The We We Are: Vocational Choices in Severance’s Season 2

I tell a story sometimes to my children that now seems more fable than reality, but it is fitting for this essay. About fifteen years ago, fresh out of college, I worked in telecommunications. The office where I worked now feels eerily reminiscent of Severance’s Lumon: an endless, brightly lit cubicle farm. The fluorescent lights glared so intensely that I eventually landed in a doctor’s office for migraines, a condition that continues to plague me but was particularly relentless in those years, worsened by the harsh, undimmable glow of those office bulbs.

Yet the most fable-like element of this story is not that I clocked in and out on a boxy beige machine, or that my breaks were strictly timed—ten minutes, twice a day, or I risked a warning! No, the real strangeness, and perhaps even the wonder of the job, was this: my work email was accessible only at work. Yes, read that again for emphasis, pause, and imagine this: work email is accessible only at work. When I went home, there was no way to check it. No lingering notifications, no after-hours expectations. The bulky desktop assigned to me was tethered to my cubicle, and should I ever leave the job (which I eventually did), it would be as if I had never been there at all. My digital footprint would be erased, my presence completely replaced even; another worker would be trained to take the empty chair and perform the routine daily tasks I had.

When I finally quit that job to pursue my doctorate in literature, I never once thought about the unanswered emails or the computer I left behind in that sea of cubicles. I simply gathered my few belongings—including the romantic Edgar Allan Poe poem I had taped to the side of my desktop—and walked out. I have not thought of those machines, or that email account—likely erased within hours—until writing this article. Like my time there, the memory had vanished. As Poe would say, all of it—even the space it once occupied in my mind—was nevermore.

Work, Suffering, and the Search for Meaning

Now, of course, we live in different times. Apple TV’s Severance premiered on February 18, 2022, in a world still reeling from the effects of the pandemic. It was not until May 5, 2023, that the WHO officially declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency. I bring this up because in 2021, amid the upheaval of the pandemic, over forty-seven million Americans quit their jobs—an unprecedented mass exodus from the workforce that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics now refers to as the Great Resignation. During 2020 and 2021, there were over 350,000 Coronavirus deaths reported in the United States. When thinking about death constantly, we naturally begin to assess how we are spending our time, including those precious daylight hours where likely most of the readers of this journal spend much of their waking time and much of their mental energy—at work. But, other than emotional or physical obligations outside of the workplace, workers began to question the why of their jobs, and finding no answers, left their workplaces en masse.[1]

In her opus on life and writing, erstwhile Catholic convert Annie Dillard once eloquently relayed, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”—a statement so simplistically true that we me may assent to knowing it, yet sometimes—when contemplating its reality—we might find ourselves fearful rather than cheerful regarding its veracity.[2] Is spending a whole day filling out spreadsheets or travel paperwork how we imagined spending our lives? Is such an activity how we ought to be doing so? Jobs are, after all, contracts between workers and employers: just as employers get to decide whom to hire, we, too, have a say in whom we work for and how we spend our time, particularly outside of the workplace. Perhaps this is why, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and as we now mark its five-year anniversary in March 2025, a TV show querying the underpinnings of the value of work in our lives has risen to become Apple TV’s most popular show to date, with Season 2’s debut clocking in at 589 million minutes viewed in the United States alone during its first week.

The severing imaginary in Lumon, generated by Dan Erikson and Ben Stiller,[3] purposefully troubles Dillard’s seemingly rudimentary idea of how we spend our days equaling how we spend our lives. The show introduces the concept of “innies” and “outies”—bifurcated individuals who willingly choose to split their consciousness, working tirelessly during the day and then, upon leaving Lumon, forgetting entirely about that version of themselves The result is a fractured existence: outies spend their evenings with family and friends (if they have them), enjoying “downtime,” whatever that may look like for each character; innies labor. The memories of these two groups never bump into each other, or crash against each other as mine often do. Yet not all outies seem to “enjoy downtime”; rather, it soon comes to light, they seem to be using Lumon to separate themselves from suffering in some way. They do not mind forgetting half the day because their home life is not what they would choose or want it to be. Thus, they choose to escape it, to spend half the day in the supposed fog of being innies, away from the memories they have as outies.

