The Intercession of the
Blessed Virgin
the Highest Power of Prayer
by
Rev. Francis A. Baker
Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension
“If
you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you shall ask whatever you will,
and it shall be done to you.”
John 15:7
I
A
There is perhaps no Catholic doctrine which meets with more objection among those outside the Church, than our devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Expressions of love to her, of hope in her intercession, which seem to us perfectly natural, which come from our hearts spontaneously, when they are most under the influence of Christian and holy principles, seem to them altogether at variance with Christianity.
B
I do not believe that this comes always from prejudice, and a spirit of opposition on their part. It comes often, I am persuaded, from not understanding us. There is a link in our minds which connects this practice with other Christian doctrines, and this link is wanting in theirs; and therefore acts of devotion of this kind seem to them arbitrary and useless, an excrescence on Christianity, and even alien to its spirit.
C
If this is the case, it cannot but be a duty and charity for us to explain, as far as possible, what is in the mind of a Catholic when he prays to the Blessed Virgin; and I shall accordingly attempt to do so this morning. Perhaps while we are thus removing a stumbling-block out of some erring brother’s way, we shall be at the same time rendering our own ideas on this doctrine clearer, and its practice more intelligent.
II
The Blessed Virgin Mary, then, to a Catholic, represents the power of intercessory prayer in its highest form and degree.
III
A
I believe there are very few persons, indeed, who realize all the power which is attributed to intercessory prayer in the Bible and in Christianity. The Apostles frequently exhort the Christians to whom they are writing to pray for them. They enjoined it upon them as a duty to pray for one another. What does this mean?
B
Had not St. Paul and St. Peter influence enough with Heaven to carry their wants directly to the throne of grace? Was not the way of access to God open and easy for everyone? Did God require to be reminded of the woes and wants of any child of man, by the sympathizing cries of his fellow-creatures? Was not God’s own heart as large as theirs? Could anything He had made escape His knowledge, or any sorrow fail to awaken His compassion? Or, if it did, was the intercession of Christ insufficient that any other had to be called in to supplicate? No, certainly.
C
None of these suppositions are true. God’s goodness and knowledge are infinite. He needs not to be told what is in man. He loves the work of His hands. The meanest and the poorest are in the light of His Providence, Christ’s merits are infinite and universal. But after all, there stands the fact. Intercessory prayer is an ordinance of God. It is a duty to pray for others, and it is useful to have others pray for us.
D
You may call it a mystery if you like. To me, it does not seem so very wonderful. No man lives to himself. We are not the only Christians. Many others walk alongside of us on the road to Heaven. Many are ahead of us. Many have already reached their term. Shall there be no sympathy between us?
E
Is that principle so deeply seated in our nature to have no play in Christianity? Are we to have no interest, no feeling for each other? Or, is that sympathy to be a barren sentiment, and to have no results? God, in religion, makes use of and commands this kindness and sympathy. He makes use of it to bind all men together in a bond of love.
F
In order to do this, He makes it a law that we shall pray for one another, and suspends His gifts upon its execution. It is, then, to meet that nature that He has framed – it is to exalt that nature craving for sympathy – it is to give rein to charity – it is to make us always sensible and mindful of that great human family to which we belong – it is for these reasons, I conceive, that God has instituted the ordinance of intercessory prayer.
G
But, explain it as you will, the fact cannot be denied. It is an appointment of God, and an appointment of great efficacy. It plays a large part in the history of the Bible. Elias was a man subject to like passions with us, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not for three years and six months; and he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain.
H
Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and God healed him. When Moses prayed for the Israelites suffering under the fire with which God had visited them for their sins, the fire was quenched. In the prophet Ezekiel, God speaks as if he could not act without this intercession – as if it were really a necessary condition for the bestowal of His graces.
I
“I sought among them for a man,” he says, “that might stand in the gap before me, in favor of the land, that I might not destroy it, and I found none.” (Ezekiel 22:30) St. James even seems to make salvation depend on intercessory prayer. “Pray for one another,” is his language, “that you may be saved.” (James 5:16) These are but a sample of the many Scriptural proofs that might be brought to show that intercessory prayer is an ordinance of God.
J
It is one of the forms in which the goodness of God and the merits of Christ flow over upon us. By it we obtain graces from God much more easily than we could without it. And we obtain by it special graces, which we would not be likely to obtain at all without it.
