Theology Today - Vol 44, No.1 - April 1987 - ARTICLE

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May We Invoke The Saints?

"Invocation of the saints is a practice which arises as a secondary ramification of certain foundational truths of the Christian faith. To get at the theological intelligibility of how it 'works' even today and has the positive effect of evoking reliance on the saving mercy of God, without the negative effect of overshadowing the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ, two primary insights rooted in the biblical witness need to be considered. One deals with the relation between Jesus Christ and Christian believers, the other with the interrelationship among Christians themselves. "

AT first glance, the question of invocation of the saints, that is, of calling upon saints in heaven for their prayers, does not seem to be of burning importance on the agenda of theology today. Academic theologians in pursuit of the foundations and proper methods of their discipline, ecclesial theologians concerned with the church in relation to changing world cultures, and large numbers of Catholics in the North Atlantic countries who have dropped the practice in the wake of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council all find the question rather irrelevant.¹

The custom, however, was part of the debate at the time of the Reformation, and since the legitimacy of invoking the saints is still part of the general doctrine taught by the Roman Catholic Church where the practice flourishes in the cultures of the southern hemisphere and eastern Europe, the issue arises in ecumenical discussion. On first approach, it is a question where Catholic articulation is quite minimal,

Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. is Associate Professor of Theology, The Catholic University of America in Washington. She is a member of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, and this article is a revised version of a position paper she prepared for general discussion. In addition to historical and doctrinal considerations, Dr. Johnson also notes that while secularism today influences believers and unbelievers alike to think of the dead as dead, in Africa increasing attention must be paid by Christian churches to the indigenous and deeply religious notion of the "living dead."

¹Comments on the decline of veneration of the saints are found in Johannes Feiner and Lukas Vischer, eds., The Common Catechism: A Book of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1975), p. 631; George Kretschmar and René Laurentin, "The Cult of the Saints," in Confessing One Faith, George Forell and James McCue, eds. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), p. 278. The Second Vatican Council's effect on the christocentricity of piety is noted in J. A. Jungmann, "Liturgie und geistliches Leben. Die Spiritualitat der Constitutio de Sacra Liturgia, " Geist und Leben 37 (1964), pp. 91-98.

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with few scholarly developments of the theme in existence. It is typical, for example, that Vatican II affirmed both the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ and the belief that communion with the saints in heaven in no way weakens but rather enriches the church's worship of the triune God, without thoroughly explaining the intelligibility of these affirmations vis-á-vis each other.² Christians of the Reformation traditions, meanwhile, have the gravest suspicions of the practice, questioning whether it is not in fact an abuse of the gospel.

What becomes fascinating in pursuing this issue is that in pulling on the single thread of invocation of the saints, one begins to unravel a whole worldview, an entire mentality, a panoply of interrelationships which can be characterized in a typical and classical sense as "Catholic," although it is not thereby implied that only Roman Catholics share this perspective. It is a position with a distinctive pattern of thinking, which can be set in tension and even contrast with the mentality of the Reformation tradition. Paul Tillich, for example, made creative use of the differences between "Catholic substance," or the ecclesial, sacramental embodiment of God's presence, and the critical "Protestant principle" which objects when any of the church's creations put conditions upon or usurp the role of God as God.³ Carl J. Peter, while acknowledging the legitimacy of the Protestant principle and its family resemblance to the Reformation criterion of justification by faith, has asserted the need of another more catholic critical principle-that of recognizing and respecting the divine where it is at work, even when its mediating agencies are touched by sin.⁴ David Tracy has distinguished the ordered relationships of the Catholic analogical imagination from the consciousness of judgment and grace of the Protestant dialectical imagination, describing their trajectories through history as those of manifestation and proclamation, respectively.⁵

In each of these instances, two different gestalts which Christianity has assumed are recognized. Since invocation of the saints is a quintessential expression of the Catholic mentality, what is at issue here is not

²Vatican II, Constitution on the Church, articles 49-51, in The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, ed. (New York: America Press, 1966); this Constitution on the Church will henceforth be cited as LG from its opening words Lumen gentium, and the number of the appropriate article appended. It is interesting to note that the same two affirmations were made but not explained by the Council of Trent. Cf. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, H. J. Schroeder, trans. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), pp. 215-17.

³Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), Vol. 1, pp. 37, 227; Vol. 3, pp. 135, 245, and passim.

⁴Carl J. Peter, "Justification by Faith and the Need of Another Critical Principle," in Justification by Faith (Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII), H. G. Anderson et al., eds. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), pp. 304-15. In this same volume, the "Common Statement" delineates characteristics of the Catholic and Protestant mentalities in articles 94, 95, 112, 117-121. A strong statement of the Reformation pattern of thought is afforded by Albert Brandenburg, Maria in der evangelischen Theologie der Gegenwart (Paderborn: Verlag Bonifacius-Druckeri, 1965), pp. 86-117.

⁵David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981).

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simply a piece of unfinished business from the sixteenth century, and not simply a pious practice, but a manifestation of one fundamental Christian way of being in the world. It is that last point, however, which is in dispute, for if there is only one mediator between God and ourselves, Jesus Christ, then why call upon other persons? Is this not a throwback to pagan ways, where a multitude of intercessors and patrons were thought to be needed to help the petitioner before a powerful and unsympathetic God?

To focus the question more sharply, it is important to note the broad area of Christian agreement which potentially exists on the question of the saints. First of all, that there are such persons is not seriously disputed. Human beings who live their lives with faith in Christ are united to Christ with a bond so strong that even death cannot break it: "whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom. 14:8). Being "in Christ" persists even after death and, while we have no image or concept of what this may be like, such persons alive in Christ are the beginning of the eschatological community of the redeemed. In Christian terminology, they are called saints in English, from the Latin sancti meaning holy ones. Second, since it is the same Holy Spirit who makes both the living and the dead to be alive in Christ, some sort of communion exists between the two in Christ. However variously imagined, all are one in Cbrist's Spirit. In the third place, there is potential agreement about some of the ways in which believers who are still alive in this world should regard and honor the saints.⁶ They can thank God for these sisters and brothers in the faith whose lives signal the victory of God's grace and through whose own God-given gifts the church was built up. They can allow the memory of this cloud of witnesses to strengthen their faith in God's saving mercy in the midst of the struggles of life. Obviously, too, they, can honor the saints by imitating their faith and other virtues as appropriate in particular circumstances. Gratitude to God, anamnesis which strengthens faith, and adopting particular patterns of imitation of Christ are good and suitable ways to honor the saints about which, upon reflection, there could be ecumenical consensus. It could even be allowed that, while we have no concrete picture of how this happens, the saints who have died and are alive in Christ join in the prayer of Christ before his Abba for the world. If Christ lives to make intercession for those who draw near (Heb. 7:25), it is not outlandish to think that those who are with him after the struggle of life,

⁶See the similarities between the 1530 Apology of the Augsburg Confession, article 21, entitled "The Invocation of theSaints," in The Book of Concord, Theodore Tappert, ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959); and Vatican II's LG chapter 7, entitled "The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and its Union with the Heavenly Church" (1964). Both documents show an interesting parallelism on the points here summarized. See also Craig D. Erickson, "Reformed Theology and the Sanctoral Cycle," Liturgy: Journal of the Liturgical Conference 5:2 (Fall 1985), pp. 83-87; this whole issue is focused on the question of the saints in an ecumenical perspective.

