On prayer and the contemplative life · Aquinas, Saint Thomas
3. Christ, even as man, is termed the Saint of Saints; and it
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belongs to Him, as man, to pray. Yet we never ask Christ to pray for us. Hence it is superfluous to make the Saints our intercessors with God.
But prayer is an act. And acts belong to individual beings. Consequently, if we were to say, Christ, pray for us, we should appear, unless we added something, to be referring this to Christ's Person, and thus we might seem to fall into the error of Nestorius who regarded the Person of the Son of Man as distinct in Christ from the Person of the Son of God; or perhaps, too, into the error of Arius who regarded the Person of the Son as less than the Father. In order, then, to avoid these errors, the Church does not say, Christ, pray for us, but Christ, hear us, or Christ, have mercy on us.
