Mary's role in Catholicism

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angell1 said:
what about the tings like the salve regina or hail holy queen? is that too much?
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Well, it’s a prayer approved by the Church, so you can’t really go wrong with it. 👍

Line by line:

“Hail, Holy Queen”…Mary as Queen of Heaven is Scriptural (Psalm 45, Revelation 11:19ff)

“Mother of Mercy”…No quibbles here, Mother of Christ, the source of Divine Mercy.

“Hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope”…While Christ is the Way, Truth and Life, Mary is a model of Christian life. She epitomizes and exemplifies, as no other human does, the hope that we all share.

“To thee do we cry…”…A poetic way of saying “Pray for us”, i.e., “intercede for us”

“…poor banished children of Eve”…Mary is the new Eve, who unties the knot of Eve’s disobedience and its consequences for us (St. Irenaeus of Lyons)

“To thee do we send up our sighs…”…parallelism; another way of saying “pray for us”

“…mourning and weeping in this vale of tears”…this world is not our permanent home; it is disfigured by sin and suffering; we share the hope of Heaven.

“Turn then, O most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us”…as the supreme intercessor for us with her Son, we ask her to hear our prayer.

“And after this, our exile”…i.e., after our earthly life

“Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus”…quite Scriptural; see Luke 1.

“O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary”…a concluding mini-litany of veneration.

Nope, no problems there. 😉
 
ClearWater said:
And while I was on the mission trip there were prayers being lead that made me think “How in the world is this NOT praying directly to Mary and just asking for intercession as it’s being claimed?”
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One thing to keep in mind that that the verb ‘to pray’ means to ask, to implore.

Look at Hamlet, Act I, Scene II, Queen Gertrude says to Hamlet (her son) “I pray thee, go not to Whittenburg”

Or legal documents (law suits), even today, have a section “Prayer for Relief” where the plantiff asks the court for a particular remedy.

The verb comes from the Latin precare, to ask, to implore.

So yes, we DO pray to Mary, it simply means that we are asking something of her, such as to pray for us now, and at the hour of our death.
 
Perhaps my love for Mary is because she is a mother who loved fully.

When I pray the Rosary, I try to see Her Son through Her eyes. She gazed into the Christ Child’s eyes. Can we possibly love Him with that kind of love? This is what she teaches me. Love.

This came home to me soon after my 7 year old granddaughter was killed in a car accident. While praying the Stations of The Cross, I saw my daughter’s face in every scene. A mother’s love filled with sorrow for the suffering of her child.

Mother Mary. How much can we love her? How much more can we love her Son? She can show us the way.
 
I think if anyone even begins to grasp the amount of faith and love it took for Mary to accept the Incarnation, they’ll have much more respect for the Blessed Virgin. Without her cooperation and assent we have no Savior dying for us on the holy Cross.
 
Also,she continued to say yes,even as she stood silently suffering along side her Son through his passion and death on the Cross.😦
 
southern12. Are you still here?

You stated (bold mine):
I vaguely remember things being prayed that I thought should only be prayed to God and not ‘though’ Mary- like asking her to guide us (or at least I’m pretty sure that was said).
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Would you say that we are to be imitators of St. Paul?

If not, why would the Bible say we are supposed to be.

If we are, would you affirm St. Paul as being at least in some sense, a guide for us? Is it inappropriate to read 1st Corinthians? Is it improper for St. Paul to guide us?

1st CORINTHIANS 4:15-17 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 17 Therefore I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

If the Blessed Virgin Mary would have explicitly stated, “I urge you, then, be imitators of me” would that have been out of line?

Yes we are supposed to be imitators of St. Paul in regards to his faithfulness. I would say the same of the Blessed Virgin Mary is true even more so.
 
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