K
In this sense, perhaps, St. James meant to imply that it was necessary to our salvation. Not that it was a matter of precept to ask the prayers of this or that particular person, but that their intercession might be the condition of our obtaining graces without which our salvation would be a work of great difficulty.
IV
A
But this is not all that the Scriptures tell about intercessory prayer. They not only declare its wonderful power, but they make known to us that the efficacy of intercessory prayer depends on the goodness and merit before God of the one who offers it. I do not mean that no one should pray for another unless he is very holy. By no means.
B
No matter how great a sinner a man may be, it is a good thing for him to pray for others, and the mercy and compassion of God, I am sure, never turn away from such a petition. But then, in such a case, it is mercy and compassion which moves God to hear the prayer. In the case of a good man praying for another, there is a sort of claim that he should be heard. Not an absolute claim, by which he can demand anything for another, as of right, but a claim of fitness, a claim as if between friend and friend, a claim on God’s bounty and generosity, which will not allow Him to turn a deaf ear to one who is faithfully striving to serve Him.
C
The passages of inspiration which express this are very clear and very strong. “The continual prayer of a just man avails much.” (James 5:16) There is the prayer of a righteous man that has this efficacy. And to this agree the words of our Lord: “If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7)
D
Could words express more clearly that the power of intercessory prayer is in direct proportion to the closeness of the union which we maintain with God? And St. John reiterates the same principle when he says: “Whatsoever we shall ask we shall receive of Him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.” (1 John 3:22)
E
God’s dealings, as recorded in the Bible, are in exact accordance with this rule. At the prayer of Abraham, God desisted from His purpose of destroying Sodom, because Abraham was God’s friend. When the three friends of Job had displeased God by their wrong judgments and unjust suspicions, God commanded them to go to His servant Job, and he would pray for them, and him He would accept.
F
And in the prophet Ezekiel, when the Almighty would express, in the strongest possible manner, the fact that His anger was enkindled against a people and a city; that nothing, however strong, should stay its effects, He says: “And if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, shall be in it, they shall deliver their own souls only by their justice.” (Ezekiel 14:14) As if to say: “Notwithstanding the intercession and merit of these great saints, even though they were all combined in favor of the one city, they should not avail to make Me spare such wickedness. What must be the wickedness that can force Me to withstand the power of such an appeal?
V
A
Here, then, we have two things clearly taught in Holy Scripture. One is that intercessory prayer is an ordinance of God of great power and utility. The other is, that the degree of power this prayer has in any particular case depends on the merit of him who offers it.
B
Who, then, shall be the favored child of man, the favored saint, who shall exercise this power in the fullest degree? Of whom it can be said literally, “Whatever you ask of Me I will do it,” because the condition of union with God is perfectly fulfilled? Who shall this be whom Holy Scripture thus clothes with this tremendous power, if it be not the Blessed Virgin Mary?
C
My brethren, our belief in the surpassing sanctity of the Blessed Virgin is no fancy of later times. It goes back to the very beginning of Christianity. St. Ambrose wrote her praises as he had learned them from those who had received them from apostolic men. Grave, austere men, as far as possible removed from anything like fancy religion or sentimentality, men who had suffered for the name of Christ, and even faced death in its defense, employed their art and care to coin words which might express the virtue and purity and exceeding sanctity of the Virgin Mary, as they had learned it from their forefathers.
D
And in the most ancient writing of the Church, in the Canon of the Mass, when the priest recalls by name the glorious army of Christian heroes who had gone before, always in the first place she is mentioned, the all-glorious, undefiled, Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, and ever Virgin. This being so, is not her power of intercession fixed beyond dispute?
E
Does not Scripture itself fashion out for her the glorious throne on which the Catholic Church places her? Did any remain in Christ as she did? Did His words ever so abide in any heart as in hers?
F
Suppose a Christian who lived in the times of the Apostles, before the Blessed Virgin had gone to her rest, when she was just dying; suppose such a one sorely tried and tempted within and without; suppose him anxious about his salvation, distrustful of his own petitions, fearful of the coming storms of persecution; and suppose him in the state of mind to have read that passage of St. James, “The continual prayer of a just man avails much," what more natural than that he should have said to himself, “I will go to ask the prayers of the dear Mother of Christ. I will ask her to use her power and influence with her Divine Son in behalf of a frail wanderer like me.”
