Hail Mary as Fuel

If I alluded in the previous issue of Light and Life that the “Our Father” could be considered as a kind of mission for the salvation of souls, then I don’t think it’s beyond reason to allegorize the “Hail Mary” as a kind of fuel, or rations, for our mission. The structure of the Rosary lends itself to this analogy, as we begin our focus with our mission. As we pray, we take up our work of constant, rhythmic prayer, ending with the “Glory Be,” that is, the final doxology of praise and thanksgiving to God. So let’s consider the Hail Mary in three parts.

The Angelic Salutation

Hail Mary, full of grace. These are an expansion of the words of the angel from the Gospel of Luke, “Hail, full of grace” (Douay-Rheims version), or “Hail, favored one” (New American Bible), adding Our Lady’s name for our prayer. The differing phrasing is, in some way, arguments about wording or parsing, but the idea remains the same. Mary is not made “full of grace” or “highly favored” at that moment, but rather, is found “full of grace.” The angelic greeting is her identity, much as at Lourdes, Mary does not say, “I was conceived immaculately,” but “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The singular grace of her immaculate conception and remaining immaculate, unstained by sin, is her identity and glory, by God’s grace. I love that in Spanish, we do not say in the Hail Mary, “el Señor esté contigo” (“may the Lord be with you”) but instead, “el Señor es contigo” (“the Lord is with you”). The use of the indicative rather than the subjunctive in Spanish, reflects the reality at the time the archangel’s greeting reached her ears. The use of the verb ser, in place of estar, reflects that this is not considered a transitory graced state.

Calling her “favored one” reflects the idea that to be graced by God is to find favor, or pleasure in God’s eyes. Remember that God created us in His image, and once our nature was disfigured by sin, it is re-created by Baptism into the image of His Son, the living, incarnate icon of our merciful Father. We are all made, by adoption, little “sons” or little “christs” in Christ Himself. Mary is the perfect model of that Christ, the New Man, the New Adam, for she was never spiritually wounded by sin. We seek to model her in how she modeled her Son. We too, then, are made models, although I think in my case I am more a model in the definition of “a small or pale imitation of the real thing.”
Now, this is not the angel glibly throwing out a name or title. By nature, as it bears repeating, angels are far above our materially-limited nature. By grace alone we are raised above the angels, and Mary is the most illustrious glory of our race in this, because this greeting of St. Gabriel the Archangel is most high praise. St. Thomas Aquinas reflects on this by saying, “This is as if he said: ‘I show thee reverence because thou dost excel me in the fullness of grace.’” (Catechetical Instructions of St. Thomas, accessed via ewtn.com). As St. Thomas rightly points out, angels did not go around showing reverence for folks in Scripture. Rather, angels were shown reverence, such as by our father Abraham, for example, in Genesis 18. After all, why not? Angels, by their name and mission, as we reflected on before, are messengers of the Most High God, a kind of ambassador. To show disdain for the ambassador of someone important is often considered to show disdain for the one who sent that messenger. That person represents the voice of the one who sent him.

Humility First and Foremost

In art, it is common to show both the Blessed Virgin Mary and the angel showing reverence and humility. Mary recognizes the angel as a messenger of God, but the archangel is shown even more deeply bowed, for she is not only highly-favored, but will become the Ark of the New Covenant, carrying the very God the angel serves. The Lord is with thee! The Lord is truly with her by her singularly graced state, and is even more wonderfully made with her in the flesh. The Archangel Gabriel’s pose reflects that of the two cherubim that shelter the cover of the ark and look down before where the Presence of the Lord was to tell Moses all that the Lord commanded him (cf. Genesis 25:10-22). But Mary does not boast or dismiss the angel for privileged status; rather, she humbly replies to the angel, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
It is interesting that a common medieval practice was to recite the “Proto Hail Mary” (that is, just the angelic greeting), and bow, kneel, or prostate oneself in humility and showing reverence. Since, obviously, repeated prostrations or genuflections, could be tiring, it was considered penitential to say a large number of Hail Marys, often ending up at 150, as a reflection of the psalms. Here we are already seeing the seeds planted of the Rosary!

The Greeting of Her Kinswoman

After this, Mary goes in haste to visit her kinswoman, St. Elizabeth, who was already far along in her own miraculous pregnancy. St. Luke relates that St. Elizabeth “filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’” (Luke 1:41b-42). St. Elizabeth adds her own divinely-inspired proclamation that we have echoed for countless generations. Indeed, she is most blessed among women. Now, why would St. Elizabeth first say that Mary is most blessed, and then that blessed is the fruit of her womb? Should not Christ come first, since He is God? Indeed, God is infinitely greater, but here, I believe she speaks of the wisdom that St. Augustine related, that “Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb.” That great blessing that is the Incarnate God comes into her life, and our own, through her own obedience to God.

Finally, the Petitions

The word “prayer” is derived ultimately from the Latin prex, one of whose meanings was a request of another, which could be a request made to God or a god, but it just meant a request, in general. In some legal texts, this wording is still used, without any religious significance. Until now in the Hail Mary, we’ve only encountered two salutations – very spiritually significant salutations, but nevertheless, not really any kind of prayer. We find written evidence emerging in the late 15th and early 16th centuries of the common trope of asking Mary to pray for us and at the hour of our death. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t petitions made before then, only that they became much more formalized by then. It does seem to say that in St. Dominic’s time, the Hail Mary would not have included this second part, the petition. If you follow the Dominican way of saying the Rosary, only the beginning, before the Mysteries, is different. We begin In the name of the Father, etc., and then we say the first part of the Hail Mary, without the petition.
Of course, this should not surprise us. If you needed something from someone, and needed to ask, would you just run up to them; would you just blurt out your request? You would greet them, and if they were important, you might even praise them or recognize their high office, and then present your petition. Even with close ones we’re very familiar with, we’re probably not just going to say “give me the car keys” first thing. Could we at least get a hello or nice to see you? It does sound rather demanding or ungrateful. Obviously, if we’re in danger, we may well just scream out, “Help!” and many beautiful prayers are just that, simple cries for help, but in the normal course of events, we follow a loving, civil approached to our petitions, and we recognize our own lowly status in recognizing ourselves as sinners, those who have failed God and ourselves in some way.
In these petitions to Our Lady, notice that we simply leave it in her hands. God knows what we need, and He knows our hearts and petitions already, spoken or unspoken. Like our daily bread in the Our Father, we ask for her help by her own prayers to her Son, Our Lord, for these things we need, that is, now, and those we will need in the most important moment of our lives, at the hour of our death, when we will be born into eternity, whether for salvation or perdition. As St. Paul teaches, “In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26, NAB). It is enough simply to say and admit that we need help. And that might be the most beautiful part of prayer: the humble soul before God, that asks the Mother of Our Lord to be with him or her as he makes his petitions known. 

The Rosary  is one of the most powerful devotions entrusted to us by Our Lady, and in these turbulent times, it remains a sure path to peace, conversion, and deeper love of Christ.
Pope Leo XIV

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