We ask the saints to pray for us because they’re alive in Christ. Death doesn’t end the communion of the Church. When we ask St. Mary of Egypt or St. Raphael of Brooklyn to pray for us, we’re doing what Christians have always done, asking other believers to bring our needs before God.
This isn’t worship. It’s not even close.
Think about it this way. If your mama’s in the hospital and you call your friend Sarah to pray for her, you’re not worshiping Sarah. You’re asking another Christian to intercede. You believe Sarah’s prayers matter because she’s united to Christ, because the Holy Spirit works through the prayers of the faithful. The same logic applies to the saints. They’re more alive than we are, standing in God’s presence. Why wouldn’t we ask them to pray?
The difference between asking and worshiping matters here. Orthodox theology uses specific words for this. Worship, what we owe to God alone, is called latria. The honor we give saints is dulia, which just means veneration or respect. We honor St. Paul the way you’d honor your grandmother, not the way you worship the Holy Trinity. The Theotokos gets special honor (hyperdulia) because she bore God in her womb, but even that isn’t worship. She’d be horrified at the suggestion.
One Body, Living and Dead
Here’s what a lot of folks from Baptist or Bible church backgrounds struggle with. They’ve been taught that asking saints to pray is necromancy or talking to the dead. But Orthodox Christians don’t see the saints as dead. Christ trampled down death by death. Those who die in Christ are more alive than we are. They haven’t left the Church. They’ve just moved to a different room in the same house.
St. Paul calls the Church the Body of Christ. One body. Not two bodies, one on earth and one in heaven. When we gather for Divine Liturgy, we’re joining the worship of the angels and saints. The Church isn’t divided by death because Christ defeated death. So when we ask St. Nicholas to pray for us, we’re acting on what we actually believe about the resurrection.
You see this everywhere in Orthodox worship. “Through the intercessions of the Theotokos, O Savior, save us.” We say that constantly. Notice the structure. We’re not asking Mary to save us. We’re asking Christ to save us through her prayers. She prays to God. God acts. The saints don’t have some independent power to grant requests. They can’t do anything apart from Christ. They’re not vending machines where you drop in a prayer and get a miracle. They’re our family, our older brothers and sisters in the faith, and they bring our needs before the throne of God.
The early Church practiced this from the beginning. You can see it in the catacombs where Christians scratched prayers asking martyrs to intercede. You can read it in the Church Fathers. You can hear it in every Divine Liturgy ever celebrated. This isn’t some medieval innovation. It’s how Christians have always prayed.
What This Looks Like in Practice
At St. Michael, we ask for the prayers of the Theotokos and all the saints in almost every service. The Great Litany includes them. Our hymns invoke them. We celebrate their feast days and ask them to pray for us. The Antiochian Archdiocese even has a special intercession that includes the North American saints, people like St. Raphael who brought Orthodoxy to this continent, or St. John Maximovitch who served in San Francisco.
Does this mean we pray less to God directly? No. It means we pray more, period. Asking the saints to pray doesn’t replace your own prayer life. It enriches it. You’re tapping into the prayer of the whole Church, heaven and earth together. You’re admitting you need help, that you’re not in this alone.
Some people worry this is too Catholic. But here’s the thing. We’re not talking about indulgences or a treasury of merit or any of that. We’re talking about the basic Christian practice of asking each other to pray. The fact that some of those Christians happen to be standing in God’s presence doesn’t change the principle.
If you’re visiting St. Michael and you hear us asking the Theotokos or St. Michael the Archangel to pray for us, don’t let it throw you. We’re not worshiping them. We’re asking our family to help. And in Southeast Texas, where family matters and you’d never dream of not asking your people to pray when things get hard, this should make perfect sense. The saints are our people. They’re just on the other side of death, which turns out not to be much of a barrier when you’re in Christ.
