their prayers, HELP, and ASSISTANCE. Whether these last words can be
interpreted as merely words of surplusage, or whether they must be
understood to mean that the faithful must have recourse to some help and
assistance of the saints beyond their intercession, is a question to
which we need not again revert. If it had been intended to embrace other
kinds of beneficial succour, and other help and assistance, perhaps it
would be difficult to find words more expressive of such general aid and
support as a human being might hope to derive, in answer to prayer from
the Giver of all good. And certainly they are words employed by the
Church, when addressing prayers directly to God. Be this as it may, the
public service-books of the Church of Rome unquestionably, by no means
adhere exclusively to such addresses to the saints, as supplicate them
to pray for the faithful on earth. Many a prayer is couched in language
which can be interpreted only as conveying a petition to them
immediately for their assistance, temporal and spiritual.

But let us calmly review some of the prayers, supplications,
invocations, or by whatever name religious addresses now offered to the
saints may be called; and {258} first, we will examine that class in
which the petitioners ask merely for the intercession of the saints.

We have an example of this class in an invocation addressed to St.
Ambrose on his day, December 7; the very servant of Christ in whose
hymns and prayers no address of prayer or invocation to any saint or
martyr can be found.

"O thou most excellent teacher, the light of the Holy Church, O blessed
Ambrose, thou lover of the divine law, deprecate for us [or intercede
for us with] the Son of God[97]."