Saints and Mary: What Lutherans and Roman Catholics agree on about them

If you’re wondering what Lutherans AND Roman Catholics can affirm about saints, here’s what the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dia­logue’s joint document, The One Medi­a­tor, the Saints, and Mary, has to say about it. Again, h/t to the folks at “Here I Walk.”

The document states some “church-uniting con­ver­gences” :

“1. We reit­er­ate the basic affir­ma­tion that ‘our entire hope of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and sal­va­tion rests on Christ Jesus and the gospel whereby the good news of God’s mer­ci­ful action in Christ is made known; we do not place our trust in any­thing other than God’s promise and sav­ing work in Christ.’ (§103)

“2. We now fur­ther assert together that Jesus Christ is the sole Medi­a­tor in God’s plan of sal­va­tion (I Tim. 2:5). Christ’s sav­ing work and role in God’s design thus deter­mine not only the con­tent of the gospel and its com­mu­ni­ca­tion but also all Chris­t­ian life, includ­ing our own and that of Mary and the saints who are now in heaven…

“8. The term ‘saint’ is used in both our tra­di­tions for all those jus­ti­fied by the grace of Christ, and, to one degree or another, for cer­tain indi­vid­u­als among them, marked by holi­ness, who live the life of faith in devo­tion toward God and love toward the neigh­bor in exem­plary ways, call­ing forth praise to God…

“10. The fel­low­ship of those sanc­ti­fied, the ‘holy ones’ or saints, includes believ­ers both liv­ing and dead. There is thus a sol­i­dar­ity of the church through­out the world with the church triumphant…

“13. In the fel­low­ship of the liv­ing and departed saints, believ­ers are inspired by oth­ers, as exam­ples of God’s grace, to greater faith, to good works, and to thanks­giv­ing for one another.

“14. Chris­tians honor saints in at least three ways: by thank­ing God for them; by hav­ing faith strength­ened as a result of the saints’ response to God’s grace; and by imi­tat­ing in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions their faith and other virtues.

“15. Among the saints who have played a role in God’s plan of sal­va­tion for human­ity, Mary, who bore Christ, is in par­tic­u­lar to be hon­ored, as ‘God-bearer’ (theotokos) and as the pure, holy, and ‘most blessed Vir­gin’ (lau­datis­sima virgo)…

“17. Saints on earth ask one another to pray to God for each other through Christ. They are nei­ther com­manded nor for­bid­den to ask departed saints to pray for them.

“18. Devo­tion to the saints and Mary should not be prac­ticed in ways that detract from the ulti­mate trust that is to be placed in Christ alone as Mediator.”

The whole article from which this is excerpted can be found here.