Roman Catholics are taught by their church to pray to Mary with the idea being that she can be a mediator between us and God. Father Longenecker says “When we pray to Mary, we are asking her to pray for us. So Catholics believe that because Mary is already in heaven, she has more direct access to the throne of God and her prayers will therefore be more powerful than our own so we go to her first and then we petition her to take them to God on our behalf.”
This idea that Mary can or indeed should be a mediator between us and God is completely unbiblical. The Bible says “For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5) It can’t be any more explicit than that. Jesus is our only route to the throne of God. Mary doesn’t even come into it. Hebrews says “Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.” (Hebrews 7:24-25) Jesus intercedes for us, not Mary.
Imagine if you’re to go to the doctors about a sickness and then when you got there, you ask to see his mother instead. That just wouldn’t make sense to bypass the one that can cure you, to go talk to someone who can’t and who’s got nothing to do with it. But that’s effectively what Catholics are being taught to do. In the Bible, there are no examples of anyone praying to God through any other name than that of Jesus Christ. To pray to Mary is actually idolatry. It is to place her in a position that only Jesus deserves. To claim that she can hear a million prayers at once is alone to make her omnipresent and no one is omnipresent but God. This is also why we shouldn’t pray to saints or dead relatives or angels or anyone else. It is completely unbiblical and futile to pray to God by any other name than that of Jesus Christ.