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These prayers cannot be based in truth because they seriously contradict God’s Word. Many of the attributes, abilities and actions credited in them to Mary are God’s alone, as His Word reveals, and if they had instead been written by Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, that fact would then undoubtedly be acknowledged by Roman Catholics.

These prayers are so opposed to God’s Word, though, that how can Christians who go by God’s Word believe they speak the truth and be expected to pray them? Yet when Roman Catholics say all Christians need to be members of the Roman Catholic Church, that is what they are saying and expecting. I could never, though, in good conscience, or with true willingness or joy, pray these prayers, except if the same basic sentiments were addressed instead to the Lord, because He is the only one they could rightfully be addressed to. That is simply the long and short of the matter.

The following, then, are responses from what Scripture has revealed, to the most blatant instances of what, going by what the Lord Himself has revealed in His Word, can only be called blasphemy, in those Roman Catholic prayers. That’s a sad thing to have to say, but it’s what God’s Word shows. Scripture not only plainly teaches that certain things in these prayers are true of God alone, but it constantly reminds us to keep that truth in our minds. We are naturally prone to viewing ourselvefs and just about anything and everything else as a god, except for God Himself, and so we are constantly to be reminding ourselves of the truth of who is actually God. And we are also to remember that because the Lord is God, He says He is available to us, and He is the one we not only can but should always turn to. That is His will for us.

- The Lord is our protector, and so whom we should run to. (and that prayer speaks of Mary offering three different things, protection, help and intercession, not just the last one, as Catholics often claim).

- We stand before the Lord in our sinful state, as Adam and Eve did.

- Jesus spoke again and again of the Father, not the Mother.

- Only sinless God is in the position to possibly despise the petitions of His creatures.

- Only the Lord is “our life, our sweetness, and our hope.”

- We send up our cries and our sighs to the Lord, not Mary.

- The Father shows and has shown Jesus to us.

- Only the Lord can change our hearts to put real love, His love, in them.

- We are to have a continuous desire for the Lord.

- Only the Lord can give us spiritual health.

- Conversion is a work of the Lord.

- Compassion for sinners can only come from the Lord, the only Person who can truly be sinned against, and who, out of His compassion for sinners, gave His Son to die for us.

- We’re to consecrate ourselves to the Lord.

- We’re to entrust our souls to the Lord for salvation.

- We’re to unite our hearts to the Lord’s.

- We’re to offer ourselves entirely to the Lord.

- We’re to offer our whole being without reserve to the Lord.

- We’re to recognize that we’re the property and possession of the Lord.

- The Lord gives strength to the weak.

- The Lord comforts the sorrowful.

- The Lord alone is the Name. Every one else has a name.

- We’re to dedicate our bodies and our souls to the Lord.

- We’re to dedicate our prayers and deeds, and our joys and sufferings, to the Lord.

- We’re to dedicate all that we are and all that we have to the Lord.

- We’re to joyfully surrender to the Lord’s love.

- We’re to dedicate our services to the Lord.

- We can’t accomplish anything on our own, but we can do all things through Christ.

- It is the Lord who can grant that any person, church, family and country will become the Kingdom where the Lord, not Mary, reigns, in His own glory.

- The Lord is the Healer of the Sick.

- The Lord is the Comforter of the Afflicted.

- The Lord is the one who knows our wants, our troubles, and our sufferings, and can look on us then in His mercy.

All of what’s written here are truths from God’s Word itself, as you might well know. I am certainly willing to discuss any of them, including how they’re shown in Scripture, with you, but for the moment, here is God’s Word telling us that He is the one who gives strength:

27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?

28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

This is just one place in God’s Word where we’re told the Lord gives strength, and it happens to come from Isaiah 40, a chapter in which God is repeatedly called comparable to no one. So God’s Word says He gives strength, and a Roman Catholic prayer says Mary gives strength, and I have and will continue to go with God’s Word, and say in each and every instance that it is He that gives strength. It is my one and only answer on that question. With the knowledge always in my mind that God says He is the one that gives strength, and with feeling the greatest love for that truth about God, I simply cannot ever address Mary and say that she gives strength. So since the Roman Catholic Church teaches Christians should do so, against what God’s Word says, how can Christians be expected to accept it?