Ash Wednesday 2017

As a prayer in the Eastern Orthodox churches says, 

Let us, sinful and humbled, now earnestly run to the Mother of God, and let us fall down in repentance, crying from the depths of our soul: O Lady, help, have compassion on us. Make haste, for we perish from the multitude of our sins. Turn not thy servants empty away, for we have thee as our only hope.

Since Protestants will inevitably take offense at that, read Acts chapter 9.  Of course it was Jesus Who healed Saul of his blindness, but He did not do so alone; Ananias was also involved.  This is actually a consistent pattern throughout Scripture, and it continues to this day.  The Blessed Virgin is not, of course, the ultimate source of our hope, just as Ananias was not the ultimate source of Saul's hope; yet she has a role in bringing healing to us from Jesus, just as Ananias brought healing to Saul from Jesus.