1) Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and us.
2) He taught us how to pray, makes our prayer accessible to God,
and gives it the merit to be granted through His salvific action.
3) Prayer makes sense in Him and through Him only.
4) Prayers we entrust to fellow brothers and sisters, to saints and
Mary must follow these ground rules. We do not take away from
Jesus but try to help ourselves by multiplying our friends who
happen to be also Jesus' friends, in the case of Mary His very
mother.
5) Saints and Mary help us as models and intercessors. They
teach us how to pray and discern God's will. They also go with us
to Jesus supporting us in our faith and worries. Then it is up to
Jesus to do the rest.
6) Is it ludicrous to believe that Jesus is blind and deaf to what his
friends tell Him, his mother in particular? It was His intention to
make of His followers a Communion of Saints, meaning a
community of interdependent believers helping each other in the
name of Jesus. Nobody is an island, isolated from everybody else.
7) This is the sense of 1 Timothy 2,1-4: an invitation to all to offer
"supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving...for everyone."
This is not in contradiction with verse 5 (one God, one Mediator),
not in Paul's mind for sure. Now if we should pray for each other,
isn't it even more appropriate to have the saints with and for us?
The saints are not dead but alive and well with God. Thanks to their
spiritual intimacy with God they have His ear.
8) As for Mary's help – never that of a goddess! – we should reread
two passages from John's Gospel:
(1) John 2,3 f. which shows
clearly what Mary's role is. She intercedes with her Son for the
newly wed couple (v.3). Jesus rebukes her (v.4) not to tell her that
she should refrain from interceding but to let her know that it was
His decision as to whether, when and how he would help the
couple. He is the master, the sole mediator. Mary accepts. She
does not insist with her Son but prepares the servants to follow
Jesus' order (v.5). We understand how Mary acts on our behalf:
She brings our concerns before the Lord, entrusts them to His
infinite wisdom, and tells us to listen and follow Jesus' will.
(2) John 19,25-27 is Jesus' testament regarding Mary's role in our life. He
entrusts her to John, and the apostle John to her motherly care.
Being disciples of Christ ourselves, we have mutually inherited new hearts.
Her role on our behalf is that of a mother: Mother of her
Son she is also our mother. Could there be any conflict between
sons of the same mother?