Intercession

INTERCESSION  is signified in the incense offered to God  during Mass or Benediction.  Or it  an be likened to a fountain springing upwards from the lowest point to the highest pinnacle (God).  Anybody in the world from the lowest to the highest can pray to the one true God through O.L. Jesus Christ when they pray within his church.   To reach my goal the quickest way I seek the help of Mary, first to lead me to the Church where I can pray according to the mind of Christ.   Then and in that place she teaches me how to pray.   Prayer by its nature is intercessory.    The visible elements of the Church have been everywhere -until recently. 
 

When I join in the Church's prayer there are visible elements all around me so that I cannot lose my way.    I join in her continual prayer of intercession.   I enter into the State of Intercession = the Church.   Prayer is offered to God and for one another through Mary's intercession first then through Christ to the Father.   I pray for the dying and the dead that they may be released from their sins - through Mary to Christ to the Father.   The souls in purgatory cannot pray for themselves, but they can and do pray for us and we pray for them.   The whole community of the Church in each individual cell prays through Mary to Christ to the Father.   The saints in heaven pray for us here on earth.   Their powerful intercession is immediately processed through Mary to Christ to the Father.  At the lowest end of the fountain my prayer is weak but gains strength as it travels up through all the other stages of the fountain finally emerging through the saints in heaven immediately to Mary to Christ to the Father.


Christ does not hear me without Mary aiding me.   She doesn't stay at the top of the ascending prayers like a haughty queen..she searches for us, especially the lowliest and the poorest.   And wherever she goes, she speaks of her Son telling us to do as he says...remember how she started him off when he changed the water into wine?  She told the steward to 'Do as He tells you'.   That's what she says to us, and that's what her son does...changes our water into wine.

INTERCESSION is the place wherein the pewsitter finds himself when he realises that he has been given the gift of faith through the intercession of countless fellow-travellers living and those that have preceded him:  the saints, angels and of course Mary...in that ascending order...not to mention the holy souls in purgatory.  None of the above can be taken out of the picture..from the lowliest to the highest...they all form the bricks and mortar of intercession all of which is necessary to save each soul.  To them my prayers are added also.   All of this petitioning for one another, and by one another, flows upward in a continuous stream where Our Lord, through his justifying sacrifice on our behalf is offered to the Father.   Not all my prayers are accepted right away because I must first seek the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.

People everywhere pray for all sorts of things.   The Church taught me to pray for the things that God wants for me, and that when I do that, I reverse the attitude in my soul that Adam and Eve had.  They prayed for knowledge of good and evil - a knowledge God had no intention of giving them.   Evil, in the person of the fallen archangel, Lucifer, was already afoot on the earth.   Their paradise state was being protected.  Knowledge was not denied them by dint of the fact that God told them of its existence when he forbad them to seek further.  Lucifer would have been incapable of corrupting them if they had obeyed this first commandment.   It is the same today that man dialogues with the devil when he debates, for example, whether a law protecting unborn children  can be changed to accommodate the 'rights of women'.  If I enter into that dialogue I am doing exactly the same as Adam and Eve, namely, I can do whatever I like, nobody has the right to make a law for me to obey, and who says it is evil anway?   There is only one body on earth that clearly states what is evil..tells us not to eat of the tree...not to dialogue with the devil.   Why?  Because once I do that he has all but entered my very soul.   God saw this happening to Adam and Eve, just as the Church sees if it happens to me.   She makes laws to protect me without denying me the reason for it....the loss of my soul...the same as God forewarned A/E the loss of paradise.  He intervened at the very point where they would have been lost forever to Him by giving them enough taste of evil to never forget it....to prevent evil entering into the heart of man while he learned his lesson.  

The same is happening today....but God has left it to the Church to do the intervening in his place and in his name because he was crucified..   Keepers of the Church  have failed and man is losing his soul.   More had to be done then because A/E (Adam and Eve) could not halt the progression of evil to a state where they would be possessed by the Evil One - without a force stronger than evil.   God, not only chose to redeem me from my sins by paying the price for them that justice demanded but he had to provide a mechanism for me more powerful than the prince of evil.   He had to dwell within my soul.*   A state not then necessary, nor then needed by A/E if they had obeyed God but certainly needed by them and me after dialoguing with the devil.   When his chosen people rejected him as their Messiah  he provided a saving time for them too, as he had done for A/E, to rethink their situation  releasing graces through his church to help them from beginning to end.   God is not going to do it again because it is done once for all.  A second rejection of Him in his Church is fatal....for us.  But for a few, the main body of Church leaders of today have rejected him outright with the advent of the Council of Vatican II.  (See page entitled 'The Pewsitter'). 

