INTERCESSION. — In the theological sense, this means the intervention of a creature with God in order to obtain favors from him for the benefit of another creature. Since it unfolds entirely on the plane of the relations between Creator and creature, i. necessarily has as its primary object those goods that essentially concern these relations, namely, spiritual goods; the others, temporal goods, enter into it only subordinately to the primordial end. All creatures that have not yet attained the definitive and immutable state of their relations with God can be subjects of i.; hence excluded from it are all and only the blessed in heaven and the damned in hell.
Every i. prayer (v.) of petition addressed to God; but sometimes it rests solely upon this, and is then called impetratory i.; at other times it is accompanied also by the offering of meritorious and satisfactory works, such as voluntary mortifications, the acceptance of sufferings in a spirit of penance, the offering of one’s life, and almsgiving, which Catholic dogma teaches can, under certain conditions, be performed for the benefit of others (v. VICARIOUS SATISFACTION); in this case i. is satisfactory and can be made only by the living on this earth and in a state of Grace. The efficacy of i. follows the laws governing the efficacy of prayer and satisfaction.
The possibility and actual reality of i. in Catholic dogma reveal most fully the communal aspect of our relations with God, whereby creatures, in these same relations, are not like atoms independent of one another, but are mutually united in solidarity. God freely willed to observe this law in his intervention in the world, intending not merely to draw a certain number of individuals to himself, but to found a city, a kingdom, in which each individual would be concerned with and share in the fate of the others. Thus the fate and activity of the angels, good or evil, are indifferent to no 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 in solidarity with Adam and with the other sinners, and still more, in his return to God, he is united in solidarity with Christ, although he participates in his benefits in some way only dependently upon his relations with that human-divine society which is the Church, whose stages of development and whose members, on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven, are united with Christ and with one another in supernatural life (v. COMMUNION OF SAINTS). I. in Catholic dogma is a particular manifestation of this general law of salvation in community: among the ways in which God grants his benefits to creatures, by virtue of that law he foresaw and willed from eternity that of granting them through the i. of another creature, precisely because every creature in Christ and through Christ is and feels united with all the others in the fortunes of the kingdom. The interceding creatures are: Christ, the angels and the saints, especially Mary Most Holy, human beings on this earth, and the souls in purgatory.
Christ, insofar as he is man, hypostatic union (v.) of his human nature in the person of the Word, not only has with God a power of i. of infinite extent and efficacy, because he merited every grace in the strictest justice, but is also, properly speaking, the one mediator between God and men and the one way leading to the Father (I Tim. 2, 5; Io. 14, 6; Mt. 11, 27; Rom. 5, 1; 12, 24; Hebr. 10, 19-25; Act. 4, 12); hence any other i. with God on behalf of men, 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 as ultimately granted through his merits. Therefore, since all other i. are subordinate to his supreme mediation and derive their efficacy from it, they do not detract from it, much less supplant it (Denz-U, 984), but are its fruit and glorification. For this reason every petition that the Church addresses to God in the liturgy, even when invoking the i. of other saints, is always made «per Jesum Christum nostrum Dominum». Christ himself, from the first moment of his incarnation,
as the high priest between God and men (Hebr. 4, 14-15, 10), exercised during his earthly life the i. of impetration (Lc. 22, 31 sgg.; 23, 34; Io. 17, 6-26) and of perfect satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race through the sacrifice of his blood (Hebr. 9, 11-28; Rom. 3, 25 sgg.; Eph. 1, 7), thus becoming the universal Redeemer. And in heaven he continues eternally before God his impetratory i. for men: «sempre essendo vivo, sì da poter intercedere in loro favore» (Hebr. 7, 24; cf. Io. 14, 16; Rom. 8, 34; I Io. 2, 1-2).
That the angels and the saints, among whom Mary Most Holy holds a special place, subordinate to Christ and in union with him, exercise in heaven impetratory i. for men, including individuals, is a dogma of Catholic faith proposed by the ordinary magisterium, implicit in the dogma concerning the lawfulness and usefulness of the worship and invocation of the angels (Denz-U, 320) and of the saints (ibid., 984 sgg.), and expressly inculcated by the Council of Trent against Protestant errors (ibid.).
