The following text was taken from the religion textbook “Catholic Morality”, written by the American priest John Laux, pages 82-92. The book was first published in 1928 and subsequently republished in the 1990s and later.
a) VENERATION OF THE SAINTS
1. It is right to honor the Saints.
a) We honor virtuous men on earth, why should we deny honor to the Saints in Heaven, who practiced virtue in such a sublime degree?
b) By honoring the Saints we honor God Himself; for what the Saints are and have they owe to God.
c) God Himself honors the Saints more than we can ever honor them. “Where I am,” says Our Lord, “there also shall My servant be; if any man minister to Me, him will My Father honor” (John 12,26).
d) From the first centuries the Angels and Saints were honored by the Church.
In a letter on the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (A.D. 167) the Church of Smyrna declared: “We adore the Son of God, but we honor His martyrs as the disciples and followers of Our Lord, for their exquisite love of their king and master.”
In his First Apology St. Justin Martyr writes: “We honor God the Father and the Son and the host of blessed spirits.” From the most ancient times the Church has instituted festivals, and built churches and altars in commemoration of the Saints.
2. It is useful for salvation to honor the Saints because this practice incites us to imitate their example and to strive to become like them, that we may also one day share their eternal happiness.
3. We must never confuse the honor we pay to the Saints with the Divine honor we pay to God alone.
a) We honor and adore God alone as our sovereign Lord and the Author of all good things; we honor the Saints only as His faithful servants and friends.
b) We kneel down, it is true, when we venerate the Saints; but we do not adore the Saints any more than a courtier adores his king when on his knees he asks a favor of him.
c) We consecrate churches and altars, and offer the Holy Sacrifice to God alone, although at the same time we honor the memory of the Saints and implore their intercession.
d) We honor God for His own sake, on account of the infinite perfection which He has of Himself; we honor the Saints on account of the gifts and advantages which they have received from Him.
b) INVOCATION OF THE SAINTS
The Invocation of the Saints is Useful and Salutary.—
a) We often ask our earthly friends to pray for us, and we have abundant warrant in the Scriptures for so doing. St. Paul writes: “I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me” (Rom. 15,30). But if it is a Christian duty to ask a friend on earth to pray for us, why should we not request the same friend, when he has left the earth to pray for us in Heaven? Death does not dissolve the union between us.
b) Scripture teaches that the Angels and Saints in Heaven are aware of what happens to us here and pray for us. “There is joy in Heaven,” says Our Lord, “in the presence of the Angels over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15,10). The Prophet Jeremias, long after his death, “prayed much for the people, and for all the Holy City” (Mach. 15,14). ‘“‘When thou didst pray with tears, I offered thy prayer to the Lord,” said the Angel Raphael to Tobias (12,12).
c) God grants us graces and favors through the intercession of the Saints, because it is His Will that we should acknowledge our own unworthiness and the merits of His faithful servants. Therefore He Himself in former times commanded the friends of Job, saying: “Go to my servant Job, and my servant Job will pray for you” (Job 42,8).
d) From time immemorial it was customary in the Church to invoke the Saints. In the Roman Catacombs, particularly on the tombs of the martyrs, we find inscriptions appealing to the deceased to remember their friends on earth. One of them reads as follows: “Ask for us in thy prayers, for we know thou art with Christ.”
St. Augustine says that, while in the Mass we commemorate other departed souls in order to pray for them, we invoke the martyrs that they may pray for us.
It is no mark of distrust in Jesus Christ when we address ourselves to the Saints, for we expect all grace and salvation from God alone through the merits of Jesus Christ. “There is one God, one mediator of God and man, the man Jesus Christ, who gave Himself a redemption for all” (1 Tim. 2,5). If the invocation of the Saints were a mark of distrust, St. Paul would not have asked the faithful to pray for him (Rom. 15,30); nor would St. James have written: “Pray for one another, that you may be saved; the continual prayer of a just man availeth much” (5,16).
e) The difference between our praying to God and our praying to the Saints is clearly brought out in all the Litanies. We say: God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us; but, Holy Mary, pray for us.
“Let us, then, learn,” says Cardinal Manning, “that we can never be lonely or forsaken in this life. Shall they forget us because they are ‘made perfect’? Shall they love us less because they now have power to love us more? If we forget them not, shall they not remember us with God? No trial, then, can isolate us, no sorrow can cut us off from the Communion of Saints. Kneel down, and you are with them; lift up your eyes, and the heavenly world, high above all perturbation, hangs serenely overhead; only a thin veil, it may be, floats between. All whom we loved and all who loved us are ever near, because ever in His presence, in whom we live and dwell.”
