Chapter 25
The Spirituality of the Hail Mary
CATECHISM OF THE
Pope Paul VI once wrote: "Knowledge of the true Catholic doctrine regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary will always be a key to the exact understanding of the mystery of Christ and of the Church. . . . The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship." In explaining this truth, Pope John Paul II writes: "Mary embraces each and every one in the Church, and embraces each and every one through the Church" (Redemptoris Mater, 47). For this reason, the Catechism asserts that the all-holy Virgin Mary is the "model and source" of the Church's example of holiness (2030).
Entering into the Mystery of the Annunciation
In our own striving for holiness, one invaluable way of deepening our knowledge of the doctrine of the Blessed Mother is through reflection on the prayer the Hail Mary. In this regard, St. Louis de Montfort once wrote in his True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin: "Since the salvation of mankind began through the Hail Mary, the salvation of each individual soul is linked up with this prayer. . . . It was this prayer which caused the Fruit of Life to spring up in this dry and barren world, and it is this same prayer, devoutly said, which must cause the word of God to germinate in our souls, and to bear the Fruit of Life, Jesus Christ. . . . This prayer is a heavenly dew which seeps gently into the soil of the human soul, to bring forth fruit in due season."
Therefore, to pray the Hail Mary is to reenact that mystical encounter between God and the Blessed Mother at the Annunciation, and to enter into it personally. By our prayer we unite ourselves to Mary at prayer, and thereby assume her worshipful spirit of humility, openness, and utter self-donation. Our likeness to the reverent and receptive posture of the Blessed Mother disposes us to participate in the very graces she received in the greeting of Gabriel.
The Catechism reminds us that
"the Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith"
(148). By praying the Hail Mary we ourselves become conformed to the Blessed
Mother's obedience. We in turn experience the fulfillment of God's
Gabriel's words of greeting
bespeak God's own devotion to Mary: "Our prayer dares to take up this
greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble
servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her" (2676). Regarding this
angelic salutation, St. Louis de Montfort writes:
"It is the most perfect compliment you can offer to Mary, because it is
the compliment which the Most High God Himself made to her, through an
God Draws Close
The Annunciation, then, is God's invitation to Mary to participate in the divine plan of salvation. But this redemptive encounter is first of all an invitation to a life of prayer that enables Mary to respond to the promptings of God's grace: "The living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer. In prayer, the faithful God's initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response" (2567).
God constantly extends this same loving, grace-filled initiative to us. As the very first paragraph of the Catechism makes clear, "at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength." The Hail Mary is given to us as a paradigm and reminder of God's unceasing offer of saving love and of our obedient, faith-filled response.
Every time we pray the Hail Mary
we recall that "God never ceases to draw man to himself' (27). Mary
remains the way that God draws close to his people so that we might seek him,
know him, and love him through the Fruit of Mary's womb. As St. Louis de Montfort writes: "The inaccessible drew near to us,
and united himself closely, perfectly, and even personally with our humanity,
through Mary; and it is also through Mary that we can draw near to God and
unite ourselves perfectly and closely to his divine majesty."
Full of Grace
Pope John Paul II notes that "the messenger greets Mary as 'full of grace'; he calls her thus as if it were her real name." The Catechism teaches us that "a name expresses a person's essence and identity and the meaning of this person's life" (203). To be "full of grace" is Mary's essence, her identity, and the meaning of her life. As "full of grace," "Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her. . ." (2676). Mary's fullness of grace signifies her complete emptiness of self.
The confirmation that Mary is wholly God's and that she is wholly his is the angel's next revelation: "The Lord is with you." The Catechism enlightens us that "by revealing himself God wishes to make [men] capable of responding to him, and of knowing him, and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity" (52). This is preeminently true in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Through her Immaculate Conception, Mary is prepared to know, love, and possess God in a way that gloriously surpasses natural human capacity. She is blessed in this way so that, at the proper moment, Mary might reveal her Son to the world: "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman" (Gal 4:4).
Because of Mary's unique union with the Trinity, the unseen God miraculously becomes visible: "In Mary, the Holy Spirit manifests the Son of the Father, now become the Son of the Virgin. . . . Filled with the Holy Spirit she makes the Word visible in the humility of his flesh" (724). In Mary's revelation of the Son of God we become capable of knowing God, of responding to him and loving him in a way that exceeds our own natural capacity. "When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity" (2090). The Blessed Mother is God's gift who gives us the capacity to respond to God's love in the way he deserves.
Therefore, the Lord is with the Blessed Mother since, as Pope John Paul II stresses, "in an entirely special and exceptional way Mary is united to Christ, and similarly she is eternally loved in this 'beloved Son.' " The Catechism helps us to understand how Mary's total devotion to the Eternal Word becomes the very cause of her blessedness: "Mary is 'blessed among women' because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's word" (2676).
In the Name of Jesus
The first fruit of the fulfillment of God's .Word in Mary is the gift to her of the holy name of Jesus. "The name 'Jesus' signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that 'there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved' "(432; Acts 4:12; cf. 9:14; Jas 2:7).
Pray for Us
In the prayer, we next implore the Blessed Mother to pray for us. That petition is an act of hope, for we recognize that "By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her" (2677). It also stands as an act of faith in the power of Mary as intercessor. Pope John Paul II has written: "Mary places herself between her Son and mankind in the reality of their wants, needs, and sufferings. She puts herself 'in the middle,' that is to say she acts as a mediatrix not as an outsider, but in her position as mother. She knows that as such she can point out to her Son the needs of mankind and in fact, she 'has the right' to do so. . . . As a mother she also wishes the messianic power of her Son to be manifested, that salvific power of his which is meant to help man in his misfortunes, to free him from the evil which in various forms and degrees weighs heavily upon his life."
Central to this insight is the
reality of Mary's maternal mediation, for we venerate her as "Mother of
God." In this respect, our every utterance of the Hail Mary becomes an act
of love. As Pope John Paul II insists, "Mary is not only the model and
figure of the Church; she is much more. For, 'with maternal love she cooperates
in the birth and development' of the sons and daughters of
In asking Mary to pray for us, we are charged to accept the gift Christ made to the apostle John from the cross: we are to receive Mary as our Mother into our homes, into our lives. The Holy Father writes: "Mary's motherhood is a gift which Christ himself makes personally to every individual. . . . Entrusting himself to Mary in a filial manner, the Christian. . . brings the Mother of Christ into everything that makes up his inner life."
By receiving Mary as our Mother,
we dispose ourselves to the grace of spiritual childhood so essential to our
eternal happiness: "To become a child in relation to God is the condition
for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little.
Even more: to become 'children of God' we must be 'born from above' or 'born of
God' "(526; Jn 3:7;
To conclude with the insight of St. Louis de Montfort: "I have no more effective way of discovering whether a person is of God, than by inquiring whether he loves to say the Hail Mary. . . . The Hail Mary has been the means whereby the whole world was saved."