For Catholic viewers, this premise likely sets off alarm bells from the start. After all, our faith teaches us not to flee from suffering but to endure it, following the example of Christ on the cross (it feels fitting, then, that Season 2 is dropping during Lent, when we are called to reflect on Jesus’s sacrifice leading up to his resurrection). Viewed through Catholic eyes, the show’s foreshadowing of reintegration likewise feels inevitable. Science may attempt to sever what God creates, but human nature resists division—as we see unfolding, step by step, in Severance’s narrative arc. The desire to reintegrate, or to become whole again, as Catholics might term it, is part and parcel of what it means to be human. Indeed, the Catholic Church teaches that human beings are not meant to exist in isolation or fragmentation from each other, but rather in communion. It follows, then, that any prolonged attempt to sever body from soul, labor from purpose, or self from community is inherently destructive to the person. A Catholic understanding of the world holds that every human being possesses inherent dignity, created in the image of God, and as such, we are predisposed to seek wholeness. Whether spiritual, relational, or psychological, the fractured pieces of ourselves will, inevitably, strain toward reunion.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: “The human person needs to live in society. Society is not for him an extraneous addition but a requirement of his nature. Through the exchange with others, mutual service, and dialogue with his brethren, man develops his potential; he thus responds to his vocation” (CCC §1879). In other words, personhood is not something that can be divided into separate selves or contained within artificial boundaries; instead, it flourishes in relationship, in the full integration of work, rest, and play. The characters may have chosen this separation as a way to cope with whatever ails them, but in doing so, they have sacrificed something essential—the fullness of their humanity. Suffering is part of what it means to be human, an essential part. We ought not continually attempt to escape it but work daily to learn from it. Indeed, it is suffering that teaches us how to love.

When Work Becomes Our Religion

In Season 1, we see the innies’ fascination with their outies’ lives as a quiet but persistent search for vocation—a longing to understand why they are sacrificing their time and selves for someone else. As you likely already know, the word vocation comes from the Latin vocatio, meaning “a call” or “summons.” The innies want to believe their outies are calling them to labor for some higher good (that is, for love). For Catholics, a call toward vocation means serving God; it is the lifelong work of discerning how one’s life might reflect the love of self-gift to one’s neighbor (an “outie” in this fictional context, perhaps) and, through that, communion with Christ. But in the severed world of Lumon, vocation is distorted. Christ is absent, wholly unspoken of under Lumon’s fluorescent lights. The summons for the Severed employees becomes twisted: the innies are taught they can heed only the call of Kier Eagan, the company’s original founder and quasi-religious figurehead. Their devotion is redirected—not toward divine love but toward corporate fealty. Yet, beneath the surface, viewers sense the employees’ hope for something more, something transcendent, even as their days are filled with Kier’s vacuous, vaguely ominous dictates.[4]

How often do we find ourselves doing something similar? How often throughout the day do our thoughts drift to our work—whether with delight or dread—rather than to God? Dillard reminds us that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, which naturally raises the question: to whom, and to what, do we give the bulk of our attention? On April 21, 2024, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Pope Francis noted, “Hearing that divine call, which is far from being an imposed duty—even in the name of a religious ideal—is the surest way for us to fulfil our deepest desire for happiness.” For Lumon’s employees, that desire is stunted by the fact that the characters are fractured, their innie lives reduced to labor in the service of an outie self. They know no higher calling beyond the company handbook. We do. Yet each day, the question lingers: whom, and what, do we choose?

It is not surprising, then, that some employees at Lumon, like Irving Bailiff,[5] memorize the company handbook line by line, almost as if it were scripture. Workplace culture becomes its own creed—rigid, rule-bound, and filling the space where higher purpose ought to reside. I—and I suspect a few readers of this journal—have likewise sat in on a committee meeting (or two or two hundred thousand) where handbooks are treated with religious reverence, every policy dissected and enforced as though it contains the key to human flourishing—even though, in actuality, it contains the key to corporate compliance and capitalist prosperity. How often have I wanted to bring up St. Paul in such meetings, who reminds us that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6)? What Lumon—and so many modern workplaces—offers is the letter without the spirit: rigid codes and rituals, systems designed to manage behavior but unable to nurture the whole person. This is what the Great Resignation ought to have laid bare for corporate America, especially given that 57% of those who left cited disrespect from bosses and coworkers alike as a contributing factor for their leaving.[6]