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those in whom sin has definitively been overcome, enter into the movement of this prayer for others in general, just as they did while on earth.

Within the context of this potentially broad agreement, however, the parting of the ways comes with the question of invocation. As Melanchthon succinctly states, "Even if the saints do pray fervently for the church land he for one thought they did], it does not follow that they should be invoked."⁷ Several reasons support this contention. Unlike the case of prayer to Christ, there is no word of Scripture which commands such prayer, nor any promise that God will hear such prayer. In addition, there is the epistemological problem: how do we know that the saints even hear our individual prayers? But the strongest reason of all is christological: Jesus Christ alone is the mediator between God and sinful humanity. As the Scriptures attest, "there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and human beings, the human being Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (I Tim 2:5-6). Invoking the saints seems to remove Christ from this unique mediating role, making him stand over against us as the judging one with whom we need to be reconciled, so that the saints are needed to bridge this gulf. It seems to imply that the saints are more understanding of human weakness and are more approachable than Christ, who reigns in severe majesty and who judges justly. It can even give rise to the idea that the merits of the saints can be transferred or applied to the one who petitions, thus giving the saints a mediating role in redemption itself. But, as Melanchthon noted, "this is completely intolerable, for it transfers to the saints honor belonging to Christ alone."⁸

In the eyes of Christians of the Reformation tradition, what is most dangerous about the invocation of the saints is that it causes a transfer of trust from Christ to the saints, thus causing a distortion in the structure of faith itself. The practice obscures the unique mediatorship of Jesus Christ, substituting other redeerners for him, and so is clearly an intolerable abuse of the gospel.

In discussing the issue of justification, one official dialogue group in the United States agreed on a common affirmation which both wholeheartedly accepted: "our entire hope of justification and salvation rests on Christ Jesus and on the gospel whereby the good news of God's merciful action in Christ is made known; we do not place our ultimate trust in anything other than God's promise and saving work in Christ."⁹ Our question here is: on what grounds can a Catholic theology which makes that affirmation maintain that invocation of the saints is not inherently abusive, but rather a practice which intends to, and in fact can, evoke reliance on God's saving grace in Jesus Christ? Granted that there can be abuses connected with this. At the time of the Reformation, the pastoral situation was unspeakably bad. In some areas today, abuses remain which Melanchthon would recognize. Yet abuse does not

⁷Apology 21: 10.

⁸Ibid., 21:14.

⁹"Common Statement," in Justification by Faith (see n. 4), articles 4 and 157.

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necessarily invalidate a practice. Since Catholic theology unequivocally denies that prayer to the saints involves any transfer of merit from saints to the person invoking them, what then is the theological intelligibility of this practice? Or, as theologians of the Reformation tradition put it, if Catholics are serious about affirming the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ, yet persist in allowing and even encouraging the invocation of the saints, "how does it work"?

Knowing the concrete circumstances in which the practice of invoking the saints originated is a first step toward understanding its possible positive significance. Historically, the first traces of the practice in Christianity are found late in the postapostolic times of persecution, when Christians were put to the test to the point of martyrdom.¹⁰ The martyrs were women and men whose public witness to the faith was consummated in the ultimate gift of their own lives. Condemned, tortured, bloodied, and executed, they were perceived by other Christians as entering in a graphic way into the dying of Jesus, and so by his mercy into his rising. They were icons of Jesus Christ, awesome signs of the victory of his power and presence in the face of the powers of this world. Their splendid and striking witness challenged believers and nonbelievers alike to the courage of discipleship.

Archaeological and textual evidence shows that from the second century in the East and the third century in the West, Christians loved these martyrs and, even after the passing of the generation that knew one or another of them, cherished their memory. Ways were found to express this respect and esteem. When possible, their remains, which were considered to belong to the realm of the holy, were carefully buried. Small shrines were built on or near their graves, which became places of prayer and pilgrimage. On the yearly anniversary of their deathwhich, unlike in pagan custom, was perceived as the day of their true birth-night-long vigil would be kept and the eucharist celebrated at dawn at their graves, with the intent that their prayer in Christ and the example of their discipleship would encourage and help those still on the way of pilgrimage. That the martyrs did not replace Christ but were of importance within the context of faith in Christ was testified to by the church at Smyrna after their bishop, Polycarp, was burned to death by the Roman authorities in the year 167 A.D. Responding to the charge

¹⁰See the historical study by W. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967). Christian veneration of the martyrs is studied in H. Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des martyrs (Bruxelles: Bureaux de la Societe des Bollandistes, 1912), especially "L'invocation des martyrs," pp. 120-68; Josef Jungmann, "The Veneration of the Martyrs," in The Early Liturgy to the Time of Gregory the Great, Francis Brunner, tr. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), pp. 175-87; Louis Bouyer, "Martyrdom," in The Spirituality of the New Testament and Fathers, Mary P. Ryan, tr. (New York: Desclee Co., 1960), pp. 190-210; K. Baus, "Das Gebet der Martyrer," Trier Theologische Zeitschrift 62 (1953), pp. 19-32, and Felix Rutten, Die Victorverehrung im christlichen Altertum (Paderborn: Verlag F. Schoningh, 1936; New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968).

