INTERCESSION. — In theological usage, it signifies the intervention of one creature before God to obtain favors from Him on behalf of another creature. Since it unfolds entirely within the sphere of the relationship between Creator and creature, intercession necessarily has as its primary object those goods which essentially concern this relationship, namely spiritual goods; temporal goods enter into it only secondarily in view of the primordial end. Only and all creatures that have not yet attained the immutable definitive state of their relationship with God can be the subject of intercession; hence, all and only the blessed in heaven and the damned in hell are excluded from II.
Every intercession includes a prayer (q.v.) of petition to God; but sometimes it rests solely upon this and is then called imperatorial intercession. At other times, it is accompanied also by the offering of meritorious satisfactions, such as voluntary mortifications, the acceptance of sufferings in a spirit of penance, the offering of one’s life, alms, which Catholic doctrine teaches can, under certain conditions, be applied to the benefit of another (q.V. SATISFACTION, VICARIOUS). In this case, the intercession is satisfactorial and can be made only by the living on earth and in the state of grace. The efficacy of intercession follows the laws governing the efficacy of prayer and satisfaction.
The possibility and actual reality of intercession in Catholic doctrine most clearly reveal the communal aspect of our relationship with God, whereby creatures, within this very relationship, are not like independent atoms, but are united in solidarity with one another. This law God has freely willed to observe in His intervention in the world, aiming not merely to draw to Himself a certain number of individuals, but to found a city, a kingdom, in which each individual is involved and united with the fate of the others. Thus, the fate and activity of the angels, good or evil, are not indifferent to any human individual, nor is the fate of any human individual indifferent to the angels; thus, every human individual in his fall is in some way united with Adam and with other sinners, and even more so, in his return to God, he is united with Christ, to whose benefits, moreover, he participates only in dependence upon his relationship with that human-divine society which is the Church, whose phases of development and whose members, on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven, are in communion of supernatural life with Christ and with one another (q.V. COMMUNION OF SAINTS). In Catholic doctrine, intercession is a particular manifestation of this general law of salvation in community: among the ways in which God grants His benefits to creatures, He has, by virtue of this law, foreseen and willed from all eternity that they be accorded through the intercession of another creature, precisely because every creature in Christ and through Christ is and feels itself united to all others in the fortunes of the kingdom. The interceding creatures are: Christ, the angels and the saints, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, men on earth, and the souls in purgatory.
As man, by virtue of the hypostatic union (q.v.) of His human nature in the person of the Word, Christ not only has before God an intercessory power of infinite extent and efficacy, because He has merited every grace with strict justice, but He is in the proper sense the unique mediator between God and men and the only way that leads to the Father (1 Tim. 2:5; John 14:6; Matt. 11:27; Rom. 5:1; 12:24; Heb. 10:19-25; Acts 4:12). Hence, any other intercession on behalf of men before God, after original sin, must be understood as subordinate and dependent upon this supreme mediation of Christ, and every grace granted to them from that moment must be seen as granted ultimately for His merits. Therefore, all other intercessions, being subordinate to His supreme mediation and deriving their efficacy from it, do not derogate from it, nor do they supplant it (Denz.-U., 984), but are rather a fruit and a glorification of II. This is why every petition that the Church addresses to God in the liturgy, even when invoking the intercession of other saints, is always made through and for Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ Himself, from the very first moment of the Incarnation, as the high priest between God and men (Heb. 4:14-15; 10:1), exercised intercession during His earthly life (Luke 22:31-32; 23:34; John 17:6-26) and perfect satisfaction for the sins of all mankind through the sacrifice of His blood (Heb. 9:11-28; Rom. 3:25-26; Eph. 1:7), thereby becoming the universal Redeemer. And in heaven He continues eternally before God His work of intercession for men: “He always lives to make intercession on their behalf” (Heb. 7:25; cf. John 14:16; Rom. 8:34; 1 John 2:1-2).
That the angels and the saints, among whom especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, subordinate to Christ and in union with Him, exercise in heaven intercession even for individual men, is a dogma of Catholic faith proposed by the ordinary magisterium, implicit in the dogma of the lawfulness and utility of the cult and invocation of angels (Denz.-U., 320) and of the saints (ibid., 984-985), and expressly inculcated by the Council of Trent against Protestant errors (ibid.).
