Is prayer to saints / Mary biblical?

Those who esteem Mary highly do well to respect her advice: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5). The Lord’s words to John “Behold, thy mother” (John 19:27) and the fact that, from this hour, John took her to be with himself, shows that Mary did not have supernatural powers but would have to rely on being cared for. Finally, in Acts 1:14 Mary is mentioned as one of the women who continued with the disciples in prayer. No special role is attributed to her.

In brief: Mary had a very special place – but one of privilege, not of authority or power. Praying to Mary is simply idolatry. Worship belongs to God.

And see what dishonour is put upon both her and her Son in praying to her. The usual statement is that her heart is loving and tender, and what son will deny his mother a favour. So she is superstitiously approached and prayed to that she may intercede with her Son. First, there is no warrant in Scripture from cover to cover for this. Second, she cannot hear the prayer offered to her, She is happy in her Saviour’s presence but has not the attributes of deity—omnipotence and omniscience. She is not appointed an agent to hear prayer. Third, what mother would be gratified to be approached on the ground that she had a heart more tender than her son’s. That would be an insult to both mother and son.

"To whom shall we go?" To Mary? Scripture does not so instruct us. We may well imitate her faith, and as lost ones take shelter in God our Saviour (Luke 1:47). This lesson we may learn with advantage from the mother of our Lord. Nowhere does Scripture speak of mediation and intercession on her part for sinful men. Remarkably, in the sacred records we have Mary but twice seeking favours from the Lord, and in each case He rebuffed her as stepping out of her appointed place. See John 2:4; Matt. 12:46-50. Our last view of her is in Acts 1:14 as one of the praying band in Jerusalem who waited for the Holy Spirit after the Lord Jesus went on high. Not praying FOR, but WITH, her fellow-believers in the Saviour.

When our Lord was on earth, did not the sinful and distressed, the sick and the diseased, come direct to Him? Never one was rebuffed. Never once do we read of their asking His mother to intercede for them. The Lord never refused any supplicant. “And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them ALL” (Mark 12:15). Does not 1 Timothy 2:5, at one stroke sweep away the intercessor and saints of the Romish system, when it says definitely, “There is… ONE Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5-6). The Virgin Mary did not give herself a ransom, but our Lord did, and He, who did that, may well be trusted in the matter of approach to Him, and not to any intermediary. Such an attitude puts more honour on the Virgin than approaching her, as if her qualities of tenderness and compassion were superior to His, and that He needed intercession to soften His heart and persuade Him to be compassionate.

Lastly, no passage has been even attempted to be quoted of addressing saints or angels. But I will here also give the history of this matter. The first commemoration of the saints was praying for them, that they might speedily see the face of God. Gradually, between rhetoric and Jewish and heathen practices, the saints took the place of the heathen demi-gods. But Romish practice goes farther, because they found prayers on the merits of the saints, as may be seen in the Roman Missal (as on Patrick's day, for example, March 17). As to praying one for another on earth, it is clear and simple, and the New Testament teaches it, and shews it practised — never to saints absent. As to the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost, who knew what would come in, has recorded for us that she never asked anything of the Lord, without being rejected in her request, the Lord saying, What have I to do with thee?

Moreover, it is written, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My Name He will give it you" (John 16:23-26). We are thus exhorted to pray in His Name; therefore any prayer offered up in the name of Mary, or any other saint, would be a denial of His Name.

To God, and to Him alone. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a trace of any such thing as prayer being addressed to the Virgin Mary or the saints. It seems rather late in the day to have to press this, and fight the battle of the Reformation upon this point again. Yet, alas! the practice of invoking the dead is becoming prevalent in circles which were once avowedly Protestant. God is thus robbed of the honour which belongs to Him alone; creatures are exalted at the expense of the Creator; dead men and women are adored and invoked instead of the living God.

Of course, in speaking of God as the only One to whom our prayers should be addressed, I do not for a moment mean that we must not pray to the Lord Jesus. He is God, equally with the Father, and equal honour belongs to Him (John 5:23). We find Stephen praying to the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit. Paul, too, prayed to Him concerning his thorn in the flesh.

And Mary understood it, saying to the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. She was still the meek bond-servant of the Lord, if others blasphemously make her the Queen of heaven and claim falsely the honour due to the Eternal Son. He, not she, is the One pre-eminently to be heard; as the Father's voice proclaimed on the holy mount, This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him. No more unworthy thought of fallen nature than to doubt His grace in Whom all the fulness dwells, or to imagine that He the one Mediator needs her intercession to stimulate or strengthen His love. He is Himself full of grace and truth; and He is able also to save to the uttermost (completely) those that draw near to God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. On the contrary she is unable, either to save or so to intercede for others, and needed to pray herself, as she was a sinner like others to be saved by faith. So we find in the last record scripture gives of her in Acts 1:14: "These all [the apostles] with one accord continued stedfastly in prayer with [several] women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." What a contrast with ecclesiastical development in no long time! How soon men turned from him that called them in Christ's grace to a different gospel, which is not another, but perversion!

Mary the mother of Jesus is seen here for the last time in Scripture. She takes her place simply with the rest, humbled, no doubt, rather than exalted by God's grace towards her. What a grief it would have been to her to have known the place in which an apostate church would set her in the time to come! She is neither prayed to, nor even leads in prayer, but remains as in the beginning "the handmaid of the Lord," and with this passes out of the history. In the doctrine of the epistles she has no place, and is never mentioned. Blessed and honored she is, and always will be; by none so dishonored as by those who would force her into a place impossible for a creature, that of a Pagan goddess rather than a Christian saint.

We have seen Mary in various places, but perhaps the final mention of her in Scripture honours her Son, and rebukes the darkening superstitions of Mary’s worship more than any other. She had seen Jesus upon the cross, He had risen from among the dead, and He had ascended to the throne on high after He had instructed His own to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit; and now “Mary the mother of Jesus with His brethren” were among the hundred and twenty that gave themselves to continual prayer as they waited (Acts 1:14-15). Mary thus expressed her full confidence in Jesus exalted to the right hand of God; nor was she herself an object before the hearts of those gathered together in prayer, but was in one accord with the others who were in dependence before the Lord. It is to be noticed, too, that His brethren also were present; and how confirming it is to find James afterwards speaking of himself as the Lord’s bondman (James 1:1) when he addresses the twelve tribes.