(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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The Hail Mary
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
This is the prayer which Catholics recite more often than any other. It is the most familiar of all the prayers used by the Church to honor the Blessed Virgin. It forms the greatest part of the Rosary, a devotion that is practiced at least occasionally by all Catholics and very frequently by the more fervent among them. It is recited at morning, noon and night, in the Angelus.
It is a prayer which owes its origin to inspiration from God, manifested through one of His Angels, one of His Saints, and His holy Church. It is one of the most complete and perfect of all prayers, expressing in a few words salutation, praise, congratulation, thanksgiving, and petition. This prayer is the Hail Mary.
It consists of three parts. The first is the salutation of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary, into which the Church has inserted her name: "Hail (Mary), full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women." The second part is composed of the words of Elizabeth to our Lady: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb," to which is annexed the sacred name of Jesus. And the third part is a beautiful petition added by the Church of God, giving expression to the feeling with which we Catholics regard the Mother of God, and declaring our confidence in her intercession: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
The Origin of the "Hail Mary. "What is the history of this beautiful prayer? For many centuries it was unknown - a circumstance which seems remarkable to us, who use it so frequently. We may well wonder how Catholics ever prayed without it; but it is a historical fact that the Hail Mary did not exist at all until the eleventh century, and even then only a part of it was used as a prayer.
Its origin was as follows: The monastic orders were accustomed to recite lengthy offices each day; and on certain feasts, especially those of the Blessed Virgin, these services were supplemented by the "Little Office" of Mary. In this the words of the Archangel and of St. Elizabeth were used repeatedly in the form of versicles and responses. Gradually it became a pious practice, not only for the monks but for the laity, to use these sentences as a prayer. In the year 1196 the Bishop of Paris ordered his clergy to teach these words to their flocks, and within a short time the prayer became well known throughout the Catholic world.
A little later the holy name of Jesus was added, probably by Pope Urban IV, and the last part, "Holy Mary, Mother of God," etc., was introduced about the year 1500, as it was felt that this beautiful expression of devotion to our Mother would be more complete if it included a petition to obtain her powerful intercession.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on the prayer Hail Mary and its scriptural foundation:
2676 Hail Mary [or Rejoice, Mary]: the greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this prayer. It is God himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary. Our prayer dares to take up this greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her.
Full of grace, the Lord is with thee: These two phrases of the angel's greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. "Rejoice . . . O Daughter of Jerusalem . . . the Lord your God is in your midst." Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is "the dwelling of God . . . with men." Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world.
Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. After the angel's greeting, we make Elizabeth's greeting our own. "Filled with the Holy Spirit," Elizabeth is the first in the long succession of generations who have called Mary "blessed." "Blessed is she who believed. . . . " Mary is "blessed among women" because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's word. Abraham. because of his faith, became a blessing for all the nations of the earth. Mary, because of her faith, became the mother of believers, through whom all nations of the earth receive him who is God's own blessing: Jesus, the "fruit of thy womb."
2677 Holy Mary, Mother of God: With Elizabeth we marvel, "And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Because she gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust all our cares and petitions to her: she prays for us as she prayed for herself: "Let it be to me according to your word." By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her: "Thy will be done."
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death: By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the "Mother of Mercy," the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender "the hour of our death" wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her son, Jesus, in paradise.
2678 Medieval piety in the West developed the prayer of the rosary as a popular substitute for the Liturgy of the Hours. In the East, the litany called the Akathistos and the Paraclesis remained closer to the choral office in the Byzantine churches, while the Armenian, Coptic, and Syriac traditions preferred popular hymns and songs to the Mother of God. But in the Ave Maria, the theotokia, the hymns of St. Ephrem or St. Gregory of Narek, the tradition of prayer is basically the same.
2679 Mary is the perfect Orans (prayer), a figure of the Church. When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan of the Father, who sends his Son to save all men. Like the beloved disciple we welcome Jesus' mother into our homes, for she has become the mother of all the living. We can pray with and to her. The prayer of the Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope.