Hail Mary

THE HAIL MARY
Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

WHAT IS THE HAIL MARY?
The Hail Mary is an ancient Christian prayer formed by two greetings of the Virgin Mary found in the Gospel of Luke: the Archangel Gabriel's greeting of her at the Annunciation, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"; and Elizabeth's greeting of her at the Visitation: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" (Luke 1:28, 1:42). The prayer closes with a petition asking "Mary, the Mother of God" to pray for us, "now and at the hour of our death."

WHY DO WE PRAY THE HAIL MARY?
Non-Catholic Christians often mistake Catholic devotion to Mary and the saints as idolatry. The truth is, however, we honor Mary and the saints, but worship God alone! According to the Bible, the essence of worship is not prayer, but sacrifice (cf. Ex. 20:24, et al.). Catholics pray to Mary and the saints, but offer sacrifice only to God, namely the Holy Eucharist at Mass! Praying to Mary and the saints is simply a way of asking our elder brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for us, just as we ask believers on earth to do.

It is an especially good and holy thing to venerate Mary, the Mother of God. For the proper veneration of the Blessed Virgin leads directly and assuredly to a more profound relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary's mission to bring souls to Christ is verified by her last spoken words in Scripture: "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).

God asked Mary to bear Christ His Son through the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation; and Mary gave her consent with great faith and humility, saying, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38).

It is important to remember that Mary had the freedom to reject God's request. Had she done so, would He have simply found another woman to bear His Son? We cannot say. All we know for certain is that it was his will for Mary to be the Mother of His Son, and she said "Yes" to Him. The Gospels revere her for her faithfulness to God (cf. Luke 1:45); and Mary herself declares, "All generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48).

THE HAIL MARY IN SCRIPTURE & TRADITION
"Hail, ..."
"Hail" is a word generally reserved for greeting nobility (cf. Acts 23:26). That the Archangel greets Mary in this fashion is an indication of her status (Luke 1:28). It is evident from this choice of words that the Angel is addressing not an ordinary girl, but a queen. This fits with the royal overtones of his message that Her Child will receive "the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:32-33).

In the First Book of Kings, Bathsheba, the mother of King Solomon, comes to make a request of him on behalf of Adonijah. When she enters the throne room, the king stands and bows down to her, and has a throne bought for her and placed at his right hand. Then she says to him, "I have one small request to make of you; do not refuse me"; and the king replies, "Make your request, my mother; for I will not refuse you" (2:17-20). Christ is the New Covenant fulfillment of the Davidic kings; and Mary fulfills the role of the Queen Mother, presenting our petitions to Her Son in the heavenly throne room.

"Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you! ..."
In greeting Mary, the Angel uses not her given name (later added to the prayer), but rather addresses her by the Greek kecharitomene, translated by Saint Jerome in the 4th century in his Latin version of the Bible (Vulgate) as "full of grace" (Luke 1:28). It is highly significant that the Angel chooses to call Mary by this name. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of the verb charitoo, meaning "to grace." The perfect tense indicates a present state of grace resulting from an action completed in the past. It denotes, therefore, a perpetual, permanent, or full state of grace. This is reinforced by the second part of Gabriel's salutation, "the Lord is with you!", which is not an expression of desire ("May the Lord be with you!), but an acknowledgement of fact that confirms Mary's sanctification had already taken place and that her condition of holiness was ongoing. For this reason, the angelic greeting has been used as a scriptural support for the Immaculate Conception, the Church's belief that God preserved Mary from the stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception, in view of Christ's merits. The merits of the Cross, that is, were applied to Mary ahead of time, similar to the way John the Baptist is sanctified in his mother's womb in the Gospels, many years in advance of Calvary (Luke 1:15, 41).

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. ..."
These words, too, come directly from the Gospels. They are the words which Elizabeth says to Mary at the Visitation (Luke 1:42). The filling of Elizabeth and John, her unborn child, with the Holy Spirit at the sound of Mary's greeting is a strong indication of the power of Mary's intercession. And Elizabeth goes on to exclaim, "Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43). This is certainly an exalted way to address one's younger kinswoman; proving the veneration of Mary is a biblical practice.

In seeking to refute devotion to Mary, our separated brethren will sometimes refer to the later scene in Luke's Gospel, in which a woman from the crowd says to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!"; and Our Lord replies back, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:27-28). These words, though, are not meant to refute Mary's blessedness, but actually to reveal the true reason for it. Jesus blesses those who hear the word of God and keep it; and this is precisely what Elizabeth says of Mary earlier in the book: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Luke 1:45). Jesus corrects the woman in the crowd, not because she spoke wrongly, but because she said too little. Undoubtedly, Mary is blessed for bearing and nursing Him, but the greater reason for her blessedness is her faith, her supernatural closeness to Him. The woman erred in ignoring the spiritual aspect of Mary bearing Christ.

The Incarnation, the coming of Christ in the flesh, is the central mystery of our faith; and Mary, who robed Him in flesh, is indispensable to this mystery. Authentic Marian devotion, therefore, always centers on Christ. Thus, the name of Jesus is found at the center of the Hail Mary: the consummate prayer of praise of the Incarnation.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God ..."
Being at once Virgin and Mother, Mary in her person confirms who Jesus is. That she is a Virgin (that He did not have a human father) verified His divinity; that she is a Mother (that He had a human mother) verifies His humanity. In objecting to our calling Mary the Mother of God, our separated brethren fail to realize that this title, by design, says more to us about Jesus than about Mary, affirming as it does that the Child to whom Mary gave birth is God. In fact, the Marian title Theotokos or "God-bearer" was affirmed for use by Christians by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., as a way of defending the orthodox belief that Christ is both God and man against the heretical teaching of Nestorius, who denied the divinity of the Child born to Mary.

"pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."
Our separated brethren object to prayers to Mary because they mistakenly see prayer and worship as synonymous. The Bible, though, reveals that worship fundamentally involves not prayer alone, but the offering of a sacrifice (cf. Mal. 1:11); and the Catholic Church makes a sacrificial offering to God alone, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Prayer, on the other hand, is merely the act of making a request. We as the saints, our elder brothers and sisters in heaven, to pray for us just as we ask fellow believers on earth to do. As Catholics, we believe Christ's followers are called by grace to participate in a subordinate way in the work of redemption, to truly be "God's fellow workers" (1 Cor. 3:9).

Jesus is the one Mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5) because He alone by nature is both divine and human. A few lines before calling Him the one Mediator, however, Paul encourages Christians to intercede for one another in prayer (1 Tim. 2:1-3). Our going to God on behalf of others in prayer is our way of sharing in the one mediation of Christ.

Mary's privileged role of interceding for us in prayer before God flows from her call to be the Mother of all believers – a role announced by Christ when He declared to her from the Cross, "Woman, behold your son!" referring to John, "the beloved disciple"; and to John, "Behold, your mother!" (John 19:26-27). It is rather extraordinary that He first speaks to Mary, asking her to care for John, who was a grown man capable of caring for himself. This indicates Christ was calling her to look after the disciple, representing all of the Lord's followers, as a spiritual mother. And a spiritual mother primarily cares for her children through prayer.

"Amen."
While we traditionally end all prayers with "Amen," it seems especially fitting to end the Hail Mary in this way. For Amen is a Hebrew word meaning, "So be it," the precise words which Mary spoke to God at the Annunciation – her "Yes" to Him, and the primary reason why all generations have called her blessed.