must remember that, while the Church declares it necessary for salvation
to pray to God, she merely asserts that it is "good and useful to invoke
the saints."(208) To ask the prayers of the saints, far from being
useless, is most profitable. By invoking their intercession, instead of
one we have many praying for us. To our own tepid petitions we unite the
fervent supplications of the blessed and "the Lord will hear the prayers
of the just."(209) To the petitions of us, poor pilgrims in this vale of
tears, are united those of the citizens of heaven. We ask them to pray to
their God and to our God, to their Father and to our Father, that we may
one day share their delights in that blessed country in company with our
common Redeemer, Jesus Christ, with whom to live is to reign.

Chapter XIV.

IS IT LAWFUL TO HONOR THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AS A SAINT, TO INVOKE HER AS
AN INTERCESSOR, AND TO IMITATE HER AS A MODEL.

I. Is It Lawful To Honor Her?

The sincere adorers and lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ look with
reverence on every object with which He was associated, and they conceive
an affection for every person that was near and dear to Him on earth. The
closer the intimacy of those persons with our Savior, the holier do they
appear in our estimation, just as those planets which revolve the nearest
around the sun partake most of its light and heat.

There is something hallowed to the eye of the Christian in the very soil
of Judea, because it was pressed by the footprints of our Blessed
Redeemer. With what reverent steps we would enter the cave of Bethlehem
because _there_ was born the Savior of the world. With what religious
demeanor we would tread the streets of Nazareth when we remembered that
_there_ were spent the days of His boyhood. What profound religious awe
would fill our hearts on ascending Mount Calvary, where He paid by his
blood the ransom of our souls.

But if the _lifeless_ soil claims so much reverence, how much more
veneration would be enkindled in our hearts for the _living_ persons who
were the friends and associates of our Savior on earth! We know that He
exercised a certain salutary and magnetic influence on those whom He
approached. "All the multitude sought to touch Him, for virtue went out
from Him and healed all,"(210) as happened to the woman who had been
troubled with an issue of blood.(211)

We would seem, indeed, to draw near to Jesus, if we