It is no coincidence that Lumon’s Wellness counselor, Ms. Casey (who, near the end of Season 1, we learn is “outie” Mark’s wife, Gemma), offers empty affirmations during employee sessions. Her role echoes spiritual direction, but drained of depth—reduced to a sterile blend of corporate therapy-speak and human resources jargon. In one such session, she tells innie Irving: “Your outie is a friend to children and to the elderly and the insane,” as if these bland, disembodied facts—delivered in an equally disembodied tone—might be enough to justify his labor, convincing him it holds some deeper meaning he can cling to. But what relationship is being established here? There is no communion between Ms. Casey and Irving, no genuine encounter. Who, after all, would be unkind to children, the elderly, or the mentally ill? What kind of atrocious person would this be exactly? And more to the point, how does staring at a computer screen, endlessly “refining” data as per the Lumon job description Irving fulfills, meaningfully serve these groups? Lumon suggests—without ever explicitly explaining how—that Irving’s labor somehow benefits these marginalized groups, vaguely positioning his monotonous work as essential to society at large. In reality, such work is a substitution for authentic service, a corporate mirage masking the absence of real human connection and charitable action toward the poor and vulnerable.

Later, when Ms. Casey tells another employee, Helly, who is under her care for depression, “Upon request, I can also perform a hug,” we find that the gesture is equally performative. What should be an act of genuine comfort and human connection is reduced to a functional transaction, a hollow performance of care. In Catholic terms, it is presence without communion, an empty ritual stripped of relational grace. The outward action remains, but the interior reality, that is, the encounter and its attendant reciprocity, is absent. Severance reveals a stark truth about contemporary workplace culture. Indeed, it is common now to hear that our coworkers are “like family,” a slogan meant to foster “belonging.”[7] But belonging, in a Catholic context, is something deeper: belonging means being part of a community of believers, united in faith and love, drawn together through the sacraments—especially Baptism and Eucharist. These are shared practices grounded in a divine relationship. It is communion, not transactions, and grace freely given by God, not productivity or performance, that binds believers.

The Catholic tradition has long recognized the danger of turning work into an idol—of allowing labor, rather than God, to become the organizing principle of one’s life. Scripture warns against this temptation repeatedly, reminding us that toil for its own sake leads to restlessness, not to fulfillment. Ecclesiastes offers one pointed reflection: “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.” Qoheleth, the teacher and writer of the text, reminds us, “This also is vanity” (Eccl 2:22-23). In modern contexts, where workplace culture often demands total devotion, this passage feels almost uncannily relevant. Nowhere is this “vexation” more visible than in Season 2 of Severance, where the consequences of avoiding suffering and worshiping work play out in stark relief.

After all, for Mark Scout, the show’s protagonist, outie “downtime” involves drinking heavily and grieving the loss of his wife, Gemma. For the aforementioned Irving, the most devoted to Lumon’s corporate doctrine, it looks like painting haunting images of a dark corridor he does not understand and reading military manuals whose relevance is never clarified. And for Helly, the daughter of Lumon’s current CEO, James Eagan and thereby descendent of Kier Eagan, it means enforcing and adhering to the very system her innie despises; as a character in both worlds, she seems always on edge, always grasping. Helly works day and night, innie and outie selves consumed with labor in different ways. (When does she sleep? I often quip when watching her character.)

