If someone about to have surgery asked you to pray for them, would you?  Or would you say to them: “Why are you asking me to pray for you?  You can go directly to God.  You don’t need me to help you, just ask God for help.”

Of course you would never say that to them.  You would promise to pray for them, that the surgery will be successful.

Yet sometimes Catholics are asked: “Why do you pray to the saints?  Why don’t you go directly to God with your needs?”

We believe that the Church, the Body of Christ, consists of three parts: 1) we ourselves who are fighting the good fight on earth and who are known as the Church Militant;  2) the saints who are in heaven and are called the Church Triumphant; 3) those people who were imperfect when they died and who are now the Souls in Purgatory.

Though we are separated through time and space from the second and third parts, we are still connected spiritually to them and so we can pray to and for one another.  When the early martyrs were being led away to execution in the Colosseum other Christians would grab them and say, “Remember me when you get to heaven.”  The saints, canonized and known, or hidden and unknown, whom we honor with the Solemnity of All Saints, are with God in glory.  The Letter to the Hebrews says that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” as we live here on earth “and persevere in running the race that lies before us” (12: 1).  Our earthly life is a marathon, and the saints are cheering us on and praying for us.

Remembering the saints and asking for their prayerful help is one way that we can keep our heavenly goal in mind.  They inspire us by the example of their holy lives and help us to commit ourselves to living in such a way that we will eventually be united with them in heaven.  The Third Century bishop and martyr St. Cyprian put it this way:

We look upon paradise as our country, and a great crowd of our loved ones await us there, a countless throng of parents, brothers and sisters, and children long for us to join them.  Assured as they are of their own salvation, they are still concerned about ours.  What joy both for them and for us to see one another and embrace!