By Clement Harrold
April 30, 2026
A common Protestant objection to praying to the saints is based on the fact that it would seem to be impossible for someone like Mary to hear and respond to the prayers of millions of people at the same time, especially given that these prayers are offered in hundreds of different languages. It’s a fair objection, and it’s worth taking the time to see why it fails.
The Communion of Saints
The intercession of the saints is rooted in the communion of the saints, which is a remarkably intuitive concept. All Christians—whether on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven—are united in the love of Christ. The Catechism explains this concept by citing Lumen Gentium:
So it is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods. (955)
All Christians agree that while we are on earth we are called to support and pray for the other members of Christ’s Mystical Body. But there would be something quite bizarre in saying this fellowship suddenly ceases when a soul enters heaven.
What makes a lot more sense is the Catholic view, which holds that the saints in heaven continue to care deeply about our salvation. The Epistle to the Hebrews alludes to this truth in a beautiful passage:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us (Heb 12:1)
We can imagine running along some mountain trail and finding ourselves enveloped in a cloud, with water particles all around us. That’s how close the saints in heaven are to us on our pilgrim journeys, and they are cheering us on every step of the way.
Praying to the Saints
Once we grasp the communion of the saints, an obvious question presents itself: Why wouldn’t the saints in heaven continue to pray for us? In his letters, St. Paul frequently asks for prayers, and he urges that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men” (1 Tim 2:1).
But why should Christians suddenly stop interceding for their brothers and sisters the moment they enter heaven? The Epistle of James reminds us that the prayers of a righteous man are especially efficacious (see Jas 5:16). Since the saints in heaven are the most righteous of all, we should assume that they are interceding more than we are, not less.
But if that’s the case, then it makes perfect sense to say that we can ask these saints for their prayers, just as we can ask people on earth for their prayers. There are a number of Scripture verses that support this position:
- Call now; is there any one who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn? (Job 5:1)
- And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you. (Tobit 12:12)
- I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One. (Tobit 12:15)
- O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel and of the sons of those who sinned before thee, who did not heed the voice of the Lord their God, so that calamities have clung to us. (Baruch 3:4)
While Protestants do not accept Tobit and Baruch as canonical, these books still function as historical documents testifying to the fact that intercession of the saints and angels was part of how God’s people approached prayer in the Old Testament era.
Despite this, many Protestant apologists continue to deny the intercession of the saints on the grounds that it detracts from Christ’s role as the sole mediator between God and man. This objection betrays a disturbing failure to grapple with the extraordinary degree to which God has chosen to work through secondary causes in His salvation of the world.
Consider the rebuke God offers to Eliphaz in the book of Job: “and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly” (Job 42:8). If God’s only concern is for us to pray directly to Him, then why did He instruct Eliphaz to seek Job’s intercession?
Or consider the injunction Jesus offers His disciples: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt 9:37–38). The theologian Charles Journet pointed out that here Christ relies on a twofold use of secondary causes: He is planning to use human beings as His laborers, and He is asking human beings to pray for those laborers to come.
God has ordained His plan of salvation such that it unfolds in and through His creatures. If we doubt that, we should recall that this is the God who relied on Mary’s “yes” to become a human being, who used mud and saliva to heal a blind man, and who depends on His weak and frail servants to bring the Gospel to all the nations. St. Paul intuited the significance of all these things when he observed that “we are God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor 3:9).
At every level, Christianity is a religion defined by God’s desire to work through secondary causes. This is all for His greater glory, as St. Thomas Aquinas explains in his Summa Theologiae:
It is not on account of any defect in God's power that He works by means of second causes, but it is for the perfection of the order of the universe, and the more manifold outpouring of His goodness on things, through His bestowing on them not only the goodness which is proper to them, but also the faculty of causing goodness in others. Even so it is not through any defect in His mercy, that we need to bespeak His clemency through the prayers of the saints, but to the end that the aforesaid order in things be observed. (Suppl., 72.2.ad1)
The prayers of the saints don’t dilute Christ’s unique mediatorship; they magnify it. It is by means of their prayerful intercession that “the Divine goodness pours forth its effect into us through them” (Suppl., 72.2.co). This principle explains why in John’s Gospel Jesus can make the seemingly baffling claim that “he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do” (John 14:12).
The saints will do greater works than the works Jesus did on earth, not because the saints are greater than Jesus, but because it’s even more impressive to accomplish great feats through other people than it is to accomplish those feats on one’s own. When the saints accomplish great feats of charity and holiness, it is only and always because Christ is acting through them. Every good work performed by the members of the Mystical Body is made possible by the graces of the Head, and all of those good works redound to His glory.
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Answering the Objection
We’ve seen how the communion of the saints and the intercession of the saints are intuitive and theologically coherent concepts. It’s no surprise, then, that the practice of praying to the saints was defended extremely early in Church history by figures like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian of Carthage, as well as in the document known as The Shepherd of Hermas, which is often dated to the first century.
