I. Ought we to appeal to the Saints to intercede for us?
III. Are the Saints' Prayers to God for us always heard?

I

Are the Saints cognizant of our Prayers?

On those words of Job,[267] _Whether his children come to honour or
dishonour, he shall not understand_, S. Gregory says: "This is not to be
understood of the souls of the Saints, for they see from within the
glory of Almighty God, it is in nowise credible that there should be
anything without of which they are ignorant."[268]

And he says also: "To the soul that sees its Creator all created things
are but trifling; for, however little of the Creator's light he sees,
all that is created becomes of small import to him."[269] Yet the
greatest difficulty in saying that the souls of the Saints know our
prayers and other things which concern us, is their distance from us.
But since, according to the authority just quoted, this distance does
not preclude such knowledge, it appears that the souls of the Saints do
know our prayers and other things which concern us.

Further, if they did not know what concerned us, neither would they pray
for us, since they would not know our deficiencies. But this was the
error of Vigilantius, as S. Jerome says in his Epistle against him.[270]
The Saints, then, know what concerns us.

* * * * *

The Divine Essence, then, is a sufficient medium for knowing all things,
as, indeed, is evident from the fact that God in seeing His own essence
sees all things. Yet it does not follow that whoever sees the Essence of
God therefore sees all things, but those only who _comprehend_ the
Essence of God; just in the same way as it does not follow that because
we know a principle we therefore know all that that principle contains,
for that would only be the case if we _comprehended_ the whole power of
the principle. Since, then, the souls of the Saints do not comprehend
the Divine Essence, it does not follow that they know everything which
could be known through the medium of that Divine Essence. Hence the
inferior Angels are taught certain things by the higher Angels, though
all see the Divine Essence. But each person in possession of the
Beatific Vision only sees in the Divine Essence as much of other things
as is necessitated by the degree of perfection of his beatitude; and for
the perfection of beatitude it is required that a man "should have
whatever he wants, and should desire nothing in an inordinate
fas