Imagine a man who chops wood to heat his home. He allows his five year old son to “help” him. The boy carries and stacks some of the spllit logs. The father does not need his child’s help, but enjoys the involvement with his son. In the same way, God enjoys allowing His children to “help” God in His work. After all, bringing us human beings to salvatoin is a lot of work.

God does not need help from any saint, not even the greatest saint, His mother Mary. However, God enjoys allowing saints fo “help” Him. Being human beings, Mary and all the other siants have no power of thieir own. they can only do what God empowers them to do.

The Virgin Mary in particular is empowered greatly by God, because she has proven herself the most cooperative, faithful, trustworthy of all us human beings. When we pray to Mary we are not worshiping her, we are cooperating in God’s plan to mazimize everyone’s happiness during the arduous process of perfecting us.

For example, when Catholics refer to Mary as Mediatrix of graces, we are acknowledging that God permits Mary to distribute some of His graces to us. God certainly can and does give His graces to us directly, but it increases God’s joy to watch Mary have the joy of “helping” God in His work.

Increasing God’s joy; this is one reason why we pray to Mary and indeed why we pray to all the saints.