The Hail Mary or Ave Maria (from its first words in Latin) is a traditional Catholic prayer addressing Mary, the mother of Jesus. The prayer is based on two biblical passages featured in the Gospel of Luke: the Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary (the Annunciation) and Mary's subsequent visit to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. It is also called the Angelic Salutation due to the prayer's basis on Archangel Gabriel's words to Mary.
Hail Mary is a prayer of praise for and of petition to Mary, regarded as the Theotokos (Mother of God). Since the 16th century, the version of the prayer used in the Catholic Church closes with an appeal for her intercession. The prayer takes different forms in various traditions and has often been set to music.
In the Latin Church, the Hail Mary forms the basis of other prayers such as the Angelus and the Rosary. In some Oriental Orthodox traditions, theotokia in psalmody are devoted to praising the Mother of God.Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia: Hail Mary In addition, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have a common private prayer quite similar to the Hail Mary, though without the explicit request for intercession. The Eastern Catholic Churches follow their respective traditions or adopt the Latin Church version, which is also used by many other Western groups historically branching from the Catholic Church, such as Lutherans, Anglicans, Independent Catholics, and Old Catholics.
Text The Latin version of the prayer is the most common in English-speaking and other Western countries.
Biblical source The prayer incorporates two greetings to Mary recorded in the Gospel of Luke: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee", and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb". In mid-13th-century Western Europe, the prayer consisted only of these words with the single addition of the name "Mary" after the word "Hail", as is evident from Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the prayer."Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Hail Mary", Catholic Dossier, May–June 1996, Ignatius Press, Snohomish, Washington.
The first is the angel's greeting at the Annunciation, the second from Elizabeth's greeting at the Visitation, and taken together, these two passages are the two times Mary is greeted in chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke.
Annunciation The first of the two passages from the Gospel of Luke is the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, originally written in Koine Greek. The opening word of greeting, (), here translated "hail", literally has the meaning "rejoice" or "be glad". This was the normal greeting in the language in which the Gospel of Luke is written and continues to be used in the same sense in Modern Greek. Accordingly, both "hail" and "rejoice" are valid English translations of the word ("hail" reflecting the Latin translation, and "rejoice" reflecting the original Greek).
According to Pope Benedict XVI, "at first sight the term chaire "rejoice", seems an ordinary greeting, typical in the Greek world, but if this word is interpreted against the background of the biblical tradition it acquires a far deeper meaning. The same term occurs four times in the Greek version of the Old Testament and always as a proclamation of joy in the coming of the Messiah (cf. , ; ; ). The Angel’s greeting to Mary is therefore an invitation to joy, deep joy. It announces an end to the sadness that exists in the world because of life’s limitations, suffering, death, wickedness, in all that seems to block out the light of the divine goodness. It is a greeting that marks the beginning of the Gospel, the Good News."
The word (), here translated as "graceful", admits of various translations. Grammatically, the word is the feminine perfect passive participle of the verb (), which means "to show, or bestow with, grace" and here, in the passive voice, "to have grace shown, or bestowed upon, one".Liddell and Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, "χαρι^τ-όω".
The text also appears in the account of the annunciation contained in chapter 9 of the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Matthew.
Visitation The second part of the prayer is taken from Elizabeth's greeting to Mary as recorded in : "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."The same words "Blessed you above women" are referred to Joel in the Song of Deborah (). Cf. Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible: "The words here are very similar to Elizabeth's greeting of the Virgin Mary, "Blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1:42)."
In Western Latin tradition
After considering the use of similar words in Syriac, Greek and Latin in the 6th century, Herbert Thurston, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia concludes that "there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050" – though a later pious tale attributed to Ildephonsus of Toledo (fl. 7th century) the use of the first part, namely the angel's greeting to Mary, without that of Elizabeth, as a prayer. All the evidence suggests that it took its rise from certain versicles and responsories occurring in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which just at that time was coming into favour among the monastic orders.
Thomas Aquinas spoke of the name "Mary" as the only word added at his time to the Biblical text, to indicate the person who was "full of grace". But at about the same time the name "Jesus" was also added, to specify who was meant by the phrase "the fruit of thy womb".
The Western version of the prayer is thus not derived from the Greek version: even the earliest Western forms have no trace of the Greek version's phrases: "Mother of God and Virgin" and "for thou hast given birth to the Saviour of our souls".
