Why Do Catholics Pray To Mary?
Do you ever ask your friends to pray for you? That’s exactly what Catholics are doing when they pray to Mary. Catholics don’t worship Mary – she’s human, and God is the only being we owe worship to. A major reason for this misunderstanding is that Catholics use the word “pray” to basically just mean “talking” to anyone in heaven - God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, of course, but also the angels and the saints. “Worship,” for Catholics, doesn’t consist of prayer alone. Catholics worship God by going to Mass.
The reason Catholics pray to Mary is to ask her to pray to God for us, just as you would ask your friend or relative to pray for you. In the most common prayer to Mary, the Hail Mary, the first part of the prayer comes directly from the angel Gabriel’s greeting: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,” and from Elizabeth’s greeting: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Catholics then say: “Holy Mary,” which follows logically from her being “full of grace” and now in heaven, and “Mother of God,” which is a phrase approved at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD as a response to those who denied Jesus’s divine nature. The prayer ends with: “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” No worship to be found - it’s literally just quoting from the Bible, affirming Jesus’s divinity, and asking Mary to pray for us.
Why pray to Mary instead of directly to God? Well, again, why do you ask your friends to pray for you? Of course, Catholics pray directly to God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit as well. But we know from Scripture that “the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much” (James 5:16). We also know from Scripture that the saints in heaven are alive in Christ – not dead. They are the “cloud of witnesses” mentioned in the Bible (Heb. 12:1). So in asking Mary, or anyone in heaven, to pray for us, we’re asking the most righteous friends we have to pray for us. And if we believe we will live forever joyfully, reunited with our beloved family members, once we get to heaven, don’t Jesus, Mary, and Joseph also get to be together for all eternity? If so, doesn’t it make perfect sense to ask Jesus’s beloved mother to pray to her Son on our behalf?