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You Won't Believe What Pray REALLY Means!
Prayer as asking and the intercession of saints
Why do Catholics speak of praying to saints? This Search 185 Short considers "pray" as a request and distinguishes asking saints for intercession from worship directed to God.
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[0:00] And that's the distinction that I think
[0:02] needs to be made is because the word
[0:04] prayer comes from an old English word
[0:05] that means to ask. So a lot of times you
[0:08] would either read something that's old
[0:10] English or even watch an an old movie
[0:12] and it's it it talks about hey uh where
[0:15] is thy father I pray thee. Well are they
[0:18] praying to the person? No. It means to
[0:20] ask. I'm asking you where is your
[0:22] father? And that terminology transferred
[0:25] into the theology part of our faith. Um,
[0:29] and as Catholics, prayer could be
[0:31] worship to God or it could be to ask
[0:33] someone to pray for you. As you know,
[0:37] the theology was introduced in the
[0:39] Protestant Reformation, the rejection of
[0:41] of that intercession of saints was
[0:43] something that caused the word prayer to
[0:46] solely mean to worship and worship God.
[0:49] And in that case, if your definition of
[0:51] prayer is the the what you give to God
[0:54] alone, then yes, you don't pray to
[0:56] saints. But in the Catholic terminology,
[1:00] prayer can be worshiped or it can be to
[1:03] ask.