Invocation of Saints

Oversimplified

• To invoke the saints is to ask living members of Christ's Body — those already with God — to pray with and for us, exactly as we ask a friend on earth to pray.
• It is neither worship nor necromancy: the saints are alive in Christ, and asking their intercession is grounded in Scripture and in ancient Israel's own reverence for the righteous.

Summary

The invocation of saints is the Church's practice of asking the departed righteous — the martyrs, apostles, the Theotokos, and all the holy ones now in God's presence — to intercede for us before God. It rests on the conviction that in Christ "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matthew 22.32): death does not sever the saints from the Body, so their prayers remain effective and near. Far from a late innovation, the honoring and invoking of particular righteous ones has deep Old-Testament roots, and is unlocked for all the saints by Christ's Harrowing of Hades. Cross-link Theotokos, Relics, The Divine Council.

The Old-Testament roots

The instinct to single out and revere particular righteous men is already in the Hebrew Scriptures. Enoch and Elijah were taken up into heaven (Genesis 5.24; 2 Kings 2.11) — which is why bystanders thought the crucified Christ might be "calling for Elijah" (Matthew 27.47), assuming Elijah could be invoked and could come. A tradition of Moses' body being assumed underlies the dispute in Jude 9; the Transfiguration, where Moses and Elijah appear alive with Christ, confirms the instinct. The Patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — were called "the Pillars" in Second-Temple literature (St. Paul reuses the title for Peter, James, and John in Galatians 2.9);[^1] their tomb at the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron was a place of pilgrimage and prayer, and the righteous dead rested in "Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16.22). Cross-link The Divine Council.

The Harrowing of Hades opens the door for all

Before Christ, only these exceptional figures — Enoch, Elijah, Moses, the Patriarchs — were understood to be with God. After Christ descended into Hades and led out the righteous, all the saints are brought into that same nearness to God proper. So the intercession once glimpsed in a handful of prophets now belongs to the whole company of the redeemed. Cross-link Harrowing of Hades.

"Isn't asking a saint to pray for you idolatry — or contacting the dead?"

Asking a living friend to pray is not worship. The objection assumes the saints are either dead-and-gone (so invoking them is necromancy) or being worshiped (so it is idolatry). Both miss the mark. The saints are alive in Christ — "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living" — so asking their prayers is no different in kind from asking a fellow Christian on earth to pray for you, except that these intercessors are nearer to God and no longer sin. We do not offer them the worship (latreia) due to God alone; we ask their intercession, as members of one Body appealing to stronger members. Revelation shows the prayers of the saints rising like incense before the throne (Revelation 5.8; Revelation 8.3-4) — heaven is not silent or severed from us. Cross-link Theotokos, Relics.

[^1]: The "Pillars" title for the Patriarchs comes from Second-Temple literature, which St. Paul reuses for Peter, James, and John (Galatians 2.9).