INTERCESSION  then, takes on a new dimension becoming a complete reversal of that first sin....it seeks the disposition to ask God to give me what is best for me.   I learned from Mother Church to pray for the things I haven't got.   I do not have the virtue of loving my neighbour as God has loved me...because I have yet to learn how God loves me, and I can only learn that within the bosom of the Church and in receiving her Sacraments.   I do not have the virtue to forgive my enemies from the bottom of my heart as did Christ forgive his torturers.  I do not have the gift of patience when I want something right now and for it to be done exactly as I want it done.  I do not have........well you get the picture.....
So I am taught how to pray for the first things, then I can ask for what I do not have.   And since they are readily attainable it is my fault if I do not seek and find them.   And it is my fault if I do not have the  tools necessary to pray with.   There is no God like our God.

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A  PERFECT  ACT  of  CONTRITION is made by someone who truly despises the sin for its own sake.  He wants to change his behaviour and not be so weak when it comes to giving into temptations that go against his conscience or the Church's teachings.  He understands that Christ has stood between him and judgement...so he seeks mercy....the mercy of being forgiven, released from having to pay for something for which he has no 'money'.  Christ's payment on his behalf has won his redemption and if he co-operates with the grace imparted to him, he will be given the strength he asked for.  He needs the grace to co-operate with if he is to obtain the freedom from sin he seeks.  He has prayed thus:

O my God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins.   I detest them above all things because they have deserved thy dreadful punishments, because they have crucified my loving Saviour, Jesus Christ ...

How come he crucified Our Lord and Saviour?   He was not even there when Christ died.   Indeed, it seemed to me at one time that not only was I a sinner, but that I crucified Our Lord as well!   Didn't seem a bit fair!   Until I read the words ...the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Coupled with words quoted earlier that death was not of God's making it follows that since I knew I would die, then, according to these words, sin is the cause.   Death entered human nature through that first sin.   Christ  died, taking my place.  He became man in order to do just that.  Minus the Redemption physical death means spiritual death.  Still does.  The choice is mine.   Conceived into a state of sin through no fault of my own, neverthless I have sinned.   I have committed sins of my own that I have not inherited ..so that if the penalty of inheriting the state of original sin can be lifted, then I am guilty as charged.  

 Ah!  The state of inherited original sin HAS been lifted...because that is what the gift of Baptism brings about.   Our Lord, having paid the price for sin, paid the price for Adam and Eve's personal sin  thus lifting it from their souls with the ripple effect of removing what was inherited.  If you take away the cause you take away the effect.    That leaves me to account for my own personal sins which price also has been paid by Our Lord's sacrifice.   To deny my sinfulness is to lie - thus refusing the grace of redemption...so my sins remain, and I have no possibility of entering Christ's heavenly Kingdom.  Also, during my lifetime I have developed sinful habits which still plague me and will continue to do until I die...hence my need of the Sacrament of Mercy - Confession to gradually, bit by bit, throw off these habits and the sins that often result as I am trying to improve.   Providing my intention is to persevere I will receive great graces from Our Lord through the redemptive price he paid for my soul.
 
                       ...and most of all because they offend thine infinite goodness...


Providing  my  intention  as  a  penitent  has  not  changed  and  I  continue  to  receive  the Sacraments  I will continue to receive sanctifying grace and it becomes clear how much God/Christ loved me - loves me.   There is a beautiful prayer said at the foot of the cross which I will add at the end.   For now though, it is obvious and simple, that if I should pray for the gift of TRUE repentance, I am asking to know the sorrow I have caused in my ignorance.  Not good enough to just believe what I have been told, but to experience in my soul true sorrow for what Our Lord has suffered for me.  If he has suffered so much, and he has, then would he not feel comforted if at least I asked for this?   Would I not then say: 

..and I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace,  never to offend thee again, and carefully to avoid the occasions of sin.   Amen

