Jill Biden has opened up about the heartbreaking way she still reaches for her late son Beau-and one particular admission is likely to get Christians talking.
The former first lady revealed that she "prays" to Beau Biden, who died from brain cancer in 2015, and believes her son can hear her. The deeply personal practice has apparently taken on even greater significance as her husband, former President Joe Biden, faces his own battle with aggressive prostate cancer.
"I pray to Beau, and I think he listens," Jill said during an appearance on The Jamie Kern Lima Show. And when the weight of Joe's cancer becomes particularly difficult, she admitted that her prayers can become even more desperate: "Beau, where are you? I need you."
It is an emotional confession from a mother who has lived with unimaginable loss. But Jill's choice of the word "pray" also raises a theological question that Christians have debated for centuries: Should believers pray to people who have died?
For many evangelical and Protestant Christians, the answer would be a firm no.
Protestants traditionally teach that prayer should be addressed to God alone through Jesus Christ, pointing particularly to passages such as 1 Timothy 2:5, which declares that there is "one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus." Hebrews likewise presents believers as approaching God through Christ rather than through departed believers.
That makes Jill's statement especially intriguing. She did not simply say she talks to Beau when she misses him. She specifically said, "I pray to Beau" and added, "I think he listens."
Catholic and Orthodox traditions, however, approach the issue differently. Both have longstanding traditions surrounding the communion of saints and the intercession of believers who have died. Catholics routinely ask Mary and canonized saints to pray for them, insisting that such requests do not replace prayer to God or Christ's unique role as mediator.
Still, Jill's practice does not fit neatly into the usual Catholic formulation either. Beau Biden is not a canonized saint, and asking a deceased son directly for help is different from the formal invocation of recognized saints found in Catholic devotional practice.
The Bible also contains a famously unsettling account involving an attempt to contact someone who has died. In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul consults the medium at Endor and encounters the deceased prophet Samuel. The episode is presented negatively and occurs against the background of biblical prohibitions against necromancy and attempting to consult the dead.
That does not mean Jill Biden's private prayer should simply be labeled necromancy-she described no medium, séance, divination or occult ritual. But the passage helps explain why many conservative Christians draw a firm boundary around attempting communication with deceased loved ones.
Behind the theological debate, however, is a family that has already experienced extraordinary grief.
Beau Biden died in 2015 at just 46 after battling glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. A decade later, the Biden family was hit with another devastating cancer diagnosis when Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones.
For Jill, apparently, that new crisis has made her feel Beau's absence all over again.
Her comments offer a surprisingly intimate glimpse into how she continues to process that grief-and they also pose a question Christians may answer very differently depending on their tradition:
When someone we love dies, is it Christian to keep talking-or even praying-to them?
