Yes, I can ration with devotion to Mary, and honor to her, but if you give to Mary your life, your soul, your heart, your family and your country, then what is left for God? All those are God’s, anyway. Those don’t rightfully belong to any creature, that’s why God alone is worthy of worship…
As a convert from non-practicing Judaism, I had to figure out a lot of this stuff myself, too. I could accept Mary easily, as the Protestant lack of respect for the mother of the most important person in one’s life was shocking to a Jew. Culturally, mothers are held in exceptionally high esteem. It would be unthought of to walk into your beloved or even a friend’s home and not make respectful chit-chat with their Mom FIRST. So the basic love of Mary by Catholics was much more comfortable to me than Protestantism.
But the amount of devotion, and the flowery language, was a bit hard to understand. After reading and reading, I figured the only way to figure it out was to try it on for size. So I started praying the rosary, and meditating on Mary, and always stopped at any statues of Mary in churches or shrines and prayed a while.
And this is what I found - the more I prayed to Mary, the more I tried to get close to her, and get to know her, and develop a relationship, the stronger my pull was towards her son, Jesus. She acts like a funnel taking all of my loose thoughts and distracted prayers and pulled them together, clarified them and pushed me right into the heart of our Lord.
Another thing is that as a Catholic, I don’t believe in “once saved always saved.” I am very aware of my sinfulness. And as a sinner, there is always a good deal of shame to stand before God, as He is so perfect, pure and good.
Sometimes it is easier to run to Mama, who is and was always a human woman, not God. Moms know all about children and their sinful nature. She gently encourages me and gives courage and a little push toward her son. And maybe, just maybe she’ll put in a good word for me? Jesus always did end up giving into his mother, just like the good Jewish boy he was/is. Perhaps that is a little silly of me, but a simple, childlike faith is not such a bad thing, either.
So whenever you find a certain prayer or a certain private devotion to be just too hard to figure out, it doesn’t hurt to just try it. You simply tell God that you don’t mean to offend, but that you love His church, and this is an accepted devotion or prayer, that you’d like to give it a try. Tell him you mean no disrespect by any of the language, and you understand that many exceptionally good and holy people have prayed this prayer or did this devotion.
I find you need to repeat the rosary many times to feel its effect, and the same for other prayers.
Lastly, I think we Catholics can give our hearts and souls and lives to Mary so willingly because we know it is only for her to brush off a bit of lint, shine it up and present the best side of it forward as she hands it to her Son. She gives everything she is given to her Son. Everything and everyone.
And handing it to Mary to give to her son is a sign of humility - that we don’t think we are so great and important that we can ONLY talk to the BIG GUY ourselves, we don’t want to waste our time on the little peons around Him. Its like, “I’m not worthy, to bother He who is so awesome with this, so please give Him this for me, Mary.”
I look at the saints as wonderful examples of the transformed life. Each one of my own children has an icon of their saint by their bed from whom they are named: Luke, Veronica, John. And we ask that saint in our prayers sometimes to pray with us for ____________ but generally we use the saint as a great example more than anything and a shining role model of Christian living.