Intercessory Prayer Examples to Mary Mother of the Redeemer

Mary Mather of The Redeemer - image by Wonderlane via flickr

This morning, while on my way to work, I prayed the Rosary, as I usually do everyday.

Being a Thursday, the Rosary Mysteries werethe Luminous. As I was meditating on the Second Mystery - The Wedding At Cana, a thought about intercessory prayers came to mind.

I did a search of the Bible of intercessory prayer examples to Mary, Mother of the Redeemer. Instead of examples, there was only one. Imagine in all the thousands of verses in all the books of the New Testament, there was only one example!

Catholics and Orthodox Christians always seek the intercession of Mother Mary. And why do we do so? Because of traditional practices from the early Church and also because of the teachings of the Tradition.

And when we ask Mary, Mother of the Redeemer to pray for us, have you noticed that we tend to repeat the same intercession until it's fulfilled or God has given a definitive answer - whether positive or negative. We tend to think that each time we ask Mother Mary for intercession, she in turn will go bug God to help us. It's as if we have to continuously seek her intercession to remind her that she needs to go plead with God again and again and again.

However in the wedding at Cana narrative, what we see is that Mother Mary comes to know of the predicament of the wedding host. It really doesn't say that someone came up to Mary to ask her help. Recall that Mary was still known as the mother of a carpenter, only. Jesus was still a nobody as he hadn't done any miracles yet. So, I guess that Mary may have come to know of this through the grapevine.

This is what she did. She heard the rumor and possibly confirmed it with the host and immediately went to ask Jesus to help. Jesus hoed and hummed, but eventually performed the miracle of turning water into wine. A few lessons we can learn from this story

1.  Mother Mary is always attuned to our needs, even if we don't ask.
2. Mother Mary just asks once of her Son to intercede. She doesn't nag or repeat her requests.

 Of course this doesn't mean that we should not pray only once for a specific thing. Here's what some verses from the Bible tell us...

 Colossians, Chapter 4.

Be persevering in your prayers and be thankful as you stay awake to pray.

From www.catholic.org

1 Thessalonians, Chapter 5.

pray constantly

From www.catholic.org

So, if Mother Mary has to just ask once, why do we have to pray constantly?

Don't we all know of the story of St.Monica, praying 15 years for St. Augustine's conversion.

All the prayers of his mother Monica for his conversion were now beginning to be heard after many years of seemingly being unheard.

From www.frtommylane.com

Can you even imagine praying for something for 5,475 days (that's 15 years)?

God wants us to pray constantly, because eventually we get to see that what we ask for if not really for our benefit and come to accept the will of God and not our will be done.

“You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:3) We could save ourselves a lot of aggravation by accepting this advice and seeking to discern God’s will for our lives. In doing so, we would get a clearer idea of those “things” that God wants us to have.

From catholicexchange.com

So carry on praying. Prayer works. It'll change you rather than changing God's mind, which is impossible anyway. Change is a malady of the imperfect - God's creations and creatures.