“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you” Luke 1:26-28 – In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
The Hail Mary is a Scripture-based prayer in which we meditate on words from the Gospel of Luke. In the second half of the prayer, we ask Mary to intercede for us and bring us closer to her Son, Jesus.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Luke 1:28 "And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." The Greek kecharitomene means favored by grace, graced. Its tense suggests a permanent state of being "highly favored," thus full of grace.
The 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.
However, while the prayer is essentially straight from the Bible, Christians did not put the two verses together until the 11th century. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that “in point of fact, there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050.
A popular German religious manual of the fifteenth century ("Der Selen Troïst", 1474) even divides the Hail Mary into four portions, and declares that the first part was composed by the Angel Gabriel, the second by St. Elizabeth, the third, consisting only of the Sacred Name.
In 1975, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach popularized the term "Hail Mary" to describe his miracle, winning touchdown pass to fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Drew Pearson in a playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings.
The justification for asking Mary to intercede for us is once again found in the Bible. Revelation 5:8 depicts "the prayers of the saints" being set before the altar of God in heaven.
Q: Is there a biblical basis for the Rosary? A: As you know the bible does "not" tell us to pray the Rosary because this form of prayer originated only during the middle ages. However, important elements of the Rosary are biblical and/or belong to the common Christian beliefs.
Catholics do not pray to Mary as if she were God. Prayer to Mary is memory of the great mysteries of our faith (Incarnation, Redemption through Christ in the rosary), praise to God for the wonderful things he has done in and through one of his creatures (Hail Mary) and intercession (second half of the Hail Mary).
We pray to Mary as well aside from praying to Jesus because we want to ask her to pray for us and bring our petitions to her Son. And who better to ask than the one closest to Jesus, His very own mother? The Hail Mary is the most common of all the prayers used by the Universal Church to our Blessed Lady.
And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
John Calvin
Calvin stated that Mary cannot be the advocate of the faithful, since she needs God's grace as much as any other human being. If the Catholic Church praises her as Queen of Heaven, it is blasphemous and contradicts her own intention, because she is praised and not God.
The earliest recorded prayer to Mary is the sub tuum praesidium (3rd or 4th century) and the earliest depictions of her are from the Priscilla catacombs in Rome (early 3rd century).
She is a central figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Mother of God.
The main function of the rosary beads is to count prayers, the prayers that are counted on rosary beads are collectively known as the rosary. The purpose of the Rosary is to help keep in memory certain principal events or mysteries in history.
The Rosary Beads are used to help us; they count our prayers and tell us which prayer to say. We being the Rosary Prayer with the Crucifix. We make the Sign of the Cross as we say: + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Tradition does hold that St. Dominic (d. 1221) devised the rosary as we know it. Moved by a vision of our Blessed Mother, he preached the use of the rosary in his missionary work among the Albigensians, who had denied the mystery of Christ.
Why not pray directly to God? The mother of Jesus Christ and the other saints have no meaning or power independent of God. Catholics and many other Christians venerate the saints as ongoing examples of what a life generously open to God's grace can look like in a great variety of circumstances.
Many harbor misconceptions about the Church and our devotion to Mary and the saints. Christ is indeed our “one mediator between God and man,” but he invites all of us to pray for each other. In no way does our devotion to Mary and the saints diminish Christ. In fact, it leads us to a deeper relationship with Christ.
The reference to “Mary conceived without sin” supports the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary — referring to Mary being sinless, “full of grace,” and “blessed among women” (Lk. 1:28). The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed 24 years later in 1854, and then confirmed when Mary appeared to St.
For many years, whenever I was asked about why Catholics pray the Hail Mary, I explained that it was a prayer in which we ask the mother of Jesus to pray for us. Since Mary is so close to her Son in heaven, she serves as an ideal intercessor whose prayers bring us closer to Jesus.
Independently from this historical reason, there is a symbolic reason. Ten has the meaning of totality and unity, meaning that each one of Christ's mysteries is part of his total person and work and expresses its unity and totality, as well as its thorough contemplation by the person who says this decade of the rosary.