Is there a Biblical principle that says that one believer's prayers are greater than another's because of status or position?
I wouldn't know, but there's the experience of many. My dreadful supermarket tabloid-quality secret is that the REAL reason I'm catholic is that I always lose stuff and the prayers of St. Anthony of Padua are spectacularly effective when it comes to finding stuff. After the fiftieth or so time my car keys appear within ten seconds of my imploring the intercession of Anthony, all objections to appealing for the help fo the saints seem forced and formal.
Also "greater"? That's not the word that would have come to my mind, nor do I find myself thinking in terms of "status or position".
As to the phrasing of "St. Mary Save us" lingo, yeah, it makes me kind of lift my skirts too. But I have recently been in a tyranny, the Sheriff's Office, where you serve at the Sheriff's pleasure and there is no grievance procedure at ALL. So I get, after the flesh, the idea of saying to some sergeant, "Listen, You gotta do something. You have to tell the sheriff we just can't keep doing it this way." And after having done that a few times and had it "work", I can see saying, "Sarge, go do your stuff, PLEASE! Give us a break here!" So in the context of a series of interactions involving lots of intercessions and one remarkably effective intercessor, I think the phrasing is not as repellent "upon further review" as it is on its face.
Please remember. I'm not trying to convey an argument so much as a flavor here. I'm not going for capitulation but for something more like, "Yeah, if I had several martinis I could see how you might think that ...."
Okay, Mary and Martha and the good portion: This was totally ignored earlier, but for me, in my personal experience, I don not think I am NOT talking to God, just because I'm talking to you. A fortiori, I do not think that talking to Mary means I stopped talking to God. I don't say this as an argument, but as a report of experience. Further most of the time I do not view prayer as labor or as being "anxious about many things". On the contrario! The three high points of my Monday-through-Friday are when my schedule allows going to my parish church, praying a Rosary with the between 20 and 100 other people there, then celebrating Mass, beginning with the psalms and lections of evening prayer AND with a brief reflection or exposition of the readings by one of our stable of outstanding Dominicans.
I'm not doing this to impress God (as IF!) or to rack up credits in the indulgence account. It's more like going to the spa, (I imagine, never having gone to a spa.)
Okay, HERE's a metaphor, from water skiing: You know how when you let go of the rope you sort of scoot along on top of the water, then you stop, and you sink down, and the water comes up around you and envelopes you? That's what it's like! I get in the pew and on my knees, let go of the rope, and sink into the love and mystery. Then the whole thing is "the good portion".
And I think this may account for the sense of outrage when people make contemptuous and disparaging remarks about our devotional behavior.
My wife and I had fertility issues and finally were blessed with a daughter, who (not counting the year she was 13, when she was possessed by hormonal demons) has been a nonpareil blessing!
The sorrow of sub-fertility, the joy of a pregnancy that did not end two or three days after it was noticed, the miracle of the birth, the, how shall I say it, honor of staggering our of bed at 2 am to perform routine personal baby maintenance, plug the kid into the mama, wake up, repeat routine baby maintenance, put kid back in crib ... All that could be made fun of. One could use really very nasty language indeed about the activity we politely call "trying to have a baby," and to do so would be to display a really horrible and disgusting coarseness and complete insensitivity to our personal pain and, more importantly, to the wonder of being invited to cooperate with God in the development of a new candidate for His miraculous Grace.
So when some smart alec talks about our "droning" our way through rosaries and so on and contemptuously compares what we do to Tibetan prayer wheels, my gut reaction is not far from the one I would have if somebody made fun of what my wife and I went through.
In both cases, someone who saw only "externals" would be mocking "internals" of amazing profundity and would be stabbing at a place where we are most easily wounded. That's the stuff of which "Holy Wars" are made.
Enough. There's something else I should be doing.
We have similar sensibilities on our side.
But I don't think God is near (if at all) as fussed up about our sensibilities as we are.
But when our sensibilities and biases blind us to truth . . . there is a problem. And God can care a lot about that.
OK, so you're saying a big reason why you do it is that it works. Fair enough. Let me ask you this, do you think the results would have been different if each of those prayers had been directed solely at God instead of through St. Anthony?
So I get, after the flesh, the idea of saying to some sergeant, "Listen, You gotta do something. You have to tell the sheriff we just can't keep doing it this way." And after having done that a few times and had it "work", I can see saying, "Sarge, go do your stuff, PLEASE! Give us a break here!" So in the context of a series of interactions involving lots of intercessions and one remarkably effective intercessor, I think the phrasing [St. Mary save us!] is not as repellent "upon further review" as it is on its face.
I think most people have been through what you describe in their working lives. What you're saying is perfectly reasonable and I have handled it similarly too. Now, imagine that the sheriff was the most dedicated Christian man of God you had ever met in your life. Would you have just gone directly to Him with your honest disagreement? I think I would have. And think how much greater is God Himself than any among us, even the most faithful.
Okay, Mary and Martha and the good portion: This was totally ignored earlier, but for me, in my personal experience, I do not think I am NOT talking to God, just because I'm talking to you. A fortiori, I do not think that talking to Mary means I stopped talking to God. I don't say this as an argument, but as a report of experience.
But I don't "think" you talk to me in any way similar to the way you talk to Mary. Whenever we go to prayer we comport ourselves in a certain way, we try to clear our minds, we might bow our heads and close our eyes, etc. We enter a prayerful state. None of this happens when we speak with each other.
Now, I think the Bible teaches that our goal is to be in this prayer state all the time. I can only report that I am not there yet. :) This makes my prayer time a scarce resource, intermixed with my other Christian duties in daily life. (We'll just leave out my sin time for convenience. :) Anyway, since I suppose that time with Mary is also spent in a prayerful state, I see it as a lost opportunity with God.
... That's what it's like! I get in the pew and on my knees, let go of the rope [waterskier's rope in your metaphor], and sink into the love and mystery. Then the whole thing is "the good portion". And I think this may account for the sense of outrage when people make contemptuous and disparaging remarks about our devotional behavior.
That's a good word: "devotion". How would you use the word "devotion" in your interactions with Mary and the saints? Every faith-based reference to "devotion" I could find in my Bible only spoke of devotion to God alone. I think a big problem many Protestants have is that we really think you all have a devotion to Mary that is separate from your devotion to God. In fact, it was no work at all for me to find several Catholic prayers, from Catholic sites, advertised as being in devotion TO Mary.
So when some smart alec talks about our "droning" our way through rosaries and so on and contemptuously compares what we do to Tibetan prayer wheels, my gut reaction is not far from the one I would have if somebody made fun of what my wife and I went through.
I am thankful to God for the blessing on you and your wife. That is wonderful to hear. I would have contempt on anyone who would make fun of what you went through. I would just say that I don't think comments about the method of prayer would be intended to be nearly as personal, since those would apply to a billion people equally. But I certainly DO understand not liking it. Viva FR! :)