One Little Four Letter Word | Pipes with Pappy — Episode 4

What does the word “pray” actually mean?

For many modern Christians, prayer means one thing: talking to God. So when Catholics say they “pray to Mary” or “pray to the saints,” the conclusion can seem obvious. If prayer belongs to God, Catholics must be worshiping them.

But what if the argument begins with a definition Catholics never stopped using differently?

In this episode of Pipes with Pappy, I dig into the history of one little four-letter word. We’ll look at how pray was used in ordinary English, how it appears in the King James Bible, why the biblical languages contain a much richer vocabulary than our single English word suggests, and why Catholics still use pray in its traditional sense of asking or entreating.

Then we get into the real theological questions: Christ as the one Mediator in 1 Timothy 2:5–6, Christian intercession, the Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints, Revelation’s picture of prayer in heaven, and why asking a saint to pray for you is not the same claim as worshiping that saint.

Understanding the word doesn’t prove every Catholic claim about the Communion of Saints. It does something more basic: it gets us past an argument about definitions so we can finally discuss the actual disagreement.

I’ve been saying this since about 2006: If you want to rewrite history, you don’t have to change the words on the page. You can simply redefine them.

Steelman the position first. Then tear it apart if you can. At least then we’re actually talking to each other.

Seek deeply. Pray daily. Speak clearly. Share regularly. Serve humbly.

Veritas.