What about praying to Mary, or the saints?
FAQs (021)
The Bible never elevates Mary to a high position compared to Jesus. It tells us something of her life because her story complements and completes the story of Jesus - not because she is particularly important in her own right. Mary is portrayed to us as a woman with a servant attitude, obedient to the will of God for her life and modest in her opinion of her own role.
She makes clear her own relationship to God in some of the few words in the New Testament that are attributed to her. She says that she "rejoices in God my Saviour" (Luke 1 v 47). When she instructs the servants at the wedding in Cana she tells them "Do whatever he (Jesus) tells you." (John 2 v 5). What does Jesus tell us? Jesus tells us to pray to the Father, never to his mother.
With regard to prayer, the New Testament writers include many prayers, but none of them are in any way directed to Mary. Praying to any of the 'saints' has no basis in the Bible. Elizabeth indeed describes Mary as "blessed among women", yet Jesus describes all those who follow him sacrifically as "blessed" (Matt 5 v 3-11) and Paul prays for 'all the saints' (by which he means ordinary Christians like you and I) that they may know the "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit" (2 Cor. 13 v 13-14). All our blessings are based on our relationship to God.
Paul's prayers are directed "through him (that is Jesus - because) we both have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephes. 2 v 18). We have direct access to God himself. We can come boldly into his presence (Heb 4 v 16). The truth of the Incarnation (God becoming one of us and living among us - ie Jesus) is that we have just one mediator (go-between) and that is Jesus himself (1 Tim 2 v 5).
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