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that they were inclined to abandon the Crucified in order to worship this martyred man, the community's author of the acts of Polycarp's martyrdom wrote:

They did not know that we could neither forsake the Christ who suffered to save those who are saved in the whole world, nor worship anyone else. For we worship him since he is the Son of God; but the martyrs we love as disciples and imitators of the Lord, and worthily because of their matchless affection for their own king and teacher. May we, too, become their comrades and fellow disciples.¹¹

Within this historical setting of venerating the martyrs, the custom of directly calling upon a martyr for prayers arose, originally as the expression of the private piety of individuals. No one in an official position said that this was to be done; it simply seemed to some to be a coherent and good thing to do. Graffiti scratched on the walls near martyrs' graves both in the Roman catacombs and in other cemeteries give evidence of the invocation of these outstanding members of the confessing church: "Vincent, you are in Christ, pray for Phoebe"; "Januaria... pray for us"; "... intercede and pray for your brothers and sisters;" "Paul and Peter, pray for Victor"; "Paul, Peter, pray for Eratus"; [faithful Sentianus] "in your prayers pray for us, for we know that you are in Christ."¹² Calling upon the martyrs for their prayers was a specific way of evoking the solidarity which existed in Christ between those still struggling on earth and those who had been sealed with the victory of Christ. These latter were asked to remember before God their sisters and brothers who had not yet run the whole course. A sense of bondedness across the spheres between earth and heaven and across the years between the martyr and the ones who asked for prayers supported those who might be called next to give the supreme witness of their lives. This lively sense of communion in Christ which permeated the veneration of the martyrs is well captured in one of Augustine's sermons on the feast of the young women martyrs Perpetua and Felicity:

The martyrs of Christ, for the name and justice of Christ, won a twofold victory: they feared neither death nor suffering pain. He who lived in them conquered in them; so that they who lived not for themselves but for him did not die even in death itself.... Let it not seem a small thing to us that we are members of the same body as these.... We marvel at them, they have compassion on us. We rejoice for them, they pray for us.... Yet do we all serve one Lord, follow one master, attend one king. We are joined to one head, journey to one Jerusalem, follow after one love, embrace one unity.¹³

This, then, is the context in which the practice of calling upon saints

¹¹Martyrdom of Polycarp 17:2-3, in Early Christian Fathers, Cyril Richardson, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 156.

¹²First three citations from Delehaye, pp. 123, 124, 125; fourth and fifth from Jungmann, p. 182; last from Charles McGinnis, The Communion of Saints (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1912), p. 54, quoting Marucchi, Elements d'archeologie chretienne,Vol. 1, p.188.

¹³Augustine, Sermo, CCLXXX: 6 in Patrologia Latina 38:1283-84. Cf. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, together with the Sermons of St. Augustine upon these Saints, W. H. Shewring, tr. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), pp. 49-51.

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for their prayers originated: a tense and dangerous time for the budding but persecuted church; a time when martyrs were existentially loved for the witness they had given to Christ under extreme pressure; a time when the church began to honor their memory liturgically, and when some individuals took the additional step of asking them directly, in view of the solidarity which they shared in Christ, to pray for them that they, too, might become good disciples. That latter move of invocation did not overshadow the person of Jesus Christ the Savior and sole mediator; it did serve to strengthen the bonds between those in heaven and those on earth, giving expression to a particular consciousness of the way those who are in Christ are related to one another. In later centuries, when martyrdom was no longer an imminent possibility, other holy women and men whose lives had given witness in the church were also affirmed as being with Christ after death, and their prayers were also asked.¹⁴ But the pattern had been set in the age of the martyrs.

III

Invocation of the saints is a practice which arises as a secondary ramification of certain foundational truths of the Christian faith. To get at the theological intelligibility of how it "works" even today and has the positive effect of evoking reliance on the saving mercy of God, without the negative effect of overshadowing the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ, two primary insights rooted in the biblical witness need to be considered. One deals with the relation between Jesus Christ and Christian believers, the other with the interrelationship among Christians themselves. When these are used to undergird the practice of invocation of the saints, both are obviously being interpreted within a perspective able to be characterized as Catholic, which emphasizes that Christian initiation, among other effects, introduces persons into a koinonia, a genuine, grace-filled community with Jesus Christ and thereby with one another in his Spirit.

Regarding the first insight, Scripture testifies that Jesus Christ and those who follow him are related in the power of the Spirit in such wise that Christians exist dia, eis, syn, and en Christo.¹⁵ In the Catholic mentality, this works out to mean that through faith and baptism Christians are united to Christ even to the point of being associated with the preeminent redemptive acts of his death and resurrection. As seen by Paul, for example, those who believe also suffer with, are crucified with,

¹⁴For later development see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1981); P. Sejourne, "Saints (culte des)," Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, Vol. 14/1 (Paris: Librarie Letouzey et Ane,1939), pp. 870-978; and Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), with annotated bibliography, pp. 309-417.

¹⁵For biblical data and discussion, see Joseph Fitzmyer, "Pauline Theology," in Jerome Biblical Commentary, Raymond Brown et al., eds. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 2:800-27, especially articles 133-144.

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die with, are buried with, are raised with, are glorified with, and rule with Christ. In a word, the destiny of the disciple is to "be with Christ" in eschatological glory, and meanwhile to live out a dynamic union "in Christ," a phrase which occurs 165 times in Paul's letters.

What happens here to the exclusive role which Jesus Christ alone has as Savior? It is interpreted in a participatory way. Jesus Christ the sole mediator is victorious and effective precisely by reconciling sinners to God, and thereby making them participants through him and with him in his own dying, rising, and salvific mission in the world. It is not a question of disciples' religious activity either substituting for or supplementing the redemption accomplished once for all in Jesus Christ. Rather, what Christians do is initiated and energized by the very Spirit of Christ as a sharing in Christ's redemptive activity becoming effective in particular times and places. Jesus Christ alone, then, is not simply alone. As suffering and risen Savior, he alone engages disciples into his own pattern of liberating love and prayer. This participatory interpretation of being "in Christ" basically utilizes a noncompetitive model of the relation between Jesus Christ and those who follow him. The more Christians, through the grace of God, enter into the dying and rising of Jesus Christ, the more they love and serve and believe, then the more keenly does the saving presence and face of God in Jesus challenge and bless the world.

