t jealous saying, “Don’t touch those prayers. Those are made by that person to me.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
He’s bringing other people in to make this a liturgical aspect of worship. Now, it’s not just you and your private bedroom prayer for a new job or whatever it is. He’s elevated this into something in the heavenly court where now the angels are offering this publicly before God. The whole heavens can know this prayer that you’re offering, that’s the biblical image.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There’s something so much more beautiful about that if you actually understand it, which is why we pray for one another living or in the presence of God in purgatory. Then, why we ask one another for prayers as well. That’s what it is to be part of the body of Christ. We rejoice together, we suffer together, and we pray for one another.
Cy Kellett:
The communion of love among all Christians means that we can help each other and this fits with our natural desire to want to help those who have died, especially loved ones. Jesus never said to stop. The apostles never said to stop. The Jews clearly prayed for and now pray for the dead. It’s something that we should do.
Cy Kellett:
Those Christians who gave up the practice just a few centuries ago made a tragic mistake. They made a tear in the fabric of Christianity. No reason to live with that tear, patch it up, pray for the dead. We’ll see you next time right here on Catholic Answers Focus.
Cy Kellett:
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Cy Kellett:
If you want to email us, send it to focus@catholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. See you next time, God-willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.