WOODSIDE — Mely Borgonia remembers feeling overwhelmed the first time her godmother invited her to a 2,000 Hail Marys devotion at the home of a family friend in 1992.

“I thought, ‘Praying the Hail Mary 2,000 times? I can’t even get through a decade of the rosary!’ I did not believe I could do it,” Borgonia recalled. The 2,000 Hail Marys is a devotion in which Catholics gather to recite the prayer 2,000 times in a row — a litany that usually takes seven to eight hours to complete. Borgonia has come a long way from her initial reaction.

Today, 33 years later, she leads the same devotion at her church, St. Sebastian in Woodside. The group gathers in the convent on the first Saturday of the month to begin at 7 a.m. sharp. The session usually lasts until 3 p.m. Despite her reservations back then, she went and found her first experience so spiritually fulfilling that she became a part of a group whose members would go to each other’s homes in Elmhurst, where she lived at the time, to say 2,000 Hail Marys.

“I really felt the presence of the Blessed Mother, and I believed she wanted me to keep going,” she said.

According to the website, prayyourrosary.com, the prayer is recited 2,000 times because it is believed that reciting it many times helps a person develop a deeper understanding of the words in the prayer and enables them to grow closer to Jesus through the intercession of the Blessed Mother.

Borgonia spent 13 years going from house to house to participate before deciding to see if she could start a devotion at St. Sebastian in 2005. The devotion has been going strong since, drawing 20-30 participants each month.

“I come all the time because Mary, our mother, intercedes for us,” Claudia Cort, a St. Sebastian parishioner who has participated in the devotion for eight years, said after the group completed the 2,000 Hail Marys on Feb. 1.

“I always leave here feeling so peaceful and filled with the desire to help others as Mary has helped me,” she added. The 2,000 Hail Marys devotion is believed to have been created by two seminarians —Daniel Ara and Juan Riu — in Barcelona, Spain, in 1933 during the feast of the Annunciation. To begin the devotion at St. Sebastian, organizers set up a shrine with statues and candles in the front of the room.

Once the devotion begins, people are permitted to take small breaks and leave the room, but at least one person must remain at all times so that the cycle of reciting the Hail Mary is never broken. In addition, after each 100th Hail Mary, the group presents petitions to the Blessed Mother, including for world peace, an end to abortion, help for people suffering from addictions, and an increase in religious vocations.

While those aspects are universal, one part of the devotion is deeply personal to each participant. The organizer asks everyone to write their personal petitions to the Blessed Mother on pieces of paper, which are then placed in a basket next to the shrine. At the end of the session, the papers are burned.

While the devotion is spiritually rewarding, it also has practical benefits, Borgonia said. “You come, you pray, and you make friends,” she said, adding that she tries to create a relaxed atmosphere. “We serve coffee and breakfast in the morning, and we have food here all day.”

On the day The Tablet visited, a table had been set up with trays of food and snacks in the vestibule outside the chapel. Participants periodically took breaks to munch on some food, which is what Borgonia said she aims for.

“I always tell people that if they can’t see themselves staying for the entire eight hours, they can come for a little while and leave,” she said. And, of course, they can always come back later.

“I want them to spend time with the Blessed Mother,” she said. “That’s what this is all about.”