Holy Mary

To this form of thanksgiving the Church of God has wisely added prayers and an invocation addressed to the most holy Mother of God, by which we piously and humbly fly to her patronage, in order that, by her intercession, she may reconcile God to us sinners and may obtain for us those blessings which we stand in need of in this life and in the life to come.

This is what the Catechism of the Council of Trent says about the second part of the Hail Mary. It is not known who wrote it, but it is the result of many years of reflection, liturgical practices and lots of prayer. It began to be included in some breviaries of the religious orders of the past until it came into regular use by the people of God around the 15th century. Like all traditions, it was not taken from the Bible, but it is rooted in it.

Holy Mary – Unlike Eve, who was proud before God and wanted to usurp God’s power by submitting to the serpent, the symbol of evil, Mary, humble before God to whom she submits, crushes the serpent's head. By becoming the Mother of God, Mary achieved through humility what Eve wanted through pride "to be like God" (Genesis 3:5). Eve, the pretentious one, wanted to be like God in omnipotence, while Mary, the humble servant of Zion, wanted to be like God in holiness.

If Abraham is our Father in faith, then Mary is our Mother in faith; in Mary, faith and hope throughout the ages find their fulfilment. 

Mother of God – An enthusiastic Protestant proselytizer gets on a bus and exclaims, "This is the letter and this is the envelope that contained it, we keep the letter and throw the envelope in the trash. Christ is the letter, and Mary is the envelope." "Is your mother also an envelope you throw in the trash?" Someone asked...

And it is not true that you throw away the envelope. Lovers who keep their love letters keep them inside their envelopes. Christ is a love letter from God to humanity. Mary is the flagrant, colorful envelope that contains that letter; whoever is a mother is always a mother. Furthermore, the envelopes also contain the address of the sender of the letter; we need this to respond, just as we need Mary's mediation.

A mother is the one who carries a child in her womb and has contributed genetically to its formation; Mary is a mother in both of these senses. If Mary is the mother of Jesus and Jesus is God, then Mary is the mother of God. This is an inescapable syllogism.

She is not the mother of God in the sense that she is the origin of God or that she came before God and is the origin of Jesus’ divinity. She is the mother of God because she contained God in her womb and because she contributed genetic material to the human form that God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, took in Christ.

Pray for us sinners – The new Eve, the new Abraham, the new Jacob, Mary is also the new Moses. Abraham interceded before God for Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses continually interceded for the people until he could no longer hold up his outstretched arms. In the new and eternal covenant established by Christ, the role of intercessor fell upon his mother Mary because there is no human creature closer to God than her. Even during her Son’s earthly pilgrimage, Mary exercised this role of intercessor and mediator of all graces. Jesus' first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana is performed at Mary's request, (John 2:1-11).

Now – “Passed Waters Do Not Move Mills". Life takes place in the present; however, there are people who are held hostage by traumatic and guilt-ridden events of the past that act as curses in the present and prevent them from taking charge and being responsible for their own behavior. 

Sin is done in the past and forgiven in the present; Jesus' forgiveness sets us free and undoes the shackles of the past; this is assimilated in the context of our whole life in a positive way. With Jesus we chant our "Felix Culpa" in the present; "there are no evil out of which good cannot come", "God writes straight with crooked lines". 

The three theological virtues explain and shape our life, which consists of three stages. We live only in the present, but it is the faith we bring from the past that gives meaning to our present, and it is the hope that projects us into the future that animates and inspires our present. Charity must be the only action we do in the present; to live is to love, both God and neighbour.

And at the hour of our death – "I want to die," said my mother in agony when she saw death coming to take her to God. Jesus said, "No one takes it (life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord!" (John 10:18). If we love God above everything and everyone, death does not deprive us of anything or anyone. Letting go of the little we have in order to cling to the Much that is God should not be difficult. Let us live in the hope that the best is yet to come.

Amen – So be it, I believe this is our stamp, our signature underneath, we endorse to everything we have said above.

Conclusion – The first part of the "Hail Mary" concerns the past and the role of Mary in the history of the salvation of humanity. The second concerns what Mary is in the present and future, and her role in the salvation of each one of us. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Hail Mary

It is undoubtedly the most popular and recited prayer by Catholics; it is repeated 53 times in the rosary alone, which is so beloved by the wise and the simple alike; it is also recited in many other situations and circumstances. 

Like the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary is also divided into two parts; but unlike the former, the Hail Mary is not entirely biblical. In an ascending movement, the first part, taken from the Bible, consists of 5 steps that go up to Jesus. In a descending movement, the second part is also made up of 5 steps that descend to human reality -- our death. 