Scripture already shows explicit cases of angelic intercession (Zech. 1:12; Job 5:1; 33:23-24) and of saintly intercession (2 Macc. 15:11-16), and reveals how they take an interest in the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth (Rev. passim, e.g., 6:10) and offer the prayers of men to God (Tob. 12:12; Rev. 5:8; 8:3). This is perfectly consistent with the whole of Christian Revelation, according to which the blessed know our prayers and our needs—a fact which, in the Church, apart from the manner of explaining it, is not doubted even by those who admitted a general intermediate state of righteous souls before their final and complete retribution at the Last Judgment, and which can be doubted even less once it is definitively clarified as a point of faith (Denz.-U., 530, 693) that the angels and the blessed in heaven already enjoy the beatific vision, whereby they see in God all that in any way concerns them, including, naturally, the prayers we address to them. To this is added the aforementioned communal law of God’s intervention in the world, whereby each member of the city of God is concerned with the fate of those not yet definitively brought to their end; and the now perfect state of charity of the blessed, whereby it is inconceivable that those who, while still on earth and possessed of an imperfect charity, were nonetheless impelled by it to intercede ardently for their neighbor, should now, when they possess perfect charity, be indifferent to the eternal salvation of men. Thus is explained the ever-increasing attention accorded in the Church to the doctrine of the intercession of angels and saints and to the consequent invocation and cult of them (q.v.). The essential traits of this doctrine are already attested before the 4th century, especially by Origen (De oratione, Exhortation to Martyrdom) and by a good number of funerary paintings and inscriptions, such as that of Atticus: “Attice, sleep in peace, secure in your safety, and be solicitous to ask for our sins” (q.V. G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. d'Archeologia Cristiana, 5th series [1894], p. 58); in the 4th and 5th centuries, it is fully elaborated, e.g., in St. Jerome, for his explicit defense of it against the denials of the priest Vigilantius (q.v.) in his Contra Vigilantium; likewise in St. Augustine and in a great number of liturgical, monumental, pictorial, and epigraphic testimonies, among which is the fine and comprehensive inscription of Gentianus: “Gentianus, faithful, in peace, who lived 21 years, 7 months, 16 days; and in your prayers ask for us, for we know that you are in Christ” (O. Marucchi, I monumenti del Museo cristiano lateranense, Milano 1910, tav. 51, n. 15).
Patristic documents (e.g., St. Augustine, *De cura pro mortuis gerenda*, 4, 6), liturgical (e.g., in the Masses for the dead, in the Ambrosian rite funerals), and epigraphic sources attest to the belief, now common in the Church, that the blessed intercede not only for the living but also for the souls in purgatory.
The intercessory and satisfactory power of the living for other living persons is also a dogma of faith proposed by the ordinary magisterium and widely attested in Scripture, both in the Old Testament (e.g., Gen. 18:22-32; 20:7; Abraham intercedes for Sodom and will intercede for Abimelech; Ex. 32:11-14; Num. 14:13-20: Moses intercedes for the people; 1 Sam. 7:8 ff.: Samuel; Job 42:8: Job) and in the New Testament (e.g., the plural form in the petitions of the Pater Noster; Acts 7:60; 12:5; Rom. 15:30; Eph. 1:15; 6:8-20; 1 Tim. 2:1-4; Jas. 5:16-18), as well as in the documents of ecclesiastical tradition regarding the practice of the faithful, both private and liturgical. For example, the admonition in the *Didachē*, 1, 3: “Pray for your enemies and for those who persecute you”; the prayers and recommendations sought from confessors of the faith; the prayers for the living in the Canon of the Mass, in the orations of the Mass, and in the administration of the Sacraments and sacramentals.
It is likewise a dogma of faith (Denz.-U., 464, 693) that the living possess intercessory and satisfactory power on behalf of the souls in purgatory (v.), which is exercised through every kind of suffrage, especially the sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, alms, and other pious works (ibid.), as well as through indulgences (v.), which the Church, according to the common opinion of theologians (ibid., 762, 1542), in virtue of the membership of these souls in the Mystical Body of Christ and in the Communion of Saints, has the power to apply to them by way of suffrage. This intercession of the living for the dead is always acceptable to God, although we do not know when He will grant it or to which soul He will apply II. Even sinners can in some way benefit the souls in purgatory by having Masses celebrated and pious works performed by righteous souls, as well as by praying for them, if it pleases God, purely out of mercy, to grant their prayers, though devoid of merit.
That the souls in purgatory may in turn exercise intercessory power on behalf of the living, especially their benefactors, is an opinion increasingly common among modern theologians, supported by the widespread practice of the faithful, who invoke those souls, though this is never done in the liturgy, and by the attitude of the ordinary magisterium, which seems favorable. In reality, nothing prevents these souls from praying for us, since they are in a state of grace, possess a very perfect degree of charity, and the state of suffering in which they find themselves does not seem necessarily to prevent God from making known to them our needs or accepting their prayer. However, ancient theologians, in particular St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 83, a. 11, ad 3; a. 4, ad 3), generally held the contrary opinion, and, in any case, the invocation of the souls in purgatory can never be equated with that of the saints, nor can they be the object of cult.