Intercession
To act as an intercessor is literally to become a "go-between." If we take this picture too literally, we will imagine that the one who goes to God on our behalf "gets in the way" of the relationship between God and the person in need. This picture-thinking then leads to anxieties about whether Catholics deny that Jesus is the one and only Mediator between God and His People.
It is the inadequate picture, not the idea that we should pray for each other that must be discarded. God commands us to pray for the needs of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. He is not commanding us to block His view of those whom He loves; He wants us to participate in His original, creative, unbounded, always-present, indefatigable love for His sons and daughters. Our prayer for them is caused by His love for them, not vice-versa. We can never "get in the way" of God's direct and personal love for the people we pray for; He is always the cause of their existence and salvation as well as the cause of our existence and salvation.
God does not want to have a solitary union between Himself and His children. Besides commanding us to love Him, He also commands us to love one another.
- intercession: early 15c., "act of interceding," from L. intercessionem (nom. intercessio) "a going between," noun of action from pp. stem of intercedere (see "intercede").