And then there is Dylan, whose innie thrives on Lumon’s arbitrary workplace rewards—erasers, finger traps, waffle parties, all of which are tied to quarterly progress. Unlike the others on his team, Dylan’s innie is motivated to perform well, convinced that his efforts contribute to his outie’s success, whom he imagines living a wildly adventurous, purposeful life (“I like to think my outie lives on, like, a riverboat,” he jibes early in the series). But for Dylan’s outie, severance is not about ambition; it is about escape. He drifts aimlessly, flitting from one distraction to the next, unwilling or unable to commit to anything lasting. In one episode, his wife Gretchen worries aloud about him impulsively buying a car they cannot afford. In another, he sits blankly in front of the television, half-listening as she heads out for her night shift, while their children climb around him unnoticed. Content to let his innie shoulder the burdens of labor, he never pauses to question what it means to surrender half his existence to a job he cannot remember. Instead, he waits—perhaps for purpose, perhaps for something to give his life direction—without realizing that severance itself has already foreclosed the possibility of wholeness. Meanwhile, his innie clings to the belief that his labor is in service of his outie’s greatness, a belief that sharpens when he learns, through Lumon’s “Overtime Contingency Protocol,” that his outie has a son—a relationship his innie has heretofore been denied even the knowledge of, but which feeds the illusion (perhaps!) that his sacrifices are noble, that his work is meaningful, that it all adds up to something real, or, more to the point, something whole, where one side of self is contributing to the betterment of the other.

Dylan: The Everyman Seeking Wholeness

Significantly, and you may be able to tell from my waxing poetically above, Dylan’s story is where I see the most authentic everyman character—the one in whom I see myself the most and the one whose wins and losses seem more in line with the middle American workforce. Whereas the saving of the world seems to rest on the handsome Mark Scout—and his ethereally beautiful maybe-or-maybe-not-but-ultimately-not dead wife’s shoulders (while, mind you, he sleeps with both the classically beautiful innie and outie versions of Helly), Dylan is, in actuality, the one most like the rest of us, in my mind. Viewers might tend to imagine themselves more as Mark Scout (Severance viewers trend older than 30 and male), but I suspect that, if they searched their souls honestly, they might find a little more of Dylan there, as I do.

It is no accident, then, that Dylan’s story offers one of the clearest glimpses of what a reintegrated self might look like—not through drugs, surgery, or secrecy, but through relationship. If Mark embodies what Gen Z might dub “main character energy,” then Dylan represents the rest of us—the supporting characters, the ones who hold up the energies of “Yous You Are,” to borrow a phrase from Ricken Hale, Lumon’s accidental self-help guru. Innie Dylan, confined within Lumon’s walls, is intensely focused on excelling at his job; he responds to rewards, yes, but more important, he becomes particularly attuned to connection. He is the one innie who believes, wholeheartedly, that his work matters because it supports someone on the outside. He imagines his outie needing him, inventing reasons to justify the sacrifices, almost like a child seeking the approval of an absent parent. That sense of loyalty only intensifies upon learning about, and then constantly thinking of, his son, an accidental Lumon mishap in season one. Upon learning about him, Dylan longs to support him and entices the other Lumon employees to want to learn about their families and live in relationship with someone in the outside world. For the first time upon learning about his son’s existence, Dylan is not driven by perks or performance but by curiosity and care, believing his vision of love is now at least somewhat reified: he wants to bridge the gap, to work toward something larger than himself. We see this come to an apex in one of the show’s most powerful scenes from Season 1, Episode 9, aptly titled “The We We Are.” Dylan risks everything for his coworkers to experience what he has, physically holding open the severance control switches so his entire innie team can know something of their social bonds outside of the walls, even if the experience lasts for only a few cherished seconds.

Tellingly, when his outie wife Gretchen finally meets his innie, it is not the detached jokester Dylan his coworkers know that she gravitates toward; instead, it is the one who has been paying careful, undivided attention to a romantic version of the purpose of his work all along, gathering every crumb of information about the outside world he longs to love and give his labor and life for. While we learn little about Gretchen’s outie life beyond her job in campus security, what we do know is significant. She is the only mother in the series raising multiple children at various life stages. The visual details of her character underscore her maternal symbology: she is almost always dressed in Marian blue, a hue long associated with Our Blessed Mother—the maternal protectress who watches and intercedes for others. (With one notable exception—when she lies to outie Dylan about visiting his innie, she appears instead in purple, the color of penance, of Lent.) Even Gretchen’s work in campus security hints at more than physical protection; it points to knowledge, to a kind of maternal vigilance akin to the Virgin Mary’s—a deep awareness attuned to noticing what others overlook. Around her neck, Dylan’s wife typically wears a single pearl, too, a traditional symbol of the kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps we might even interpret this as the pearl of great price hidden in the field (Matt 13:46), suggesting that beneath the ordinariness of Gretchen’s life lies something precious and eternal—something Dylan, and we as viewers, instinctively recognize as attractive in her more than in any other character. It is no wonder, then, that she sees Dylan not as fragmented, but already whole—already capable of encounter, already belonging to her family. She notices the way he sacrifices for her and does nothing to distinguish between her husband on the outside and the husband she meets in Lumon’s Visitation Suite. “I’m always proud of you, Dylan,” she tells him simply when they meet: “I love you.”