A second correlative insight undergirding invocation of the saints concerns the interrelationship of Christian believers among themselves. Scripture testifies that in making the covenant, God gathered in not isolated individuals but individuals as a people, the people of God. Linked with that people, the new covenant formed in Jesus Christ likewise shaped a communion, the ekklesia of God.¹⁶ Members of this people are deeply and really related to one another. In a broad sense, all of human existence is marked by a profound intercommunicative character. Biologically, psychologically, culturally, politically, economically, who one is and what one does is affected in important respects by others. In turn, one's own person and deeds have inescapable impact on those nearest, and ultimately on all. No one is or can be a solitary player; for better or worse, everyone depends on everyone else. This social structure of human existence is not eradicated but respected by the advent of God's saving mercy in Jesus Christ. The people formed by the Spirit of Christ likewise have an intercommunicative character by virtue of which they affect each other for better or worse. If one suffers, all suffer together; if one is honored, all rejoice (I Cor. 12:26). This is the case even with regard to salvation. In Karl Rahner's phrasing, reflective of the Catholic perspective, it is understood

that in the economy of grace in Christ, as a result of and by virtue of his mediatorship, everyone depends on everyone else and is of significance for

¹⁶See the systematic discussion of this matter in Hans Küng, The Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), pp. 107-25.

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everyone else, that everyone has a task subordinate to Christ (munus subordinatum), and that the receipt of salvation also implies the receipt of the task of salvation, a participata ex unico fonte cooperatio.¹⁷

Individual sinners receive the grace of Christ not as fenced-in monads, not as isolated persons whose justification would be of no benefit to others, but as individuals with a social nature who are intrinsically linked with others "in Christ." Their reception of grace, which also implies the reception of the responsibility to be concerned for the salvation of others, becomes of significance for the whole people, a sign and help for others growing in Christ. Since each disciple is "in Christ," strengthening the bonds with one another within this koinonia, far from being a distraction, has the effect of strengthening communion with Jesus Christ. In and through their mutual interrelationship, believers are constituted in a relation of immediacy with Jesus Christ.

Such is the nature of the saving solidarity created and sustained by his Spirit, who confirms the social ties by virtue of which Christians influence and assist one another toward fidelity to God in Christ. One favored biblical figure which acutely expresses this corporate identity of believers in Christ and with one another is that of the "body of Christ," a Pauline metaphor which evokes the vital unity of the head with the members, and of the members with one another as each interactively contributes to the good of the whole. The confluence of these two insights, participation of believers in Christ and solidarity with one another in Christ, yields a certain way of being Christian within which invocation of the saints arises and has its intelligibility.

Since invocation of the: saints is a difficult and specialized case, several other instances of the perspective which views the saving activity of Jesus in a participatory and communal way may serve to clarify this mentality and move our consideration directly to the threshold of invocation itself. An interesting nest of examples is presented in Vatican II's Constitution on the Church when it comes to teaching about the role of Mary, Mother of Christ and pre-eminent member of the church. At the outset, the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ is clearly affirmed, appeal being made to the words of I Tim. 1:5-6.¹⁸ It is then asserted that

¹⁷Karl Rahner, "One Mediator and Many Mediations," Theological Investigations, Vol. 9, Graham Harrison, tr. (New York: Seabury, n.d.), p. 173. See this pivotal essay with its accompanying notes for a further development of this thesis; the quote within the citation is taken from LG 62. Other theological efforts to explain this Catholic perspective are Liselotte Hofer, Okumenische Besinnung uber die Heiligen (Lucerne: Raber-Verlag, 1962); Paul Molinari, Saints: Their Place in the Church, D. Maruca, tr. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965); and Otto Karrer, "Wie stellt sich der katholische Glaube in der Wirklichkeit des Lebens dar?" Una Sancta 10 (1955), pp. 24-34.

¹⁸Reference here is to LG 60. Commentaries on this teaching with an eye to its ecumenical implications include Otto Semmelroth, "The Role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ and the Church," in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 1, H. Vorgrimler, ed. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967), pp. 285-96; Rene Laurentin, La Vierge au Concile (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1965); Karl Rahner, "Zur konziliaren Mariologie," Stimmen der Zeit 174 (1964), pp. 87-101; and Michael Schmaus, Der Glaube der Kirche Vol. 2 (Munich: Max Huber Verlag, 1970), pp. 657-97.

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Mary's role in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. For her saving influence on others originates not from inner necessity, but from God's good pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it. Instead of impeding the immediate union of believers with Christ, Mary's role fosters this union. Thus, she is invoked in the church by the titles of advocate, helper, and mediatrix.¹⁹ Once these titles are stated, it is then affirmed that they are to be so understood that they neither take away from nor add anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator-for how could any creature be classed with the incarnate Word and Redeemer?

The intent of the Council is clear; but how is it explainable? No theological explanation as such is given in the text. Instead, two further examples of the same dynamic are proposed, both similar in structure to the relation between the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ and the intercessory role of Mary. The first is that of priesthood. There is only one priest and one sacrificial offering of the new covenant (Heb. 10:12-14). But Jesus Christ's oneness as priest is not exclusive. It gives rise to a multiform participation in itself both by the whole people and by ministers. In other words, in the one priest, Jesus Christ, the whole church is a royal priesthood (I Pet. 2:9). The priesthood of Christ does not exclude but includes the character of all the baptized as priestly and the particular ministry of official priests. Each in its own way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.

The second example is more cosmic in nature and has to do with the goodness of God. God alone is good (Lk. 18:19), but this is not to say that all that is not God is necessarily evil. God does not jealously reserve all divine goodness in se, but through creation communicates this one goodness diversely to creatures. Wherever created goodness is found, it is a participation in the goodness of God who alone is its source. The one goodness of God includes rather than excludes the goodness of others who are good. From these two examples the conciliar text draws a line to Jesus Christ the sole Mediator whose mediation is participated in by all believers. Just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways, and just as the goodness of God is shared variously with finite creatures, "so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather

¹⁹LG 62. Rahner comments that with these titles the Council by no means ascribed to Mary the function of a mediator in the strict sense, but rather took the "freer language of pious affection" under its protection. See "One Mediator and Many Mediations," 172; similarly Schmaus (n. 18) calls for a particular hermeneutic when interpreting titles given to Mary, for they are in the nature of poetry (p. 693).

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gives rise among creatures to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this unique source.²⁰

In this mentality, it is a question of the sole mediatorship of Christ being victorious precisely by reconciling persons with God and thereby making them participants in his own saving activity for others. It is not that Christ is at a distance so that Christians need intermediaries between themselves and him. Christ is in intimate liaison with every Christian, and this gives rise to a communion with his concern, a participation in his mediation for others. What is sometimes called the "mediation" of believers or of the saints is actually prayer for one another in Christo, and, in that sense, not a real, formal mediation at all.²¹

Christ alone is Redeemer. As he saves, he includes persons in his own saving prayer for others. Nothing is thereby added to the intrinsic value of Christ's own once-for-all salvific work; but it is a way in which that saving activity becomes effectively present in particular persons and times and places. The model all along is one of inclusivity rather than exclusivity, of sharing in the goodness of God or in the priesthood and mediation of Jesus Christ as members of his body, the church. Within this context, Mary's role is affirmed by Vatican II as a helping one, subordinate to Christ, ordered to him as one special person's participation in and communion with the saving intercession of Christ for all people.

