Tom Nash provides a clear and insightful response to the question of whether Catholics worship saints. He explains the distinction between worship and veneration, emphasizing that only God is worthy of worship, while veneration is a form of respect and honor given to saints for their relationship with Jesus Christ.
Transcript:
Hello. Hello. So I was having a conversation with someone and the topic moves to Catholic’s so-called worship of the saints. Yes. So I tried explaining about how worship is explicitly a sacrifice before God and due only to God and we do not do that to the saints. And her response was that in Revelations when John frustrates himself before an angel, the angel stops him saying worship is only for God. So if the Bible shows that bowing reparetingly is seen as worship, how do you respond to that?
I would say that’s the distinction. He was looking and thinking that because he was treating him like God, that’s the problem. With someone who kneels at an altar at a church with an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they are not worshiping her. Why do we have respect for the Blessed Mother of any saints? Precisely because, I always emphasize, precisely because of their relationship with Jesus Christ. She is the Mother of God and that’s why we look to her and as an intercessor. And quite frankly, it’s very biblically speaking of the book of Revelation, which you cited a moment ago. Revelation 8, verse 3 talks about the elders who bring forth the bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the faithful, showing that they somehow are interceding. And if James chapter 5 can speak about how a person on earth, or the prayer of a righteous man, avails much, well, how much more a person in heaven? And this isn’t necromancy where we’re contacting the dead like a seance and seeking out dead relatives. These are people who we know are canonized because of the authority given by God to the church that affirms that they are in heaven. And in addition to that, when we think about these saints, look what it says in Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12 says, you know, you’ve come to the throne room of God, to the firstborn enrolled in heaven, to the spirits of just the souls, the spirits of the souls of just men made perfect. Well, if they’ve been made perfect, then they have something better than we have here on earth. And because of God’s blessing, not because of anything themselves, they can intercede for us in heaven, and they can handle people. So how can they do that? It’s not humanly possible. Well, it’s not humanly possible for somebody on earth to exercise a demon. It’s not humanly possible alone for that or for healing. And yet the apostles did those things precisely because of God’s grace. And so with regard to the saints in heaven, we are not praying to them. Excuse me. We pray to them. We are not worshiping them. And whereas when somebody falling down, that case, yeah, in that case, that person is worshiping and need to be corrected that he’s, this is an angel, this isn’t God. And for those also with regard to icons or images, we don’t pray to them. We pray through them. We look at them and they guide our prayer. They keep us focused on the saints who lead us to Jesus Christ.
The Blessed Mother says it so well, “To whom shall we go?” Excuse me. That’s going back to John and John 6, but with the Blessed Mother says, “Do whatever he tells you in John chapter 2 of the wedding of Canaan.” In other words, she’s always leading us to Jesus. And the church always leads us to Jesus with St. Peter and to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life. So I would tell people that just because you are kneeling in prayer doesn’t mean you are worshiping someone. And number two, just because you have an image of someone doesn’t mean you are idolizing that or we could convict God of that with regard to back in the Old Testament with Numbers, right? Where they brought out, look upon this serpent, the seraph serpent, which they mounted on a pole and they were able to be healed by that. Now, interestingly enough, a little later as we see in salvation history, King Hezekiah had to destroy it because they were looking at it as an idol. So no,
images help us focus our prayer. They are not. And just, but kneeling itself does not necessarily, I mean, people kneel before a king or a queen and it’s not necessarily a sign of respect to say that it necessarily is worship, is to fail to make proper distinctions.
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