Here, it is helpful to bring in Catholic philosopher Józef Tischner, who reminds us that the workplace is “an intermediary world between man and nature—a world adapted to satisfy both the stable and changing needs of man.”[8] It is meant to be a space of reciprocity and cooperation—a place where meaningful labor draws us into relationship with others, fostering growth both within the workplace and beyond. It should not isolate us, as it does Dylan from his family. Work, Tischner argues, should connect us to others and offer a sense of rootedness through shared purpose and encounter. But when the purpose is hidden—when we are cut off from the people we are ultimately working for, whether coworkers, community, or family, as Dylan is from Gretchen (or as we often are from our own families and communities when work consumes us)—it takes on a destructive quality.

What is particularly helpful within Tischner’s philosophy is his insistence that the most important elements of life are bound in encounter, and that true encounter is revealed in the human face. “Things have appearances,” he writes; “people have faces. Faces are traces of Transcendence.”[9] In this, Tischner resonates with Pope Francis, who likewise reminds us that the human face is not only a reflection of transcendence, but a summons to love: “This face, which looks at us with love, invites us to move beyond ourselves and to seek the good of others” (Evangelii Gaudium §39). When Dylan is with Gretchen in the Visitation Suite, there is a spiritual charge between their interactions. She sees in him the husband motivated to sacrifice for her and their family; meanwhile, at home, she finds a husband who drifts and cannot find his purpose. Both are Dylan, and she loves them both for being versions of her husband—yet she recognizes that, in the Lumon universe, they have been unnaturally divided.

When in the Visitation Suite[10] innie Dylan and Gretchen witness that invitation to move beyond themselves, to transcend the division between innie and outie Dylan. Gretchen even shows him photos of their children, allowing him to glimpse their faces. In one of the show’s most poignant gestures, innie Dylan proposes to her with a paper ring. She turns him down, realizing instinctively that the very fragmentation severance encourages is unsustainable.

Importantly, in that moment, Dylan is not simply asking for her affection—he is asking to integrate his life, to make his sacrifice whole. Gretchen turns him down because, while they may not be Catholic, she senses what the Church teaches: love without full presence, love without whole personhood, cannot be sustained. The sacrament would not be genuine; it would be as flimsy as the paper ring Dylan gives her.[11] Her rejection, however painful, catalyzes Dylan’s awakening. He resigns. Without the hope of communion, without the promise that his labor is for love, Dylan feels he has no reason to continue.

In the season finale, we discover that outie Dylan does not want his innie to resign. He writes him a letter, acknowledging (and pointedly admonishing) the feelings innie Dylan developed for Gretchen. She, he notes, is “perfect,” so he gets it, too, he says. Outie Dylan admits that he is jealous of his innie’s bravery and confidence—qualities he wishes he could embody. Knowing his innie exists inspires outie Dylan to become a better man, particularly for his wife, whom he now seems to appreciate more. Even so, he ultimately leaves the decision to his innie about whether to stay at Lumon or to walk away. While we do not see an explicit answer, what we do see is innie Dylan continuing to act out of love as he always has—for Gretchen and for his co-workers. His willingness to step in, to show up, to keep fighting alongside Helly and Mark in the season finale suggests a choice not of resignation but of recommitment. Since we already knew he was motivated by love and loyalty, it is no surprise his path leans toward altruism.

Indeed, his actions to help Helly and Mark when they need him in the final “battle scene” of Season 2—and to stay at Lumon, we can presume at least in some capacity—reflect a character formed by self-sacrificial love. As Pope St. John Paul II often reminds us, “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes §24). Unlike Mark, who remains painfully caught between two fractured identities—waving at one wife while running toward another romantic partner in the final moments of Season 2—Dylan seems to be progressively moving toward wholeness. His story outright resists the show’s broader pattern of fragmentation. His journey, more than any other character’s, gestures toward the Catholic vision of the whole human person because both versions of Dylan refuse to compartmentalize suffering or affection. Instead, they strive to live with integrity, in communion with others—even with each other—for the common good (i.e. Gretchen, their children, their co-workers, their shared world even, I would argue). In doing so, they discover hope—not through escape or division, but through the sincere and freely offered gift of self for the betterment of the common good.