Scripture already presents explicit instances of i. by angels (Zach. 1, 12; Job 5, 1; 33, 23 sgg.) and by saints (II Mach. 15, 11-16), and shows us how they are concerned with the fortunes of the Kingdom of God on earth (Apoc. passim, e.g., 6, 10) and offer the prayers of men to God (Tob. 12, 12; Apoc. 5, 8; 8, 3). The matter is then perfectly logical within the whole of Christian Revelation, according to which the blessed know our prayers and our needs; this is a fact of which, in the Church, apart from the manner of explaining it, no one who admits a general intermediate state of just souls before their final and complete retribution at the Last Judgment has any doubt, and of which there can be still less doubt once the point has been definitively clarified as a doctrine of faith (Denz-U, 530, 693), namely, that the angels and the blessed in heaven already enjoy the beatific vision, and thus see in God everything that in some way concerns them, including, naturally, the prayers that we address to them. One must also add the aforementioned communal law of God’s intervention in the world, whereby every member of the city of God is concerned with the fate of men who have not yet definitively reached their end; and the now perfect state of the charity of the blessed, for it is incomprehensible that those who, while living here below and possessing charity that was still imperfect, were nevertheless impelled by it to intercede ardently for their neighbor, should now, possessing perfect charity and being all the more powerful with God, lose interest in the eternal salvation of men. This explains the ever-increasing attention given in the Church to the doctrine of the i. of the angels and saints and to the consequent invocation and worship of them (v.). The essential features of this doctrine are already attested before the fourth century, especially by Origene (De oratione, Cohortatio ad Martyrium) and by a considerable number of cemetery paintings and inscriptions, such as that of Atticus: «Attice, dormi in pace de tua incolumitate securus et pro nostris peccatis peti sollicitus» (v. G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. d'Archeologia Cristiana, 5ª serie [1894], p. 58); in the fourth and fifth centuries it received full elaboration, for example, in s. Girolamo, because of the explicit defense he made of it against Vigilanzio (v.) in his Contra Vigilantium; likewise in s. Agostino and in a great number of liturgical, monumental, pictorial, and epigraphic testimonies, among which the inscription of Genziano is beautiful and comprehensive: «Gentianus fidelis in pace, qui vixit annis XXI mensibus VII dies XVI; et in orationi(bu)s tuis roges pro nobis, quia scimus te in Christo» (O. Marucchi, I monumenti del Museo cristiano lateranense, Milano 1910, tav. 51, n. 15).
Patristic documents (e.g., St. Augustine, De cura pro mortati gerenda, 4, 6), liturgical documents (e.g., in Masses for the dead and in the funeral rites of the Ambrosian rite), and epigraphic documents 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 impetratory and satisfactory intercession of the living for other living persons is likewise a dogma of faith proposed by the ordinary Magisterium and abundantly attested by 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; I Sam. 7, 8 ff.; Samuel; Job. 42, 8: Job) and in the New (e.g., the plural form in the petitions of the Pater; Act. 7, 60; 12, 5; Rom. 15, 30; Eph. 1, 15; 6, 8-20; I Tim. 2, 1-4; Iac. 5, 16-18), as well as by documents of ecclesiastical tradition concerning the practice of the faithful, both private and liturgical—for example, the admonition of the Didachè, 1, 3: «Pray for your enemies and fast for those who persecute you»; the prayers and recommendations requested of confessors of the faith; and 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 exercise impetratory and satisfactory intercession on purgatory (v.), an intercession exercised through every kind of suffrage, especially the sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, almsgiving, and other pious works (ibid.), indulgences (v.) which the Church, according to the common opinion of theologians (ibid., 762, 1542), by virtue of these souls’ belonging to the Mystical Body of Christ and to 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 accepted by God, although we do not know when he will grant it or to which soul he will apply II. Sinners themselves can in some way benefit the souls in purgatory by having Masses celebrated and pious works performed by righteous souls, and by praying for them, if God in his sheer mercy is pleased to hear their prayers, although they lack merit.
That the souls in purgatory may in turn exercise impetratory intercession on behalf of the living, especially their benefactors, is an opinion increasingly common among modern theologians. It is supported by the very widespread practice of the faithful, who invoke those souls, although 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 and possess a very perfect degree of charity; nor does the state of punishment in which they find themselves seem necessarily to prevent God from making our needs known to them or from accepting their prayer. The ancient theologians, however, especially St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2a-2a, q. 83, a. 11, ad 3; a. 4, ad 3), were generally of the opposite 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 objects of worship.