July 28, 2024 - Pastor Message
December 30, 2024THE CATHOLIC TREASURY OF PRAYER
THE CATHOLIC TREASURY OF PRAYER
THE HAIL MARY (cont.)
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42).
Continuing our reflection on the Hail Mary, the history of which we looked at last week, we turn now to explore the meaning of the prayer. As mentioned last week, the first two verses of the prayer are drawn from Scripture, both from the Gospel of Luke. The first - “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you” - comes from the first chapter, verse 28, in the story of the Annunciation. Here, the angel, Gabriel, a messenger of God, has been sent to Mary to announce to her the good news of Christ’s coming and the special role she will have in it.
“Hail” is more than a casual greeting, like “Hello”. It is an exclamation, an enthusiastic expression of joyful blessing, the reason for which Gabriel makes clear immediately. He describes Mary as “full of grace”. “Grace” here is not used in the technical sense that would develop in later theology but rather as an expression of God’s favor, and, since Mary is “full of grace” she is most favored by God, as compared to her cousin, Elizabeth, for example, whose miraculous conception of John runs parallel to Mary’s miraculous conception of Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Elizabeth was favored by God to be the mother of the last and greatest of all the prophets of God, but Mary was blessed and favored to be the mother of the Son of God, whose coming was foretold by the prophets, including John. Gabriel drives this point home even more strongly by “The Lord is with you.” This greeting recalls passages from the Old Testament, such as the call of Gideon in Judges 6:12, in which the angel of the Lord announces salvation to his people through God’s chosen one. Mary is even greater than Gideon, however, because, through her, God will save his people from all their foes, not just the troublesome Midianites, as Gideon did, and establish his kingdom forever (Luke 1:32-33). Thus Mary is indeed full of grace and most highly favored by God.
The second verse - “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus” - comes from the same chapter of Luke, verse 42, in the story of the Visitation. On the surface, Mary visits Elizabeth to assist her elderly cousin in the later stages of her pregnancy, but, on a deeper level, the women come together to celebrate the salvation of God at work in both their wombs: John as the precursor and Jesus as the fulfillment. Once again, Luke’s words, attributed to Elizabeth, recall God’s saving work in times past, specifically that which God worked through holy women, such as Judith, in Judith 13:18. “Blessed is the fruit of your womb” also carries a double meaning. Children have always been cherished as a blessing from God by his people from the dawn of creation (Genesis 1:28), but, when sin entered the world through humanity’s disobedience, childbearing was cursed with pain and toil (Genesis 4:16). Through Mary’s obedience, her faithful consent to God’s will - “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) - she canceled Eve’s disobedience , rising above even the mother of all people by God’s singular favor and opening the door for God to begin a new creation through the seed he had planted in her blessed womb, our new Adam (Romans 5:12-21).
Fr. Marc Stockton
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