How can the Blessed Virgin Mary and other finite saints and angels hear millions of prayers?

[Michie]

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s extraordinary role in the Kingdom of God is completely harmonious with Scripture.

A Calvinist friend of mine, with whom I am engaged in ongoing cordial dialogues, raised this issue, and stated that this is what Catholics teach when we assert that God gives power to Mary so that she can hear many thousands of simultaneous prayers or intercessory requests.

He contended that God takes such prayers to Mary and as such acts as a “mediator” to her. I had never heard this before. It’s an interesting question to ponder and reply to as an apologist.

The immediate response is that these prayers are directed through Mary to God, not through God to Mary. All Catholics are doing is applying what James (5:16) recommended: “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.”

God told Abimelech that Abraham would pray for him, so he could live, “for” Abraham was “a prophet” (Genesis 20:6-7). Was God, then, the “mediator” of Abraham in that instance?

Continued below.

How Can a Human Like Mary Hear Millions of Prayers? The Answer Is in the Bible

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s extraordinary role in the Kingdom of God is completely harmonious with Scripture.

www.ncregister.com

 

[Zachm531]

The same way that St John heard every creature in the world praising God while he was in Heaven.

“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!””
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭5‬:‭13‬ ‭

 

[narnia59]

The same way the angels know every time a sinner repents on earth.

That question is based on a false assumption that saints (and therefore heaven) are governed by time in the same way we are. Rather, the saints have entered eternity with God. Mary has all eternity to respond to those prayers in what we would think of as being one moment, earth-bound and constrained by time as we are. And even if 100 million people have prayed to her and she attends to each one with deliberate care, not a drop in eternity will have passed.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Luke 2:35
(and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

Although it is a mystery on earth because we do not yet communicate as spirit... as done in Heaven, but needless to say anyone who prays to our Lady is known by the Lord at all times because He is in/with us at all times.
He knows we seek His Mother, she is then also to know.
She cannot be overwhelmed because negativity and grief et al do not exist in Heaven.

Though I am sure it is easy for Heaven to know all things, including the angels, but the Lord knows our thoughts. Therefore; she is rendered to know. And the many hearts revealed is her perpetual gift from the Lord to help mankind.

He wants His people saved, she wants His people saved. etc etc

 

[WarriorAngel]

Jesus demonstrated how a multitude exists in the fish and bread from one small source. Same with the Eucharist, same with the communication to those in Heaven.
What seems like an impossibility here in the 3d world of flesh is unlike the spirits ways in Heaven.

 

[fide]

I was saddened by the article when I read this, from Mr. Armstrong:

Mary is simply a helper or chosen vessel, just as Moses or John the Baptist or Elijah or Paul or Peter or John or anyone else was. In no way does this impinge upon God’s sole prerogatives, because he is simply using one of his creatures for his divine purposes.

I realize that the purpose of the article is not to give a full presentation of Catholic Mariology, but to give a few apologetic arguments to resolve this one issue of hearing millions of prayers. I guess I would have preferred to hear more of Mary's entirely unique role in God's plan, rather than to hear of her commonality or similarity with many saints of our Faith. It doesn't seem fitting or just, to me, to explain the prerogatives of a Queen as "simply" those of every other citizen of some nation. The Queen has a unique place, and role, and calling - as Mary indeed does. To cite one paragraph of the Catechism (with added emphasis):

492 The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.[LG 53, 56] The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.[Cf. Eph 1:3-4]

And "to whom much is given, much is required" and in her unique case, much is expected, and enabled, and received.

I was saddened because active in the Church is a wide-spread and widely spreading minimization of Mary and her role in the Church. And not only Mary and Marian devotion - it is the case for other tenets of the Catholic Faith, and Catholic moral teachings, as well.