We paused and prayed in the chapel beneath the old basilica at Assisi, Italy. There above the altar are the remains of the blessed St. Francis. My Roman Catholic colleagues described that experience as an opportunity to pray to St. Francis for the sake of the world. And they were deeply gratified by the experience. Probably because I'm Lutheran, I found myself praying with St. Francis...also for the sake of the world and for the peace for which he so famously prayed.
Praying to? Praying with? Is there a difference? I think so. And it may be a difference worthy of more theological reflection than a brief blog entry can accommodate. But in the meantime, allow me to suggest...
Francis and all of God's holy ones...those gone before us, those with whom we now share the earthly church, and those whose days in this sphere are yet to come...are one in the mystical body of Christ. We cannot perceive it completely because we are bound by the mortal constraints of space and time. God...our God of the living...is not so bound. So His holy ones are there with us at the font, around the table, and in the community's life of prayer, worship and praise. They are our sisters and brothers...our friends in the faith. And in the same way we would ask a friend in this life to pray with us or for us, might we not also ask the saints of every time and place that their prayers would be joined with ours and ours with theirs?
Often afraid of being "too Catholic," we Lutherans have avoided the saints. It occurs to me that we have done so to our own detriment. In our worship, in our understanding of the depth and breadth of Christian experience, we would do well to remember the saints...and to join our prayer to theirs.
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