Are there any Christians who ask for help from the mother of Jesus Christ or other saints?
Do they think they are Gods?
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Orthodox and Catholics ask the mother of Jesus Mary and other saints for prayerful help, that is, to pray to God for them. If you keep this in mind, the question disappears. A similar practice exists, for example, among Jews, as well as among Muslims-tawassul. Protestant Christians, as already mentioned, usually do not have such a practice.
Only Orthodox and Catholics have saints, while Protestants do not, as is well known. Remember the story of Cain and Abel? Abel's prayers and offerings went straight up, but Cain couldn't do it, even though he tried. Why? According to popular interpretation, the severity of sins interfered. It is believed that saints are closer to people and it is easier for them to hear people's prayers and pass them on to God. So they are asked to: “Saint/holy one, pray to God for us.”
This is still a tradition coming from Egypt, you can pray directly, or you can ask the priest-then for sure.
Yes, there are such people, I think that there are a lot of them. Another question is whether they are Christians. The word “Christian “does not just come from the word” Christ”; it means a person who trusts his life to Jesus Christ. “Trust” also means asking for help. If a person asks for help from the mother of Jesus Christ, then the question arises-who did he really entrust his life to: Jesus Christ or His mother? To be honest, it was more honest to call yourself “Marian” rather than”Christian.”
As for the so-called “conciliarity”, this is nothing more than a theological cover for a real distrust of Christ in favor of trusting someone else. Yes, we ask for prayerful help (and not only prayerful, but also material) from people around us, but there is a fundamental difference between turning to living people and turning to those who have already died. The living are not ascribed divine attributes, but the dead are essentially ascribed, for example, omnipresence, omniscience, special holiness, etc. If appeals to living people can be conciliatory, complementary to appeals to Christ, then appeals to the dead are no longer complementary, but a substitute for appeals to Christ.
Christians have such a concept as “conciliar prayer”. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them,” says the Scripture.
The meaning of the appeal to the Mother of God, to the saints, is precisely in an attempt to create conciliarity, to ask them to pray together, to intercede for us before God. After all, these people are close to God, and he will listen to their words better than to ours.
Orthodox believers do not think that the saints they turn to are gods. When asked why you pray to someone other than God, they answer that they ask the saints to intercede for them, since the saints are now alive, they are with God, near His throne, and the Orthodox regard an appeal to them in prayer as a request from the living that the saints ask God for them. “After all, you ask your religious friends to pray for you when you have a special need? This is how we ask the saints, ” Orthodox believers say. And here, at first glance, everything is correct. The saints are really alive now, they are with God, at His throne and can communicate with Him. But in the practice of praying to them, there are some assumptions based on the fact that divine properties are attributed to the saints. Of course, they are not deified, but it is assumed that they can hear prayers addressed to them from anywhere in the world, and at the same time. This is what God can do. The assumption that it can be someone else is the assignment of divine properties to someone else besides God. Further, in the prayers addressed to the saints, there are not only requests for intercession before the Heavenly Father, but also quite specific requests that are usually addressed to God. Here's just one example::
To My Most Blessed Queen (Translation)
My Most Blessed Queen, my Hope, Theotokos, Shelter for orphans and wanderers Protector, Joy to the sorrowful, Patroness of the offended! You see my trouble, you see my sorrow; help me as if I were weak, guide me as if I were a stranger. You know my grievance: resolve it of your own free will. For I have no other help but You, no other Protector, no good Comforter – only You, O Mother of God: may you preserve me and protect me forever and ever. Amen.
The Scriptures teach believers to pray only to God. Jesus Christ responds to the request of His disciples to teach them how to pray by giving the Lord's Prayer. The Savior himself prayed only to God the Father. The apostles and Christians did the same. The only reference not to Heavenly Father is found in the Bible in the book of Acts: “And they stoned Stephen, who prayed and said, Lord Jesus! Receive my spirit “(Acts 7: 59). Stephen turns to Jesus Christ.
God is omniscient. From the moment of thought to prayer. It doesn't need intermediaries. To pray several times for one thing – to doubt the entire knowledge of God. The tradition of intermediaries to God from the secular technique of petitions.