Makes sense to me!   On my own strength I will not improve.   Sometimes out of habit I will sin again but there is no excuse for despair because I am improving all the time...if I am sincere in prayer-life.   Mortal sin means of my own free will I sin like Adam and Eve...I did not inherit this kind of sin and if I die in a state of mortal sin....then like Adam and Eve I must be truly sorry for God to forgive me - which he does if I go to Confession as soon as possible.   Venial sins are not mortal to the soul...but if indulged in show a lack of truthfulness in my prayer-life and can lead me away from God.   The fervent pray-er however, grows to love God for himself...hence the motivation becomes strong to avoid places where I would deliberately put myself in the way of temptation.   It  goes  without  saying  that  anybody  who  goes to Confession without the intention to change makes a mockery of God and his 'second state is worse than his first'.

When a person begins to pray through Christ in his church he would not persevere if there was no response from God, but whilst there are periods of desolation they have their place too.  Overall, however, it becomes obvious that God is changing the heart bringing his wayward son home. This is the real miracle.

BEHOLD,  O kind and most sweet Jesus, I fall upon my knees before Thee, and with the most fervent desire of my heart, I pray and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst impress upon my heart a lively sense of faith, hope and charity with true repentance for my sins, and a firm resolve to make amends. Whilst with deep affection and grief of soul, I ponder within myself and contemplate thy five most precious wounds, having before my eyes, that which Thy prophet David spoke about Thee, O good Jesus: "They have pierced my hands and feet, they have   numbered all my bones." Amen

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I CONFESS to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I beseech blessed Mary ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, to pray for me to the Lord our God. Amen.


This last prayer is a classic example of the Intercessory structure of the Mother Church. It is here that the Pewsitter (Ps.) knows that his prayers are being said in heaven itself because of the indelible and indestructible path laid out from the heart of God directly to his beloved Church. The Ps. willing submits to God allowing himself to be held in the arms of the Father in heaven. All made possible solely through the prism of the crucified Lord as his advocate.


                                                       WITHIN  the  CHURCH
                                     INTERCESSORY  PRAYER   is  UNCEASING          

Almost every day in the life of the Church the life of a canonised saint is celebrated.    Liturgical prayer is prayer offered with sanctified words.   This means that the words  used are of divine origin....not formed by me but by God Himself.   God has given me words to ask for what he cannot refuse.  Almost all of them are scriptural. The responses/petitions etc. are based on seeking the graces that God wants to give me as told in the Scriptures.   I do not have to worry about prayers not being heard when I pray liturgically because I know I am praying through Christ's intercession for me with the words that Christ gave to me.  

When seeking the intercession of the saint of a particular day I read the scriptural words that his steps shall never be supplanted.   Liturgical words are living words that never die for as long as the church exists.   The church keeps them alive because Christ's words will never pass away even though heaven and earth will pass away.   After that, words are not necessary.   What this means is that the saint has an irreplaceable position in the structure of the Church so that as a body I cannot do without his/her intervention on my behalf without losing ground.   His/her intervention does not cease if I fail to seek it but I fail to benefit from it.  It is rather like a mother does not cease to love her children even if they have forgotten all about her....but the children will have missed out on it all due to their indifference.   All the saints pray unceasingly for  the souls on earth, but when the church celebrates each one singly I am reminded that each of the steps of the other saints cannot be supplanted either. That one saint continues to fulfil his unique role completing the whole.   And there is such variety!  We have so many relatives in heaven that none of us can be orphaned or unable to find a soul mate.  And since I cannot remember them all at once, they are presented to me daily and individually so that I get to know them and seek their help throughout that day.    

In addition to all this neither can I be supplanted.   This is so because Christ died for me as if I were the only one on earth (see previous).   Christ comes to me and each other in Holy Communion, in the Sacrament of Mercy (Confession) and during the Sacrifice of the Mass.
The baptised Catholic has an indelible mark on his soul that cannot be removed...his soul has God's protective mark on it...is as precious to God as if he were the only person on earth...and by extension no soul is capable of being supplanted because there is only one of me and one of each other person.  Not one person is excluded from becoming complete in the Body of Christ without which I cannot become complete.  Finally, the soul is immortal - it cannot die.   Eternal life...or eternal death is a reality revealed to us by Our Lord as the reason for his supreme Sacrifice on Calvary.....if I reject his mercy I have no advocate to plead for my soul.