Yes. The saints are alive in Christ, and by God’s grace they can hear our prayers and intercede for us before the throne of God.
This isn’t some superstitious add-on to Christianity. It’s rooted in what we believe about death, the Church, and the communion of saints. When someone dies in Christ, they don’t cease to exist or fall into some kind of spiritual sleep. They’re more alive than we are. Death is a change of place, not a destruction of the person. And because all of us, living and departed, remain united in the one Body of Christ, we can still ask each other for prayers.
Your Baptist coworker at the refinery might find this strange. Most Protestants in Southeast Texas grew up thinking prayer to saints sounds like talking to the dead, which Deuteronomy forbids. But there’s a difference between necromancy (conjuring the dead for power or hidden knowledge) and asking your brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for you. The saints aren’t dead. They’re with Christ, which is better by far.
What Scripture Shows Us
The Book of Revelation gives us a window into heavenly worship. In Revelation 5:8, St. John sees “the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” Again in Revelation 8:3-4, an angel stands at the altar with a golden censer, offering incense mixed with “the prayers of all the saints” before God’s throne. The prayers of the faithful on earth are being presented in heaven. Heavenly beings know about them and offer them to God.
If the saints and angels in heaven are presenting our prayers to God, they must be aware of them somehow. They’re participating in the prayer life of the Church.
And there’s the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. The rich man is aware of his brothers still living on earth. He’s concerned for them. Abraham knows what’s happening in the land of the living. The barrier between heaven and earth isn’t as thick as we sometimes imagine.
How Can They Hear?
Here’s where people get confused. God alone is omniscient. The saints don’t have some kind of independent, godlike knowledge of everything happening everywhere. That would make them divine, which they’re not.
But they participate in the divine life by grace. That’s what theosis means. They’re united to Christ, and in Him they share in the life of the Trinity. Through that union, God makes known to them what He wills. It’s not that they’re all-knowing. It’s that they’re in communion with the One who is all-knowing, and He lets them in on what concerns His Body, the Church.
Think of it this way. You don’t need to be omniscient to know what your friend needs if your friend tells you. The saints are in the presence of God, closer to Him than we can imagine. If God wants them to know our prayers so they can intercede for us, He can make that happen. It’s His grace at work, not their independent power.
The Communion of Saints
We say in the Creed that we believe in “the communion of saints.” That’s not just a nice phrase. It means the Church is one body, and that body includes both the living and the departed. St. Paul calls the Church the Body of Christ. If your hand is in pain, your mouth can pray about it. If your foot is injured, your hand can help. We’re connected.
When my grandmother in Vidor asks me to pray for her, I don’t think she’s denying that Christ is the one Mediator between God and man. She’s asking a fellow Christian to intercede. When I ask St. Michael the Archangel to pray for me, I’m doing the same thing. He’s part of the same Body. He’s just in the part of the Church that’s already in heaven.
The Church has always prayed this way. Our liturgies are full of requests for the prayers of the Theotokos and the saints. We say, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.” We’re not replacing Christ. We’re asking our family to pray with us to Christ.
But Isn’t This Unbiblical?
Some folks worry that asking saints to pray for us is unbiblical because we should go straight to Jesus. But we do go straight to Jesus. Every day. Many times a day. Asking the saints to pray doesn’t replace direct prayer to God any more than asking your friend at church to pray for you replaces it.
St. Paul asked for prayers constantly. “Brethren, pray for us,” he writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:25. James tells us to “pray for one another” (James 5:16). If it’s good to ask living Christians to pray, why would it suddenly become wrong when those Christians are with the Lord in paradise?
The real question is whether death severs us from the Body of Christ. We don’t believe it does. Christ defeated death. Those who die in Him are alive in Him. The Church isn’t divided into the living and the dead. It’s one family, one body, in heaven and on earth.
What About Worship?
We don’t worship the saints. Worship belongs to God alone. What we do is called veneration, which is honor and respect. We ask for their prayers. When you visit St. Michael Church and see people kissing an icon of St. Mary or lighting a candle before an icon of St. George, they’re not worshipping those saints. They’re showing love and respect to members of their family and asking for their help before the throne of God.
The distinction matters. We offer worship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We offer love and requests for prayer to the saints. It’s the same distinction you’d make between how you relate to God and how you relate to your mother. You honor your mother, but you don’t worship her.
Living in Two Worlds
One of the most beautiful things about Orthodox worship is that it places us in both worlds at once. When we celebrate the Divine Liturgy, we’re not just remembering something that happened long ago. We’re joining the worship of heaven. The angels are there. The saints are there. The Theotokos is there. We sing “Holy, holy, holy” with the seraphim. We’re surrounded by that great “cloud of witnesses” Hebrews talks about.
The saints aren’t distant or unreachable. They’re close, because we’re all in Christ. And because they see God face to face, their prayers are powerful. Not because they have power in themselves, but because they’re near to the source of all power and grace.
So yes, the saints can hear our prayers. Not because they’re gods, but because they’re alive in the God who hears everything. And they love us still, because love doesn’t die. If you’ve never asked St. Mary or St. Michael or St. Thekla to pray for you, try it. You might be surprised how close heaven really is.