Be that as it may, we are still left with the objection with which we began. Maybe intercession of the saints sounds good on paper, but how could it actually work in practice if the saints are receiving thousands of petitions all at once? Perhaps the first thing to say about this objection is that it’s not an objection to the intercession of the saints per se. This objection says nothing about the intercession of the saints being impossible; it only claims they would need to handle one petition at a time. So in theory, the Protestant who makes this objection should accept that the saints can hear and respond to our prayers; it’s just that the Protestant thinks it will take the saint a very long time to get through all those requests!
But even that isn’t totally clear. After all, a human being on earth, such as the pope, could be given a book full of hundreds or even thousands of different prayer requests. Even if the pope doesn’t review each request individually, he can still pray for all the intentions entrusted to him. Given this, there’s no reason to think the saints in heaven couldn’t do something similar.
Yet we can go further than that, because there’s good reason to suppose that, unlike the pope on earth, the saints in heaven are capable of comprehending (and personally interceding for) all of the countless petitions that they receive. First, there is the Scriptural evidence that the saints in heaven are cognizant of the spiritual lives of Christians on earth.
Patrick Madrid points to Luke 15:7 as an example: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Considering that somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting every minute (or even every second) of every day, this verse implies that the saints have some kind of supernatural awareness over what takes place here on earth.
Another Scriptural point is that the devil is clearly portrayed as being able to tempt and ensnare millions of Christians simultaneously. But if the devil can do this, then wouldn’t it make sense that angels like St. Michael and St. Raphael as well as the great saints would also be capable of attending to the needs of millions of people at once? The point becomes even clearer when we consider Jesus’s statement that “in the resurrection they [i.e. human beings who died in union with God] neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt 22:30).
Lastly, it’s worth considering the evidence from the book of Revelation. In Revelation 5:8, the twenty-four elders fall down before God “with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” This matters because in Revelation the elders are representatives of the saints in heaven, which is why they are dressed in white priestly robes and crowned like kings (see Rev 4:4; cf. 1 Pet 2:9). But if that is the case, then who are “the saints” in this verse? Karlo Broussard explains that this phrase is clearly referring to Christians who are still on earth:
Consider that out of the fifty-nine times the term saints is used in the New Testament only once does it refer to Christians in heaven: Colossians 1:12. All the other times, thirteen of which are found in the book of Revelation, it’s used to refer to Christians on earth. That alone gives us good reason to think that Christians on earth are included among the “saints” mentioned in Revelation 5:8. Another reason is that the Bible directly associates the prayers of the faithful on earth with incense. For example, the Psalmist writes, “Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice!” (Psalm 141:2).
In Revelation 8:3–4, we’re told that the angels also play a role in carrying “the prayers of all the saints” to God.
Sometimes Protestants try to respond to these passages by saying that the prayers that are being carried up were prayers that were offered directly to God, rather than to Our Lady or the other saints and angels in heaven. But it is surely a major concession if the Protestant is admitting that the saints and angels do still play an essential role in bringing our prayers before God. Moreover, as Jimmy Akin points out, in a sense it’s actually worse for the Protestant if these prayers weren’t made to the saints in heaven, because this would show that the saints in heaven are aware even of prayer requests that aren’t directly addressed to them.
Having said something about the Scriptural reasons for thinking the saints can hear and respond to our prayers, let’s conclude by saying a word about the deeper metaphysical framework that allows us to make sense of the Catholic doctrine.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains that the saints in heaven are capable of hearing our prayers—including millions of prayers spoken simultaneously and in different languages—for the simple reason that God has given them a share in His divine essence that allows them to see everything they need to see for His glory and the salvation of souls:
The Divine essence is a sufficient medium for knowing all things . . . each of the blessed must needs see in the Divine essence as many other things as the perfection of his happiness requires. For the perfection of a man’s happiness requires him to have whatever he will, and to will nothing amiss: and each one wills with a right will, to know what concerns himself. Hence since no rectitude is lacking to the saints, they wish to know what concerns themselves, and consequently it follows that they know it in the Word. Now it pertains to their glory that they assist the needy for their salvation: for thus they become God’s co-operators . . . Wherefore it is evident that the saints are cognizant of such things as are required for this purpose; and so it is manifest that they know in the Word the vows, devotions, and prayers of those who have recourse to their assistance. (ST, Suppl., 72.1.co)
The way that Our Lady can hear and intercede for all our petitions is always “in the Word,” which grants her some mysterious power of split concentration that is unheard of here on earth, but that clearly already exists in the minds of the angels (including the demons), and which God now extends to the saints in heaven.
The mistake Protestants make is to assume that the way our minds will work in heaven is identical to the way they will work here on earth. Catholics take a different view, following St. Paul: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).
Catholics also remember that “when he [God the Father] appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). In heaven, we will no longer possess a merely human way of seeing, for we will see things as God sees them. This is what permits the saints in heaven to assist the souls here on earth—not through their own abilities, but in the power of His Word and according to His plan of providence.
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About Clement Harrold
Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s degree in theology, philosophy, and classics from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. He is a columnist for The Catholic Herald, and his writings have appeared in First Things, Word on Fire, Catholic Answers Magazine, Church Life Journal, Our Sunday Visitor Magazine, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.