A similar Catholic pattern of thought is expressed in a contemporary ecumenical consensus statement on the eucharist as sacrifice. One question being discussed is whether the worshiping assembly "offers Christ" in the sacrifice of the Mass. To allay Lutheran fears that a "yes" to this question makes the eucharist a human supplement of God's saving work in Christ, the following Catholic explanation was given:

The members of the body of Christ are united through Christ with God and with one another in such a way that they become participants in his worship, his self-offering, his sacrifice to the Father. Through this union between Christ and Christians, the eucharistic assembly "offers Christ" by consenting in the power of the Holy Spirit to be offered by him to the Father .²²

With supporting references to Luther, Augustine, and the Second Vatican Council, the point is made that the church's eucharistic offering of Christ adds nothing to the sacrifice of the cross. Rather, through the involvement of believers' self-offering in the movement of Jesus Christ's loving self-dedication to his Abba, it is a way in which the saving will of

²⁰See LG 10-13 for development of the idea that the church as people of God shares in Christ's priestly, prophetic, and kingly office, and LG 62 for this quotation on participation in the goodness of God.

²¹Laurentin, La Vierge au Concile, 119-20; and Rahner, "One Mediator and Many Mediations," p. 184.

²²The Eucharist as Sacrifice. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue III (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, and New York: National Committee for Lutheran World Federation, 1967), p. 189 and following: emphasis mine.

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God, founded exclusively on the reconciliation of the cross, becomes visible and takes hold of believers in a particular time and place. The full sufficiency of the cross is in no way denied by this. What comes into focus is its present effectiveness in winning sisters and brothers of Christ who become part of his own self-offering to God.

These and other instances which could be cited from the Catholic perspective reflect a mentality which focuses on the efficacy of God's saving work in the present renewal of the created order, affirming that it is God in Jesus Christ who has absolute priority at the same time that God's saving and real effects do not slip from view: simul Creator et creatura. In the stunning metaphor spun out by Karl Rahner, God is a burning flame whose drawing near does not burn everything else to a crisp but gives it its own reality and authentic value. "We must understand that in this infinite sea of measureless flame everything else is not destroyed; on the contrary, only in this flame does all else become truly alive, not only in itself, but also for our benefit."²³ Once again, the sense is that of a noncompetitive relationship in Christ whereby the more powerful the grace of God, the more positive becomes the following of Jesus, with the life of believers assuming a christic pattern.

At certain times, awareness of this participation in Christ with its concomitant community among one another comes explicitly to consciousness, and is expressed as prayer for others (intercession) or requests for the prayer of others (invocation). The former is an expression of love and concern for one's neighbors in what pertains to their well-being and ultimate salvation. Following the example and command of Jesus Christ, the New Testament encourages believers to pray to God for other persons, even for those who persecute and abuse them (Matt. 5:44; Lk. 6:28). This praying by living persons for other living persons in unity with the prayer of Christ has not been seen to pose a threat to the sole mediatorship of Christ. It is interesting to note that the very text which so emphasizes this sole mediatorship is introduced with an exhortation to Christian prayer for others:

I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all human beings, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way (I Tim. 2:1-2, followed by the affirmation that there is but one mediator, Jesus Christ).

Rather than conflicting with the mediatorship of Jesus Christ, Christian prayer of intercession for others is called into being by God's grace as a way of participating in the prayer of Christ, who lives to make intercession for others (Heb. 7:25). It is a concrete expression of being

²³Karl Rahner, "The Eternal Significance of the Humanity of Jesus for Our Relationship with God," Theological Investigations, Vol. 3, K. and B. Kruger, tr. (New York: Seabury, 1974), p. 42.

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"in Christ" and thus mutually bonded with and caring about all those whom God wishes to redeem.

On the strength of the supposition that death is not powerful enough to sever the believer from Christ, it has been affirmed from the time of the martyrs that the saints who are with Christ after death also pray for the church on earth, that is, imitate their risen Lord in continuing to pray to God for those trying to draw near. In this context, we come to the heart of the question about invocation of the saints. Requesting living believers on earth to pray for oneself and one's needs has seemed a legitimate way of expressing awareness of one's dependence on God for every good gift, in company with all those whom Christ has redeemed. But calling upon a saint in heaven to pray for oneself or others has posed many problems, not the least being that saints then seem to become other mediators in addition. to Jesus Christ, standing between Christ and oneself.

Late medieval abuses in this regard were very real, and it would be naive to think that none existed today. But there is another perspective, laid out above, in which this practice can be viewed. It presumes an understanding of the saints in heaven as situated not between believers and Jesus Christ, but with believers in Christ, in the people of those redeemed by Christ. Then calling on a saint in heaven to pray for us is a precise categorical expression of Christian solidarity in Jesus Christ, through the ages and across various modes of human existence. It is not an act trying to supplement what seems insufficiently given by Christ, but an act expressing openness to God in communion with those whom Jesus Christ has redeemed. As a particular prayer in which someone is named and asked to pray for us, it is an indirect act of faith in God's power to rescue human beings from death. In its own way, too, it is an act of courage whereby believers acknowledge that this concrete individual's life has a permanent value in God's eyes which makes him or her significant for all.²⁴ A person or persons definitively with Christ are asked to remember before God their sisters and brothers who are still on the way: thus the bond of koinonia is activated.

The net effect of this activation is to lead to deeper existential union with Jesus Christ, for stronger ties among the body, brought about by Christ's saving grace, constitute the situation of stronger ties with the head. Vatican II described the experience this way: "just as Christian communion among wayfarers brings us closer to Christ, so our companionship with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from their fountain and head issue every grace and the life of God's people itself."²⁵ Other holy persons, whether living or dead (the saints), are not medial characters inserted between believers and Jesus Christ, but other redeemed sinners in company with whom Christian disciples are strengthened in their relationship of immediacy with Jesus Christ.

²⁴This interpretation is given by Rahner, "Why and How Can We Venerate the Saints"? 23; and Feiner and Vischer, 632, among others.

²⁵LG 50.

