Study & Discussion Guide

Should Christians Pray to Saints?

A study on praying to Mary and the saints, the veneration of relics, and the one Mediator who has already thrown the door to God wide open.

The episode opens on a viral video: a cardinal lifts the roughly thousand-year-old skull of St. Agatha, set atop a jeweled gold bust, crowns it, bows before it, prays, and carries it out to a cheering crowd. It's arresting — and it puts a very old question on the table. Should a Christian pray to Mary or to the saints? Should we bow to relics and images to reach God? The hosts' answer is a warm-hearted but firm no — and, importantly, they say plainly it's "not an attack on Catholics, it's an attack on Catholicism." This guide walks the same path they do: not to win an argument, but to ask what the Bible actually shows about how a believer comes to God.

What the text actually says

• The one question that frames everything. Josh puts it to an imagined Catholic friend: "What precisely is missing from my access to Christ that I'd have to go through Mary or a saint to make up for?" Scripture's answer is: nothing. "There is one mediator between God and humanity" (1 Tim 2:5) — not two, not Christ-plus-Mary. Jesus laid down His life so you could come to God directly. Why would you then go through anyone else?
• A mountain of "come straight in" verses. The Bible's picture of prayer is unbroken and direct: "pray to your Father" (Matt 6:6); "Ask, and it will be given to you" (Matt 7:7); "whatever you ask in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13); "if you ask the Father… he will give it to you in my name" (John 16:23); "let your requests be made known to God" (Phil 4:6); "approach the throne of grace with boldness" (Heb 4:16), because our high priest "sympathizes with our weaknesses" (4:15). Every one of them sends you straight to God.
• The absent-and-present test. Present: direct-access verses everywhere. Absent: a single command, model, or example of anyone praying to a departed saint. James and Stephen both die in the New Testament — and nobody prays to them. Even in history, the first faint trace of it shows up around AD 250 (two centuries after Christ), and formal endorsement of venerating images comes only much later, at the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787. The apostles' church simply didn't do it.
• What idolatry actually is. Two working definitions from the episode: "putting a created thing in the place of the Creator," and "going to something else besides God to get something only God can give." The second commandment is blunt: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image… You shall not bow down to them… for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God" (Exod 20:4-5). Read that, then re-watch a crowd bowing and praying to a crowned relic. It's hard not to see it described.
• "But it's veneration, not worship" — the reply, answered. The Catholic distinction is that this is higher honor, not worship. State it fairly. But two things: worship is a matter of the heart, which only God can see — and He calls Himself jealous; and the practice itself (bowing, praying, crowning, parading) matches what Exodus 20 calls worship, whatever label is put on it. Honestly, many Catholics themselves looked at the St. Agatha ceremony and said it went too far.
• A good thing becomes a "God thing." God Himself told Moses to make the bronze serpent, and healed people through it (Num 21:8) — a good, God-ordained object. Yet centuries later, when Israel began "burning incense to it," the godly king Hezekiah smashed it and renamed it Nehushtan — "just a piece of bronze" (2 Kings 18:4). The lesson lands on everyone: even a God-given thing becomes an idol the moment we venerate it. "A good thing can become a bad thing if it becomes a God thing."
• The sharpest point: divine use is not divine authorization. Yes, God works through physical things — Elisha's bones, the bronze serpent, and Paul's handkerchiefs, which healed the sick (Acts 19:11-12). But God using an object never licenses venerating it. Notice: no one in Acts bows to Paul or prays to his apron. And when Elisha picks up Elijah's fallen cloak, he doesn't cry out to the departed Elijah — he cries, "Where is Yahweh, the God of Elijah?" (2 Kings 2:14). Even holding the prophet's mantle, he prays to God, not the dead man.
• Mary in particular. Because there is one mediator (1 Tim 2:5), the title "Mediatrix" (co-mediator) doesn't fit — even the Vatican has recently stepped back from it. This isn't about running Mary down; she is genuinely blessed among women. It's about something subtler: the enemy is perfectly content to get your eyes "even one degree off Jesus." Honor those who've gone before — but pray to, bow to, and fix your eyes on Jesus alone.