To the greeting and praise of Mary of which the prayer thus consisted, a petition "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death" was added later. The petition first appeared in print in 1495 in Girolamo Savonarola's .British Library - Rare Books Department, shelfmark: IA 27542. The "Hail Mary" prayer in Savonarola's exposition reads: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst 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 petition was commonly added around the time of the Council of Trent. The Dutch Jesuit Petrus Canisius is credited with adding in 1555 in his Catechism the sentence
Eleven years later, the sentence was included in the Catechism of the Council of Trent of 1566. The catechism says that to the first part of the Hail Mary, by which "we render to God the highest praise and return Him most gracious thanks, because He has bestowed all His heavenly gifts on the most holy Virgin ... the Church of God has wisely added prayers and an invocation addressed to the most holy Mother of God. ...We should earnestly implore her help and assistance; for that she possesses exalted merits with God, and that she is most desirous to assist us by her prayers, no one can doubt without impiety and wickedness."The catechism of the Council of Trent by Theodore Alois Buckley 2010 . "PART IV: THE LORD'S PRAYER: PRAYER: Importance Of Instruction On Prayer". Soon after, in 1568 Pope Pius V included the full form as now known in his revision of the Roman Breviary.
The current Latin version is thus as follows, with accents added to indicate how the prayer is said in the current Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation:
Because recitation of the Angelus, a prayer within which the Hail Mary is recited three times, is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell, words from the Ave Maria were often inscribed on bells.
Indulgence The Enchiridion Indulgentiarum (Indulgences Handbook) grants the partial indulgence for this prayer.Apostolic Penitentiary, Enchiridion indulgentiarum, Normae Et Concessiones, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Editio Quarta, 2004, p. 82. (in the appendix relating to "pious invocations")
Byzantine Christian use
The Hail Mary prayer of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches is similar to the first part of the Latin Church form, with the addition of a very brief opening phrase and a short concluding phrase. It is well known and often used, though not quite as frequently as in the Western Church. It appears in several canons of prayer. It is typically sung thrice at the end of Vespers during an All-Night Vigil, and occurs many times in the course of daily prayer.
The Greek text, of which those in other languages are translations, is:
To the Biblical texts this adds the opening invocation "Theotokos Virgin", the name "Mary", and the concluding phrase "because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest".
Another English rendering of the same text reads:
or:
Aramaic version The Aramaic version has been reconstructed (probably from Arabic) by Afram Barsoum in the following way: +AramaicQolo Shlom leg bthulto Maryam, su KoleSuryoye.nl - Syriac Church Lyrics. — The initial part of the prayer was written in Syriac language of the Syriac liturgy, modern son of the Aramaic which was spoken at the time of Mary, while the Green text has been handed down by Saint Luke the EvangelistTextTransliteration ..
Slavonic versions There exist two variant versions in Church Slavonic: Cyrillic Romanization English Translation Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, (or: Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos) Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne Christ the Saviour, the Deliverer of our souls. Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, (or: Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos) Mary full of grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne the Saviour of our souls.
The first is the older, and remains in use by the Old Believers as well as those who follow the Ruthenian recension (among them the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the Ruthenian Catholic Church). The second, corresponding more closely to the Greek, appeared in 1656 under the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, and is in use by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Romanian version „Născătoare de Dumnezeu, Fecioară, bucură-te! Ceea ce ești plină de har, Marie, Domnul este cu tine. Binecuvântată ești tu între femei și binecuvântat este rodul pântecelui tău, că ai născut pe Mântuitorul sufletelor noastre. Preasfântă Marie, Maica lui Dumnezeu, roagă-te pentru noi, păcătoșii, acum și-n ceasul morții noastre”.
Latin Church Catholic use
The Hail Mary is the last prayer in Appendix V of the present Roman Missal, the last of seven prayers under the heading "Thanksgiving After Mass". There it appears with "with you" instead of the traditional "with thee", "are you among" instead of the traditional "art thou amongst" and "your womb" in place of the traditional "thy womb":
The Hail Mary is the central part of the Angelus, a devotion generally recited thrice daily by many Catholics, as well as high church Anglicans, and Lutherans who usually omit the second half.
The Hail Mary is an essential element of the Rosary, a prayer method in use especially among Roman Rite (Western) Catholics. The Eastern Catholic Churches say a similar version.