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This sense of how invocation "works" was captured by the nineteenth century American philosopher Orestes Brownson, who published a series of articles on the subject between 1865 and 1866. In a revealing passage, this thinker formed in the Reformation tradition describes how insight into the intelligibility of the practice first struck him:

What we ask of the saints in glory is only what we may and do ask of one another while living in the flesh. Many years ago, before I had the happiness of being received into the communion of the Catholic Church, I was, as most Protestants who retain some respect for religion are, in the habit of frequently closing my letters to my friends with the words, "pray for me." One day, writing to a very dear friend, but one who was not precisely a saint, I concluded [in this very same way]. I did so from the force of habit, but I had no sooner written the words than a sudden thought struck me, and I exclaimed to myself: "There is the justification of the Catholic practice of invocation of the saints. Here I am asking a sinful mortal to pray for me; how much rather should I ask the prayers of a beatified saint in heaven, always in the presence of God." From that moment to this I have had no difficulty with the invocation of saints, nor hesitated to ask them to pray for me.²⁶

This critical thinker rejects the motivation sometimes ascribed to those who ask the saints' prayers:

We do not invoke the saints because they are nearer to us than God.... The saints are not nearer to us than God, nor so near. They are not more compassionate, or more readily touched by our infirmities, or more disposed to aid us than is God himself. They do not and cannot interpose between us and God and, however ready they may be to succor us, their readiness like their power comes from God and from him alone. Nothing can be nearer to us than God, for in him we live and move and have our being.²⁷

He attempts a positive formulation of what goes on in this act:

We do not ask the saints, not even the blessed Mary, for pardon, for mercy, for grace, or blessings of any sort, as things in their power to grant. We simply ask them to aid us by their prayers, or to intercede with God to obtain these things for us from him from whom comes every good and perfect gift.... What we ask of them is their intercession, or simply their prayers, as human beings united with us in one and the same communion.²⁸

Brownson here is articulating the mainline understanding which came into view when Catholics were first pressed to explain themselves on this point. More proximate in time to the Reformation, the theologian Robert Bellarmine, who composed one of the first systematic essays on Catholic veneration of the saints, likewise explained:

Christ alone reconciled the world to God. Christ alone merited for us grace and glory and everything necessary for our salvation....Accordingly we ask of the saints nothing more than that they intercede before God in order that

²⁶Reprinted in Orestes Brownson, Saint Worship. The Worship of Mary, Thomas Ryan, ed. (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963), pp. 39-40.

²⁷Ibid., p. 13.

²⁸Ibid., p. 39.

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the merits of Christ may be applied to us and that we may attain grace and glory through those merits of Christ.²⁹

As to the question, finally, whether the saints so addressed are to be considered mediators in any way, Brownson states adamantly that they are not mediators personally, individually, in the strict and absolute sense of the term. Yet there is a sense in which their prayers are a mediation. Saints are included in the total reality of Christ, constituting what Augustine called the totus Christus. Thus, they mediate "not personally, individually, in their own independent right, but in Christ, as included generically in his human nature."³⁰ There is the "Catholic" imagination at work again, seeing the positive effects of God's grace in individuals as of significance for everyone else, understanding that there is a saving solidarity among the redeemed on the basis of which one can speak of a mediating role of one to another in Christ. In this perspective, "Christ alone" is not simply the solitary one, but uniquely the one Mediator and Redeemer who gives rise to and sustains manifold participations in his merciful prayer for others.

Two examples of invocation widely, if occasionally, used may serve to illustrate how this "works" in practice.

The first is the litany of the saints used annually during the Catholic liturgy of the Easter Vigil before the baptism of catechumens, and also during the liturgy of ordination of a priest. The earliest form of this particular prayer can be dated to the seventh century in Rome.³¹ The litany opens with three invocations to Jesus Christ to "have mercy on US." Then follows a roll call of saints; after each one is named, the people respond, "Pray for us." First named is Holy Mary, Mother of God; next, Michael and the holy angels of God; then, a number of biblical holy people such as John the Baptist, Joseph, Peter and Paul, Mary Magdalene; martyrs such as Ignatius, Perpetua, and Felicity; doctors of the church such as Augustine and Athanasius, Catherine and Theresa; preachers such as Francis and Dominic; other saints which a local congregation would find it appropriate to name; and finally "all holy men and women." The litany continues with a series of petitions directed to Christ to deliver his people from all evil, sin, and death, and to save them by his coming, death, resurrection, and gift of the Holy Spirit. It

²⁹De Ecclesia Triumphante, sive de gloria el cultu Sanctorum, lib. 1, c. 17, Opera Omnia (Neapoli: 1857), t. 11, pp. 448-49; translated in Molinari, Saints: Their Place in the Church, pp. 132-33.

³⁰Brownson, ibid., pp. 68-69. So, too, Robert Bellarmine: "The saints are not our immediate intercessors before God; rather, everything that they ask of God on our behalf is asked through the power of Christ." De Ecclesia Triumphante..., ibid., Molinari, p. 132.

³¹F. Cabrol, "Litanies," Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne et de liturgie, Vol. 9/2 (Paris: Librarie Letouzey et Ane, 1930), pp. 1540-1571; Balthasar Fischer, "Litanies," Dictionnaire de spiritualite, Vol. 9 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1976), pp. 865-72; E. J. Grasch, "Litany," New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9, pp. 789-90; and Louis Weil, "The History of Christian Litanies," Liturgy: Journal of the Liturgical Conference 5:2 (Fall 1985), pp. 33-37.

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concludes with a global petition: "Christ, hear us. Lord Jesus, hear our prayer."

Singing one's way through this litany on the festal occasions when it is used gives rise to the realization that the church is much more universal than this particular congregation and this particular time. Our ancestors in the faith, all of whom bad their hearts set on Christ in their various ways, widen our assembly. As those who are forever with God, their lives and their prayer are of benefit for us who are still on the journey. Summoning the memory of particular ones by name out of the unnumbered multitude of those who have been redeemed by Christ and asking them to "pray for us" has the effect of strengthening the union of believers with the whole people of God throughout time.

These saints do not come between believers and Jesus Christ, but are companions with believers in Christ. As the movement of the litany from Christ to the saints and back to Christ implies, it is not a matter of either/or, but of both/and. Jesus Christ alone has the unique priority and role as Savior, and everyone else is concerned for each other in the interrelationship shared in Christ. Strengthening the bonds between members of the communion of saints strengthens union with Jesus Christ.

