For years, St. Thomas More Church had a chapel set aside for honoring Mary, the mother of Jesus. To keep with this practice, a chapel honoring Mary and her husband has been built on the same spot as the old "Mary Chapel". It features the statues of Mary and Joseph. It also has a place for votive candles.
Sometimes Catholics are asked about their use of statues. Sometimes people of other faiths mistakenly believe that Catholics pray to statues. For us, statues are reminders of holy people who lived good lives. We have statues in our church for the same reason that people hang pictures of their grandparents on the walls of their homes -- we love these people, and we are touched and inspired by their lives. When we look at the statues, we recall the quality of the lives of the saints whom we honor. We do not pray to the saints in the same way that we pray to Jesus. We speak to the saints in the same way we speak to one another when we ask others to pray for us. So too we speak to the saints, who are alive, living with God in heaven, and ask them to pray for us. In this way we recognize that we are connected with the "Communion of Saints".
People light prayer candles as an outward sign of their inner prayers. There is something comforting about the flame of a prayer candle -- it signifies our desire to have our prayer be ongoing; it shows our desire to have light shed on our darkness.
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