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.
The Hail Mary
There is likely no prayer as quintessentially Catholic as the Hail Mary. This is a short, beautiful prayer in which we ask Mary to pray for us. She is with God and her prayers are particularly meaningful.
Many non-Catholic Christians, especially evangelicals and fundamentalists, specifically teach their followers that Catholics don't follow the Bible, that we are an unscriptural Church. They sometimes twist or take verses out of context in a wrongly focused attempt to show that. But that is completely false. Catholicism is the most scriptural of all protestant and post-protestant era Christian churches.
Hopefully, you will find out more about this later in your class. But one example is this prayer. Its origins go directly back to Scripture.
In Luke 1:28 (NCB), we find the Angel Gabriel himself greeting Mary with words from this prayer:
Lk 1:28: The angel came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you."
(Note that "full of grace" is also interpreted as "most favored one.")
The prayer continues in Luke 41-42 (NCB). Mary's cousin, Elizabeth greets the young Mary upon hearing Mary's greeting when Mary came to visit her. At the time, Elizabeth was about six months pregnant with a baby who would become St. John the Baptist.
"When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb. Then Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.'"
In verse 43, Elizabeth then asks, "...why am I so greatly favored that the mother of my Lord should visit me?"
Here she refers to Mary as the mother of her Lord. We know that Elizabeth's Lord was God.
Therefore, so far, the words of the Hail Mary scripturally proceed as: "Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with [thee]. Blessed [art thou] among women, and blessed is the fruit of [thy] womb."
Over the past 2,000 years, the prayer has added the name of Jesus to the end of that first sentence. When those words were first uttered in Scripture, Jesus had not yet been formally named since He had not yet been born. But now we end the first sentence of the Hail Mary with the name of Jesus Himself.
As time progressed, Christians [Catholics] added the second sentence asking Mary to pray for us "now, and at the hour of our death." Early Christians, but continuing down to today, had a special affection and devotion to Mary...and Mary has had love for us.
The words "thee," "art," "thou," and "thy" are slightly older English words. In many current Bible translations, as well as in some modern prayer books, those words are given as "you," "are," "you," and "your." Regardless, the vast majority of English-speaking Catholics continue to use the older forms. Both forms are correct for the prayer and you can pray either one. But when praying with a larger group, the older forms are still generally used. There is a sense among many — and that would include me — that there is just a bit more beauty in the older traditional forms.
That, then, is the scriptural progression of the Hail Mary which is so closely associated with Catholics.
Many people today bristle when any prayer they grew up with changes. They should not. Prayers have changed throughout the past two millennia. But they remain prayers which (hopefully) come from our hearts.
The Hail Mary is especially associated with the Rosary. We will look at the Rosary later on.
Carefully memorize this prayer.
This prayer is also one of the world's most beautiful spiritual songs: the Ave Maria. That song is the Hail Mary, but in Latin. One version of the Ave Maria is by the famous classical composer, Franz Shubert. [Minor word changes were made for the song.]
©L. S. Scarpitta