It cannot be understood by the advocates of "sola fide sola scriptura solus Christus", because it harmoniously unites Scripture, the Word of God, described in the first part, with Tradition, that is, the history of the Christian community’s faith throughout the ages, reflected in the second. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the center of history, is the core that unites the two parts.

The Hail Mary is a compendium of salvation history; it unites heaven, represented by the angel Gabriel, with earth, represented by Elizabeth, Mary's cousin. It combines the past, the Annunciation and the Visitation all the way to Jesus, with the present, when we ask for Mary's intercession "now", and the future, when we ask for her intercession also at "the hour of our death". 

Hail – It means rejoice; rejoice, daughter of Jerusalem, the Lord is in your midst. This is how Mary is greeted by the angel Gabriel, who, a few verses earlier, introduced himself to Zechariah, saying, “I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God…” (Luke 1:19). Mary is human, and humans because of sin, do not stand in the presence of God. However, the Archangel Gabriel recognizes in Mary a dignity superior to his own; furthermore, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is already deduced here, namely that Mary was conceived without sin.

Mary – It means enlightened and illuminating. Illuminated inwardly by the Sun who is Christ, being herself like the illuminating moon; and just as the light of the moon exists only in reference to the sun, so Mary is a finger always pointing to Christ

Full of grace – Grace is the presence of God; the angel recognizes that Mary is full of God’s presence. Full of grace because she was conceived without original sin. Because she was the mediatrix of the principal Grace, which is the gift that God gave to humanity, Jesus, Mary is now the mediatrix of all the graces that God grants to those who love Him. 

The Lord is with you – Mary is the dwelling place of the God Most High; Mary is the new ark of the covenant; while the old ark contained only sacraments of the presence and wonders that God worked in his people, Mary contains the same God made man. Mary is also both the temple and the spouse of the Holy Spirit. 

The old ark contained manna, the manna that the people ate only to be hungry again; Christ is the new manna that satiates for eternal life. The old ark contained the tablets of the law, the Ten Commandments; Christ is the new law, the law of love that sums up the commandments and goes beyond them, because he invites us to love without measure, whereas the commandments only told us what not to do. If the old ark contained Moses’ staff with which he guided his people and worked wonders, the new ark contains the Good Shepherd, the one who gives his life for the sheep and tells us that we should only recognize one authority, one Father, one Teacher, one Lord who is God.

Blessed are you among women – After the Angel’s Annunciation, the Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth begins. If in the Annunciation Mary related with God, loving God, praying, contemplating, then in the Visitation Mary relates with her neighbour, loving her neighbour by helping her cousin, acting and putting God’s word into practice in concrete works of charity.

We make Elizabeth’s greeting our own. In fact, the first beatitude of the Gospel is spoken by Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to Mary: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (Luke 1:45) 

Mary is the faith of Abraham from generation to generation, which finds in Mary its broadest and ultimate fulfilment. Through Mary, not Jacob, Abraham has descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea, since he is the father of all believers outside the meager borders of Israel.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb – The wheat that God sowed in Mary's womb has become for us the bread that gives us life and eternal salvation. (Canticle of Fatima)

A disciple is one who listens to the word of God and puts it in practice. Mary listened to the word of God from the Angel and put it into practice by accepting and incarnating it. So, Mary is mother because she was first a disciple; she is the fertile ground par excellence, because in her the seed of the Word bore 100% fruit. Mary is also the fulfillment of Jacob's dream: the ladder that connects heaven and earth. 

Whenever we recite the Hail Mary, we are uniting heaven, represented by the angel Gabriel, with earth, represented by her cousin Elizabeth. By means of Mary's ladder, God descends to earth and Christ ascends with humanity to the Father.

Jesus
Strange as it may seem, the Hail Mary prayer is a Christ-centered prayer. He is the subject, the raison d'être of the prayer; it is in him and through him that Mary is praised. He is the center of the prayer that unites its two parts. 

Just as a stone thrown into a lake makes concentric circles that travel until they reach the borders of the lake, so Christ, when he came into the world, occupies the centre of human history, his action gradually making itself felt, until he is all in all, (1 Corinthians 15:28). Jesus is the cornerstone (Acts 4:11), the foundation of the Church, the one who holds everything together in a harmonious and secure whole. 

Conclusion – The words of the Angel, followed by Elizabeth’s words, make up the biblical part of the "Hail Mary" prayer which ends with JESUS, who is the center and the glue that binds the Bible to the Tradition of the Church, which is represented in the second part of this prayer. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC