or mother, a tender sister or brother, who die in the
peace of Christ, that they are forgetful of you. The love they bore you on
earth is purified and intensified in heaven. Or if your innocent child,
regenerated in the waters of baptism, is snatched from you by death, be
assured that, though separated from you in body, that child is with you in
spirit and is repaying you a thousand-fold for the natural life it
received from you. Be convinced that the golden link of prayer binds you
to that angelic infant, and that it is continually offering its fervent
petitions at the throne of God for you, that you may both be reunited in
heaven. But I hear men cry out with Pharisaical assurance, "You dishonor
God, sir, in praying to the saints. You make void the mediatorship of
Jesus Christ. You put the creature above the Creator." How utterly
groundless is this objection! We do not dishonor God in praying to the
saints. We should, indeed, dishonor Him if we consulted the saints
_independently_ of God. But such is not our practice. The Catholic Church
teaches, on the contrary, that God alone is the Giver of all good gifts;
that He is the Source of all blessings, the Fountain of all goodness. She
teaches that whatever happiness or glory or _influence_ the saints
possess, all comes from God. As the moon borrows her light from the sun,
so do the blessed borrow their light from Jesus, "the Sun of Justice, the
one Mediator (of redemption) of God and men."(207) Hence, when we address
the saints, we beg them to pray for us through the merits of Jesus Christ,
while we ask Jesus to help up through His own merits.

But what is the use of praying to the saints, since God can hear us. If it
is vain and useless to pray to the saints because God can hear us, then
Jacob was wrong in praying to the angel; the friends of Job were wrong in
asking him to pray for them, though God commanded them to invoke Job's
intercession; the Jews exiled in Babylon were wrong in asking their
brethren in Jerusalem to pray for them; St. Paul was wrong in beseeching
his friends to pray for him; then we are all wrong in praying for each
other. You deem it useful and pious to ask your pastor to pray for you. Is
it not, at least, equally useful for me to invoke the prayers of St. Paul,
since I am convinced that he can hear me?

God forbid that our supplications to our Father in heaven should diminish
in proportion as our prayers to the Saints increase; for, after all, we