Mary Immaculate is the refuge of sinners

The Immaculate is the refuge of sinners, the place where even the worst of sinners, who are mired in their sin, those who feel rotten to the core, can taste absolute purity and find their way back to it.

Mary is our Mother: this is not an honorary title, but a reality as concrete as the maternity of all earthly mothers. The difference is that our maternal love is limited, fragile, mixed with selfishness, laziness, and cowardice... but not the love of Mary, precisely because she is immaculate.

Her purity does not make her ethereal, a little unreal, like an unattainable maternal ideal. On the contrary! She is only more human, more present, more free: sin does not hinder her love for us; it never distorts or alters it.

As a good teacher, Mary does not act in our place, but she teaches us to do what we must do, how, and when we must do it. Then our life becomes ordered, and is deeply pacified.

“By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the "Mother of Mercy," the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender "the hour of our death" wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her son, Jesus, in paradise.” (1)

Marian Encyclopedia

(1) Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph #2677