Resigning from Fragmentation: What We Choose Next

The deeper challenge Severance leaves us with is not how to avoid suffering, but how to live with it rightly ordered—how to experience grief without letting it divide us, how to be whole human beings wherever we are, whether at work or at home. The temptation to sever, to compartmentalize, is, at its root, a temptation to dodge grief, to escape the burden of being fully present to life in all its difficulty. But Christ does not sever himself from human suffering; he enters it wholly, making it the very site of love.

Actor Adam Scott, who plays Mark, captures this tension in an interview: “It’s tricky being in entertainment because it’s sort of always with you,” he reflects. “You’re always being reminded of who you are and what you do. And it’s not like you can just take the briefcase with work in it and put it down and walk away.” Yet that feeling—the sense that work, worry, and avalanching expectations are always with us—is hardly unique to Hollywood. In truth, we are all performing in some way at work; the roles and the stage may shift depending on our occupations, but as Tischner reminds us, the key question is not whether life requires performance; it is whether our encounters within that performance are authentic. The terra firma of the stage might change, but our personhood does not. In our technological, capitalist age, this has become the model of life for many—a culture where the boundaries between work and self have all but disappeared. The danger is not in labor itself, but in allowing that labor to eclipse relationship, to sever us from the faces of others and the Transcendence they reveal.

In the end, Dylan’s resignation is not just a plot point; it is the Great Resignation, distilled. Faced with a life carved into pieces—a vocation stripped of presence and relationship—he does what millions have done in recent years: he walks away, just as I did from my job in telecommunications all those years ago (though with far less drama, I might add). Yet Dylan’s departure is not the end of his story. By the end of Season 2, he remains in the fight—not for Lumon, but against it. His resignation is not from work per se, but from labor emptied of love. He steps away not because he has given up, but because he knows now what kind of work is unworthy of him. Of all the characters, Dylan may be the one we see ourselves in most (whether we wish we came in a more heroic package perhaps), yet I submit he is also the one who most reflects the person we ought to long to become, too: brave enough to quit, bold enough to come back for what matters.

Season 2 ends in uncertainty, with questions that echo beyond Dylan himself and into the fourth wall of a viewership that also feels uncertain about their futures in the workforce. Resignation is on the table for Dylan obviously still, and now, so, too, is another occupational risk Dylan and the rest of us in 2025 are all increasingly aware of: massive layoffs. What is next? What happens if the job is not there at all and the company shuts down? These same questions hang over all who continue to toil in silence, and all who have chosen—or are choosing—to walk away or to stay. And yes, all those who fear to walk anywhere at all because the choice might not be ours to make for very much longer.

So what is next in Severance, and for us? Will Dylan’s divided selves, now speaking to one another at last, learn how to love Gretchen—together, or apart? Does it matter if they merge? Will his outie discover a deeper purpose? And will his innie’s sacrifices, offered in self-sacrificial commitment, ever be honored in any concrete way?

Dylan’s character places before us the vocational choices we all face: will we remain divided, or will we fully inhabit the settings we are in—at work, at home, and everywhere in between? We can choose to look into the faces of those we love—friends, family, coworkers, parishioners—undivided and with sacrificial purpose, putting the other first, just as Dylan inspires us to do. Or we can live life divided: halfway present, distracted, listless—never fully there for anyone, including ourselves. And including God.

As Annie Dillard reminds us—and as Dylan’s vocational journey makes plain—how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. Our whole days. Our whole lives.

And in the end, her words echo the invitation of the Incarnation itself: to bring our full selves into the world God so loves, to be truly present where we are, to love with our whole hearts and undivided selves. To look into the faces of those before us and to see God. It is a call not just to believe, but to inhabit—to live undivided from this world and the next, to live whole, to live unsevered. To live in love.

Seeking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through prayer