As Mary asked Jesus to perform the miracle at the wedding at Cana, for the said of her friend, we too are called to pray to ask Mary to intercede for us for our intentions.
Yes, with "saint" I wasn't even trying to invoke a discussion involving Mary at all, because in practice she's so far above the saints that to equate them feels like heresy (and might literally be heresy in some contexts; hyperdulia vs. dulia and all). In practice the absolute adulation of Mary is such that she nearly feels like the fourth member of the trinity.
We can have separate interpretations of how things play out in practice, anything I list is free to be dismissed as anecdotal. But when I think of famous Christian art, I think of art that depicts Mary (and baby Jesus, yes, but the artists deliberately chose not to depict a scene of Jesus without Mary); there's so many of these that it became its own genre (which is literally named after Mary, not Jesus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) . And when I think of famous Christian cathedrals, I think of the Notre Dame, among the other zillion "Our Lady Of"s that are named after Mary. And when I think of people pointing out modern miracles I think of weeping statues of Mary or people finding Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich; this once again has its own entire genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition . And in Catholic parts of the US at least, IME you're more likely to see a Bathtub Mary outside of a house than a cross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_Madonna . And when I think of the most important prayers, I think of exactly two: the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
