Byblos wrote:Ah but you see, your 'flawed' fellow christians that are in heaven are not so flawed after all as nothing impure can enter heaven (Rev. 21:25
That is my point. If we can ask those perfect christians in heaven to pray for us, why ask anybody down here besides the fact that we are told to do so?
Because we're a community of believers and a single body in Christ, flawed or otherwise. As to why we aren't told to ask our perfect believers in heaven to pray for us in scripture (although I think we are but I promised not to use those), it could be because heaven was empty before Christ and the gospel writers were the first saints to enter heaven after Christ (ergo they didn't have the opportunity to explore the idea in detail as there was no frame of reference so to speak). This is where not just the deuterocanonical books but also oral tradition come into the picture (and partly why the RCC does not hold to Sola Scriptura as some things we believe were revealed after the gospels were written).
It is definitely something interesting to think about. Do you think Mary will listen to a protestant's prayer?
"Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible." - Corrie Ten Boom
Act 9:6
And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?