C) SPECIAL VENERATION OF THE MOTHER OF GOD
A higher degree of veneration, above all the Angels and Saints, is due to the Mother of God.—
a) Christ Himself honored her in a special manner.
b) The Archangel Gabriel greeted her with the words: “Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with thee […]”
c) St. Elizabeth cried out in awe and reverence: “Whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”
d) Mary’s prophetic words: “From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,” have been unceasingly fulfilled throughout the history of the Church.
e) Mary alone, of all her race, was privileged to co-operate in the work of Redemption by her own free will and choice: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.”
f) Christ was obedient to His Mother here on earth, and He surely will not refuse her anything now that she is with Him in Heaven.
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d) THE VENERATION OF IMAGES
1. We Honor Images of Christ and the Saints:
a) because by honoring these we honor Christ Himself and His Saints;
b) because the contemplation of these images moves us to love and imitate Christ and the Saints.
2. The Council of Trent (session 25) gives clear and definite instruction on the question of the veneration of images:
“The images of Christ and of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the Saints are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them on account of which they are to be worshipped, or that anything is to be asked of them, or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which these images represent; so that we through the images which we kiss, before which we uncover the head or bend the knee, adore Christ and venerate the Saints, whom they represent. If any abuses have crept in among these holy and salutary observances, the Holy Synod ardently desires that they may be utterly abolished.”
From this statement it follows that the Church gives to images an inferior and relative honor, so far as they relate to Christ and the Saints, and are memorials of them. We may not pray to images, for they can neither see, nor hear, nor help us. In other words, praying to a picture or image is categorically forbidden. It should also be borne in mind that the Church does not compel her children to kneel or pray before any image or statue.
3. But, it may be objected, isn’t the veneration of images contrary to Scripture?—Do we not read in Exodus 20,4-5: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything. … Thou shalt not adore them nor serve them”? The restriction added shows in what sense the making or possession of images was forbidden, viz., to adore and serve them. God Himself commanded Moses to “make two Cherubim of beaten gold on the two sides of the oracle” (Ex. 25,18), and also to make a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign, which was a figure of our crucified Redeemer (John 3,14).
4. We speak of the adoration of the Cross; is that a proper expression?
When we speak of the adoration of the Cross, we understand, not absolute adoration, which is due to the Godhead, but only relative adoration, which is directed to Christ: we adore Christ Himself as represented in His image. When we make the Stations of the Cross, we genuflect before each of the fourteen crosses, saying: “We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.”
5. God has been pleased occasionally, as Catholics believe on good grounds, to glorify images of Christ and the Saints, and to grant special graces to those who honor these images. Because we feel ourselves animated to pray before these images with greater fervor and confidence, we sometimes go on pilgrimages to these so-called miraculous images. No Catholic is obliged to do so, nor is he obliged to believe that these images are miraculous.
e) THE VENERATION OF RELICS
Relics include the bodies of departed saints, fragments of their bodies, articles or portions of articles which they used, such as clothes, vestments, rosaries, and the like. The most famous of all relics is the true Cross.
1. The Veneration of Relics was solemnly approved by the Council of Trent, and the reason for this approval given: “The holy bodies of the martyrs and of others now living with Christ,— which bodies were once living members of Christ, and temples of the Holy Ghost, and which by Him are to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified—are to be venerated by the faithful” (Sess. 25).
2. Reverence for the Relics of Martyrs is as old as Christianity itself, and universal in the Eastern as well as the Western Church.
The Christians gathered the bones of St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107) and placed them in linen “as a priceless treasure, being left to the Holy Church by the grace which was in the martyr.”
When St. Polycarp’s body was burned in 167, the Christians gathered the bones they could find “as more precious than costly stones and more valuable than gold, and deposited them in a suitable place.”
God is sometimes pleased to honor the relics of the Saints by making them instruments of healing and other miracles, and also by bestowing spiritual graces on those who with pure hearts, keep and honor them. In the Old Testament we read of the resurrection of a dead body which touched the bones of the prophet Eliseus (4 Kings 13,21), and we are told in the Acts of the Apostles that the sick were healed by towels which had touched the living body of St. Paul.
3. Abuses have occurred in all ages with regard to relics. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) forbade relics to be sold or to be exposed outside of their cases or shrines, and prohibited the veneration of new relics till their authenticity had been approved by the Pope.
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