The "Hail Mary," one of the most popular prayers among Catholics since its standardization in the sixteenth century, provides a second example of how invocation "works."³² It begins with a series of salutations to Mary, using the praising words of the angel Gabriel and of her cousin Elizabeth as described by Luke (1:28, 42). The prayer reaches its high point with biblical words of praise for the fruit of Mary's womb, Jesus (Lk. 1:43). It then goes on to ask Mary to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." Here is a prayer which invokes one special saint instead of many, and is said at times of quiet meditation rather than on liturgical occasions. Its theological intelligibility, however, is the same as that of the litany of the saints. According to Catholic teaching, Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, because she belongs to the offspring of Adam, "is one with all human beings in their need for salvation.³³ Redeemed by Jesus Christ, whose mother she also is, her life is remembered as a pilgrimage of faith with unique ties to the one whom the church confesses as sole Redeemer and Savior.³⁴ Therefore she is saluted as a preeminent and singular member of the church, and as the church's excellent model of faith and charity.³⁵

In the petitionary part of the Hail Mary, the believer calls on this special member of the communion of saints to pray for us now during our own pilgrimage of faith and at the hour of our death, the final time

³²Gerard Sloyan, "Marian Prayers," in Mariology, Vol. 3, Juniper Carol, ed. (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., 1960), pp. 68-73.

³³LG 53.

³⁴LG 58.

³⁵LG 53.

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of testing. Thus is expressed the interrelatedness between one preeminent member of the redeemed community and wayfarers who are still on the journey. Rather than overshadowing the role of Jesus Christ as the sole Mediator, such a prayer unites the one who prays more closely to Christ through the evocation of solidarity with Mary, his mother and faith-filled disciple.

The considerations in this study have been largely theological in nature, concerned with official teaching on the invocation of the saints in relation to the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ. Given the historical circumstances in which this issue arose, however, the question remains of how adequately popular piety adheres to this theological understanding.

That there have been abuses connected with the practice of invocation of the saints is indisputable. From the time of the Council of Trent, there has been official recognition of this, and repeated calls by leaders of the church to correct these abuses. Trent's decree "On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of the Saints, and on Sacred Images" declared regarding abuses that "this holy council desires earnestly that they be completely removed, so that no representation of false doctrines... be exhibited." Furthermore, it mandated that all superstition be removed, all filthy quest for gain eliminated, and all lasciviousness avoided, so that the veneration of the saints not be perverted. Finally, it strengthened the hands of the local bishops by giving them authority over concrete expressions of piety, so that "nothing may appear that is disorderly or unbecoming or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing disrespectful, since holiness becometh the house of God."³⁶

Four hundred years later, Vatican II endorsed the decree of the Council of Trent, going on to urge all concerned to "work hard to prevent or correct any abuses, excesses, or defects which may have crept in here and there, and to restore all things to a more ample praise of Christ and of God."³⁷ It mandated that the faithful be taught that "the authentic cult of the saints consists not so much in the multiplying of external acts, but rather in the intensity of our active love," and furthermore that communion with the saints needed to be understood within "the more adequate light of faith."³⁸ Concerning the veneration of Mary, Pope Paul VI repeated Vatican II's denouncements of exaggerations of content and form which even falsify doctrine, and warned against devotional deviations such as vain credulity and ephemeral sentimentality which are so alien to the spirit of the gospel.³⁹

³⁶Text in Canons and Decress of the Council of Trent, H. J. Schroeder, trans. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), pp. 215-17.

³⁷LG 51.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹Paul VI, Marialis Cultus (E. T. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary), in The Pope Speaks 19 (1974-75), pp. 49-87.

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This, then, is one aspect of the present situation: occasional abuse of the veneration of the saints, and repeated official awareness of this and attempts to correct it. Another side of the pastoral situation today involves the opposite phenomenon-virtual disappearance of the veneration of the saints by numerous individuals in the Catholic Church of the North Atlantic countries. The difficulty experienced by Western Catholics today particularly with the practice of invoking the saints has to do not with the critical idea that such a practice transfers to the saints that trust that should be given to Christ alone, for such is not the experience when a saint is asked for prayers within a rightly-ordered faith. The difficulty arises much more from the climate of thought of secular culture, within which the analogy between earth and heaven has broken down. Persons experience the dead as having truly disappeared from this world and as no longer accessible to the living in any direct fashion, as was possible to imagine in a previous age. The dissimilarity of the analogy has become so great that for many people the similarity is no longer experientially available, even if it is still intellectually affirmed.

In Karl Rahner's analysis, this situation is deeply rooted in the contemporary age's characteristic experience of God. God is hidden, eclipsed, silent, experienced as utterly incomprehensible and remote even if known as the holy mystery who is infinitely close. God has always been known as ineffable, but contemporary human beings experience this with a new and radical keenness because

the world has become so inescapably vast and at the same time so profane, and also because, not surprisingly, God does not appear as one factor "along with" others which are given in the everyday experience of this world. God is, to a large extent, experienced as the silent mystery.... Into this silent, unfathomable and ineffable mystery the dead disappear. They depart. They no longer make themselves felt. They cease any further to belong to the world of our experience.⁴⁰

For many today, the dead have vanished into the darkness of the divine. They are with God, and the majority of contemporary Western Catholics are by and large content to leave them there, in the merciful mystery of God, occasionally drawing on their memory for encouragement in faith, but not usually invoking them daily as a religious practice.

A third aspect of the pastoral situation today is that of the Catholic Church in Africa. The original Protestant missionaries to that continent rejected outright the native cult of ancestors, considering it a pagan superstition. Despite its own tradition of honoring the holy dead, the Roman Catholic Church likewise forbade converts from engaging in ancestor cults. It is on this point that Christianity has met stiff resistance

⁴⁰Rahner, "Why and How Can We Venerate the Saints?" p. 7; also "The Life of the Dead," Theological Investigations, Vol. 4, Kevin Smyth, tr. (New York: Seabury, 1974), pp. 347-54. For analysis of the climate of thought which has produced this experience, see Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1952).

