Praying to the Departed

Praying for, and to, the Departed

If the departed are conscious while waiting for the final ressurrection and judgement then the questions are raised:

  • Is it meaningful to pray for them in the same way as we would pray for someone on Earth?
  • Are they in a position to pray for us, and should we ask them to do so?
  • Do they have the supernatural ability to hear, possibly millions, of people praying to them at once?

The majority of Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, would affirm at least the first two of those and yet there is no reference to this practice either in Judaism or in the New Testament.

The earliest reference to praying for the dead is in inscriptions from Roman catacombs: epitaphs include prayers like “May you find peace” or “May you live in the Lord. which date back to the 2nd century.

The earliest textual instance of addressing a departed holy figure for aid is an early prayer to the mother of Jesus “Sub tuum praesidium” which dates back to the mid 3rd century.

While it’s not proof of an established doctrine of saintly intercession across the Christian world at the time, it’s strong evidence that such devotion was already emerging regionally by the mid-3rd century.

What is the origin of this practice?

Early Christianity emerged in a Mediterranean culture where veneration of heroes and the honoured dead was already deeply embedded.

In Greco-Roman religion, it was common to honour local heroes, especially those who had died noble deaths (e.g. soldiers, founders, philosophers). Their tombs became shrines, where people brought offerings and asked for protection or favour. The line between “honour” and “petition” was fluid — prayers might be directed to these figures as intermediaries with the gods.

In early Christianity, martyrs were the “heroes” of the faith — witnesses who died for Christ. Their graves became pilgrimage sites, especially in the 2nd–3rd centuries. Over time, honouring them at these tombs gradually changed into addressing them as intercessors before God.

The faithful believed:

  • If my brother or sister on earth can pray for me, how much more can those who are already in God’s presence?
  • This logic extended to martyrs, apostles, and eventually to Mary.

The practice was thus not about bypassing God, but about seeking intercessory support from those believed to be alive with Him (cf. Luke 20:38 — “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living”).

This was an organic devotional evolution, not a top-down innovation. It wasn’t apostolic, wasn’t inherited from Judaism, and didn’t begin as a formal doctrine — it was a grassroots devotional development that theological reflection later attempted to explain and defend.

This process wasn’t officially sanctioned at first — but it proved pastorally powerful. By the 4th–5th centuries, the practice was so widespread that Church leaders (e.g., Augustine, Jerome) worked to theologically justify and regulate it rather than suppress it.

Indeed, in the mid 4th century, Epiphanius accused Aerius of heresy — not for praying to saints, but for denying the practice.

By the mid-4th century, prayer for the dead and to the saints was already so common that rejecting it was considered heterodox

At all times the Church stressed that it does not worship the saints, but asks their intercession — a crucial distinction that would remain central in Catholic theology. Nevertheless, in personal devotions, that line was often blurred or crossed – hence warnings against that happening.

Athanasius and the early bishops (4th century)

  • While promoting veneration, they were careful to clarify the difference between honour and worship. “We do not adore the martyrs; we adore their Lord.”
  • The need for this clarification shows that some Christians were going too far, treating martyrs almost as deities.
  • So even defenders of asking the saints to intercede sensed the potential for confusion.

4th century (post-Constantine):

Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity didn’t create the cult of saints — but it unleashed and institutionalised it.

Under the direction of Constantine and his mother, Helen, there was an explosion of martyr shrines and relics and the building of elaborate churches for their veneration.

What had been small, local acts of memory became empire-wide, state-endorsed devotions centred on relics, shrines, and the living intercession of the saints.

Without the Constantinian revolution, it’s doubtful that prayer to saints would ever have become the norm of Christian worship.

By the late 4th century, asking saints for prayers had become common in both East and West. For instance:

  • Basil of Caesarea (330–379): explicitly invokes the “fortitude of the martyrs” and asks them to aid the Church.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390): prays to Cyprian the martyr for help.
  • John Chrysostom (347–407): refers to martyrs interceding for us before God.

By the 6th century, the practice had become embedded in:

  • Liturgical texts (Eastern and Western rites invoked saints by name).
  • Popular devotion (pilgrimages, relics, feasts).
  • Imperial and episcopal sponsorship (churches built over tombs, relic translations).

Thus, opponents like Aerius and Vigilantius were marginalized as “heretics” largely for resisting what had become consensus practice, not because their arguments lacked substance.

In effect:

  • Their biblical and theological concerns anticipated later Protestant reasoning.
  • But the pastoral and emotional appeal of saintly intercession won the day in late antiquity.

Concerns about the growth of the practice

Although asking saints to intercede became well embedded in Church doctrine and practice, there were hose who expressed concern and dissent. However much of this was suppressed and didn’t have any effect. Only at the Reformation the practice was discontinued among the Protestants.

From Constantine’s day onward, devotion to saints had become so interwoven with the Christian imagination that only periodic reformers — Aerius, Vigilantius, the Iconoclasts, the Waldensians, Wycliffe, and Hus — ever seriously challenged it before the Reformation.

Most were suppressed, but they kept alive the question: Is Christ’s mediation sufficient, or must we seek heavenly helpers?

That question re-emerged with full force in the 16th century and has defined much of Christian theology ever since.

Beliefs and practices today

1. Catholic & Orthodox (Communion of Saints)

  • Praying for the dead:
    • Catholics: rooted in belief in purgatory — prayers can aid those being purified (2 Macc 12:44–45, 2 Tim 1:16–18 are cited).
    • Orthodox: less juridical; prayers are an expression of love and solidarity with the departed, entrusting them to God’s mercy.
  • Praying to the saints / asking their intercession:
    • The key distinction they make:
      • Worship (latria) belongs to God alone.
      • Honour/veneration (dulia, hyperdulia for Mary) is given to saints as fellow servants who now live in God’s presence.
    • The logic: if the Church on earth asks living Christians to pray for one another, why would the most “alive in Christ” (the saints) not also be able to intercede?
    • As to “hearing many prayers”: the answer given is that saints don’t hear prayers by their own natural power, but only as God permits them through union with Him. In other words, it’s God who makes the communion possible.

2. Protestant Reformers & Mainline Protestantism

  • Praying for the dead:
    • Largely rejected because purgatory was rejected and there’s no clear NT command.
    • Focus is on commending the dead to God and comforting the living.
  • Asking saints for prayers:
    • Rejected as unnecessary and dangerous because:
      • Christ is the sole Mediator (1 Tim 2:5).
      • The Bible doesn’t teach us to pray to departed believers.
      • It risks attributing divine qualities (omniscience/omnipresence) to mere humans.
    • Some Anglicans and Lutherans retain a sense of “fellowship with all the saints” in liturgy, but generally without asking for their intercession.

3. Evangelical & Free Church Traditions

  • Very similar to the Reformers:
    • No prayer for the dead.
    • No invocation of saints.
    • Strong emphasis on Christ alone as mediator and on the sufficiency of prayer directed to God.

4. Summary of the Distinction

  • Catholic/Orthodox:
    • For the dead = asking God to show mercy / hasten their journey.
    • To the saints = asking them to pray to God for us, not replacing Christ but extending the fellowship of the Body of Christ beyond death.
  • Protestant/Evangelical:
    • See both as adding an unnecessary (and potentially misleading) layer to Christian devotion. Prayer is for God alone; Christ alone is our mediator.

Some Orthodox answers to Protestant objections to praying to the saints is given here.