G
And when he came into her presence and knelt before her, and kissed her hand and made his plea, and looked up to her and saw that sweet grave smile, and heard her say, “Yes, my child, when I stand in the presence of my Royal Son, and He holds out to me the golden scepter, and says to me, what will you? What is your request? Then I will remember you!”
H
Oh! how light his heart! Oh, how strong his soul! What a charm against sadness! What a fortress in temptation! Mary prays for me in heaven to Christ her Son! And is there anything in this joy and confidence which reason or Christianity would condemn? If so, it must be either that intercessory prayer is not the power the Scriptures say it is, or that Mary is not the saint the Church considers her.
I
Why, even Protestants have gone as far as this. Protestants who have made the primitive form of Christianity their study and profess to accept it as their rule, as, for example, High-Church Episcopalians, have distinctly acknowledged in the seventeenth century, and in our own day, that the saints in heaven do intercede for us, and that this was the primitive doctrine of Christianity.
J
Why, then, find fault with us for invoking the saints, and say we ought only to ask God to hear their prayers for us, as if invocation on our part were not the correlative of intercession on theirs; as if it could be right to ask a saint to pray for us the moment before he died, and wrong the moment after; as if there could be any moral difference before God between a direct and an indirect supplication for the benefit of their prayers in heaven?
VI
A
Such, my
brethren, is our idea when we address the Blessed Virgin for aid. It is
not that we cannot go directly to God. It is not that God is not the
nearest to us, and at all times accessible. It is not that, sinful as we
are, we may not go with our miseries into the very presence of the Almighty.
It is not that prayer to God is not the best of all prayers. It is not
that we put the Blessed Virgin in the place of God. O cruel charge!
It is not that we derogate from the merits of Christ. O strange
misconception!
B
But it is this – we believe in intercessory prayer. We believe that man may help his brother. We believe that Christianity is a human and a social relation; we believe that heaven is very near this earth – oh, how much nearer than ever we believed! And that in Christ we are in communion with an innumerable company of angels, and the Church of the First-born.
C
We believe that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over the good deeds done on earth, and that the litanies of the saints ascend over one sinner and his deeds. And we believe that this power of intercessory prayer culminates in the Blessed Virgin. We believe that she is the “one undefiled,” whose way has been always in the law of the Lord.
D
We believe that before the foundations of the earth were laid, or ever the earth and sea were made, she was foreknown by the Almighty, spotless in purity, matchless in virtue. We believe that she was the flower of humanity, the fairest type of Christianity – and we believe, therefore, that God is as good as His word, and whatever she asks of Him, He gives it to her.
E
This is the doctrine on which we found our devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Take our strongest language. It means no more than this: “Pray for me.” You man amplify as you will, but from the necessity of the case everything we say comes to that. Put prayer for the Blessed Virgin, suppose prayer personified in her, and you have the key to the Catholic doctrine on this subject.
F
Strong things are said of the power of the Blessed Virgin, but so are strong things said in Holy Scripture and by holy men of the power of prayer. Whatever can be said of prayer, can be said of her. Cease, then, to misunderstand us. Acknowledge that we are but obeying Christ in praying to the Blessed Virgin. And if you will still find fault, find fault, not with us, but with God, who has instituted intercessory prayer and given such power to men.
VII
A
And for you, my brethren, let these thoughts strengthen you in your confidence in the powerful intercession of the Mother of God. Our work is too severe, our difficulties are too great, for us to neglect any help God has offered us. There are many adversaries. The world, with all its seductions, passes in array before us.
B
Why should we shut our eyes to the hosts of heaven that march unseen by our side? Why should we stay outside when we are invited to the marriage supper, and Jesus and His disciples are there, and Mary, pleader for heavy hearts, saying, “They have no wine;” and at her prayer Jesus gives them that wine that makes glad the heart of man with the abundance of His grace and love?
C
I have been glad to see you these bright May mornings around the altar. Persevere more and more. Your labor of love is not in vain. God’s words cannot fail. His gifts are without repentance. Mary’s power of intercession is as fresh this day as it was when her prayer made the miraculous wine gush forth at the wedding feast; and until some one shall arise more blessed, more holy, nearer to Christ than she, it will remain as it is now, the highest and the most efficacious of all forms of prayer in heaven or on earth.