The Golden Bowls. Take them literally. Remember them frequently. Frequenters of this site know that it takes Scriptural passages as literally as possible. It often does so by defining God as The Loving, Unprogrammed Programmer, a Being with the power to program particles and compile them into systems and beings. The highest points of His Program includes those with of us with free will, for whom the whole thing was programmed.
A couple of passages in the Book of Revelations (which is interpreted in Catholic Fundamentalism terms in the “Revelations” section on the header) tell us that The Throne of God is surrounded by twenty four elders. They sit in a circle of thrones around Him; (Rev 4;9), “each holding a Golden Bowl full of incense made of the prayers of the saints.”
It’s interesting to take that literally. If even the least of us believers are included among “the saints”, and this seems to have been the clear teaching of the Catholic Church from the beginning, then we realize that all of our prayers take actual form and have actual and everlasting substance in Heaven.
From that passage, we may reasonably infer that our own prayers ascend, and take form before God in Heaven. Each prayer is like a deposit in the safest, solidest bank in all Creation. When we appear before Him at Judgment, one of the things on which we will be judged is the size of our account in His bank.
One of our prayers should be that our prayers are worthy to be deposited in at least one of those Golden Bowls reverently held out and up to God by the 24 elders whose thrones surround Him.
Asking for the intercession of more powerful saints helps get our prayers deposited.