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in Africa, and a host of new breakaway churches are reasserting beliefs and practices connected with the ancestor cult.⁴¹

In the light of this phenomenon, and guided by anthropological studies which have shown that traditionally the relationship between the living and the "living dead" is a basic determinant of the whole social structure, including ethical values, there have been calls by both Protestant and Catholic theologians in Africa for a reappraisal of the ancestor cult. What is being argued for is its critical reception into Christianity within the framework of the doctrine of the communion of saints:

Is it not time for the Church to learn to give the Communion of Saints the centrality which the soul of Africa craves? Neither the inhibited silence of the Protestants nor the too-presumptuous schema of Rome allows African Christians to live with their dead in the way which they feet profoundly to be true to man's nature.⁴²

Terminology is important here. The old expression "ancestor worship" has been dropped as needlessly polemic and, in fact, not true to the reality of the experience. Instead, talk now is of worship of God and veneration of ancestors, the latter term implying that one feels in close relationship with those who have gone before and gives them honor. Every human tradition has its own genius, and pivotal here for the African conception of reality is the vital relationship which exists between the living and the dead, a sense of the unseen presence of ancestors as members of the community which is foundational for one's sense of identity. African theologians now point out that it does violence to people to rip them out of this context and mandate that they adopt a more Western, individualistic vision of reality, for "our people live with their dead."⁴³

The doctrine of the communion of saints, positing as it does a real fellowship between living and departed saints, finds here a point of contact with traditional African culture. Within a Christian context, the traditional cult is corrected in its belief that the ancestors can do a person harm or cause success; rather, God alone is powerful and rules over a person's life. The christocentric focus, whereby one's relationship with the living-dead is established on the basis of relationship with Jesus Christ rather than family blood ties, is also a seismic shift for the ancient

⁴¹D. B. Barrett, Schism and Renewal in Africa: An Analysis of 600 Contemporary Movements (Oxford: University Press, 1968).

⁴²John Taylor, The Primal Vision: Christian Presence Amid African Religion (London: SCM Press, 1963), p. 166. See also John Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology in an African Background (Oxford: University Press, 1971), especially ch. 5, "The Nearness of the Spirit World," pp. 127-56; Edward Fashole-Luke, "Ancestor Veneration and the Communion of Saints," in New Testament Christianity for Africa and the World, M. Glasswell and E. Fashole-Luke, eds. (London: SPCK, 1974), pp. 209-21; Aylward Shorter, ed., African Christian Spirituality (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1980), especially the essay by Harry Sawyerr, "Living and Dead in Fellowship with God," pp. 130-34.

⁴³D. Baeta at a United Christian Council Conference in Accra in 1955; often quoted, e.g., Sawyerr, p. 131.

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cult. But that tradition's sense of communion with the living-dead can in turn contribute to the worldwide church's sense of itself as a communion, too often dessicated by unbalanced individualism.

Current practice in Africa reflects this newer appreciation of the values of the cult of the living-dead. In newly drafted eucharistic rites for use in the Catholic Church in Zaire and Tanzania, the ancestors are invoked and invited to be witnesses of the eucharistic action. Prayers of mutual intercession between the living and the dead, modelled on the blessings and thanksgivings of Paul's epistolary salutations, are being incorporated into worship services. Recovering the early tradition of the North African church with its belief that the dead do pray for the living, even Protestant theologians have argued that in spite of the danger of abuse, invocation of the living-dead is justified.⁴⁴ Developments here bear watching.

VII

The practice of invoking the prayers of the saints, not commanded by Scripture, is a practice which developed in the course of the church's history as an expression of the truth that in Christ all believers are of significance for each other, even across the chasm of death. Its theological bases are the doctrines of Christian existence "in Christ" and of the koinonia to which being in Christ gives rise. Within this communion, all share in Jesus Christ's prayer of intercession to God. Praying for one another in Christ, believers likewise ask particular persons on earth or in heaven to remember them before God. It is a small act which joins believers more intensely to one another as a whole, and precisely thereby to Jesus Christ. This is the experience of those who perform this practice within the context of a rightly ordered faith, although superstition and excess can corrupt the dynamic of this practice. When invocation of the saints occurs during the eucharistic liturgy, it is a concrete expression of the people of God as a community comprising members in heaven and on earth, all joined together in Jesus Christ.⁴⁵ When it occurs in private prayer, it expresses a piety which is aware that others besides ourselves are in Christ and their lives are of benefit to us. As Karl Rahner preached on the feast of All Saints , which celebrates the multitude of "unofficial" saints:

All Saints is a festival of love.... We should praise God for his power and mercy in a love which can be extended to others too, and actually bring happiness to them. We should bend our ears to the quiet of eternity which, if

⁴⁴Among others, Fashole-Luke, p. 219, and Sawyerr, p. 133.

⁴⁵In addition to the litany of the saints recited once a year at the Easter Vigil and at the liturgy of the ordination of a priest, the only other example of direct invocation within the revised Roman Catholic eucharistic celebration occurs in one of the three possible forms of the penitential rite at the beginning of the liturgy. After confessing that they are sinners, the people ask Mary, the angels, and saints, and their brothers and sisters present to pray to God for them. This particular form of the rite dates from the eleventh century. See J. A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, Vol. 1, Francis Brunner, tr. (New York: Benzigcr Bros., 1950), pp. 298-311.

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only we are willing to hear it, speaks louder than all the tumult of noise in the world.... We should realize that in the course of the world's history an innumerable multitude has already been drawn into the eternity of God before us, so that we are the late-comers. And the realization of this should generate hope and consolation in us, courage and trust. And in this spirit we should speak with our saints. We should greet them, call upon them for their help on the way which is bringing us to where they are, before the face of Our Lord.⁴⁶

From the perspective which prizes the communion of believers in Jesus Christ and emphasizes participation in the saving action of Christ, invocation of the saints is a. manifestation of a basic sense of dependence on God in relatedness and caring communion with others. Understood in this way, while not accompanied by a word of command or promise in the Scriptures, it is not of necessity intrinsically opposed to the spirit of the New Testament. In the Protestant pattern of thought, discontinuous, paradoxical, and focused on the absolute priority of God's saving action, such a practice has been seen as suspect, detracting from a believer's trust in Christ alone through whom all of God's saving gifts flow. Within the Catholic mentality, based on a transformist model of justification and focused on the efficacy of God's work in the renewal of the created order, it has seemed legitimate to say that believers living the grace of God are configured to Jesus Christ and participate in his intercession for the needs of others.

Since death does not necessarily end this participation but more likely deepens it, it is deemed legitimate to ask sisters and brothers who are with Christ in the eternal mystery of God to pray for those still on pilgrimage. It is not experienced that this automatically lessens trust in Jesus Christ, but rather bonds the one who prays more closely to Christ. Believers of both mentalities hope for salvation from God alone through Jesus Christ. Invocation of the saints "works" by being one particular conscious experience of dependence on God in the context of the interdependence of the community of believers, called into existence by Jesus Christ's redeeming grace. Through this community, Christians are companions with one another and help one another on the way of salvation through, with, and in Christ.

⁴⁶Rahner, "All Saints," Theological Investigations, Vol. 8, p. 29.