https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=1lW2kIiVjTs
So Benjamin Wood says, We often pray some variation of the following to Christ through the prayers of thy most pure mother, our guardian angels, the saints. Lord have mercy on me. How should we understand this phrasing? What does it mean to pray for something through the prayers of a holy one? This is very important to understand and it has to do It really has to do with the way in which we understand reality. It has to do with the idea because you wouldn’t say that it’s not just about the prayers of the most holy ones. The reason why we ask others to pray for us, you know, you could say something like we don’t need to pray. God knows what you need. Saint Paul even says it. He says, he said God knows your needs, you know, God hears the secret whispers of your heart, you know, it’s not like we have to utter these phrases so that God hears us or else he won’t know what it is that we need. Or he won’t save us because, you know, we haven’t asked for it or something like that. It has to do with this fractal, the way the world works in terms of fractal relationships. You could understand it as a chain of intercession, a chain of care. Think about it that way. There’s a chain of care and a chain of reverence towards those things which model behavior and being to us. And so we pray to God. We thank God for the saints. Then we ask the saints to pray for us. And then the last move is this one, which is the one which kind of reveals the secret of what’s going on, is that we want God to save us through their prayers. We pray that God save us through their prayers because that’s how it all kind of participates. We want to be united to the saints in prayer. We want them to pray for us. We want our love and attention to move up and down the hierarchy and that it happens in every way so that we’re united. So if God saves us through our prayer, through their prayers, then we are united in love to them. They are united with us in the ways that are deep and very powerful. And so that is really understanding. And so if you look at the way that the prayers to saints are structured, people often just say, you know, praying to saints is idolatry. Praying to saints is bad because you’re praying to them as if they’re gods. But if you look at the way that these prayers are structured, they really do always have that structure. It’s like we celebrate the person for what they are and what they’ve done and what they model for us. Then we thank God for that model. Then we ask the saint to pray for us because we see them as modeling God. And so as being a just, you know, as being someone who is just and whose prayers are powerful because of that. And then finally we ask God to answer our prayers through their prayers, to basically save us through their prayers. And so you kind of see this like cycle of love and care and attention which moves up to God and then comes back down to us. And it really is that beautiful image of how unity and multiplicity co-exist together and that we’re not just a bunch of flat individuals, you know, and then there’s God up there. But rather it is this this beautiful symphony of prayers and and principalities and people who are close to God wanting us to move up into God with them and us asking them to pray for us to God. And so it’s like this beautiful image of a yeah, you can kind of see it in your mind if you kind of see people going up and then trying, you know, wanting people to come with them, asking God to take them with them and us asking them to pray for us. And asking God to to use them because we love for that to be true. We love for the church, the body to be united in these powerful bonds. So hopefully there’s a good image of why we pray the way we do. And it all leads to the idea of theosis. It all leads to the idea that we are called to be in the divine council. We are called to be, you know, the agents of God in the world. You know, we are called to be like the angels, to be the patrons of aspects of different reality and to model the love of God down to those that are under our responsibility. And that ultimately leads to true participation in God. True deification to the extent that that’s possible. You