A Note on the “Hail Mary”
Excertos do livro do Padre Michael Muller, “The Devotion of the Rosary and Five Scapulars”, originalmente publicado por Benzinger Brothers em 1878; uma síntese encontra-se em Explicações da Dourina Cristã…
IN THE HAIL MARY we are above all, not to pass over as insignificant those words of the evangelist, “And the name of the virgin was Mary” (Luke 1:28). For her very name is not without a mystery and ought to be to us a most amiable, sweet, and awful. “Of such virtue and excellency is this name that the heavens exult, the earth rejoices, and the angels sound forth hymns of praise when Mary is named,” says St. Bernard. She is truly the star which arose from Jacob, and which, being placed above this wide, tempestuous sea, shines forth by the merits and examples of her life. “Oh! You who find yourself tossed in the tempests of this world, turn not your eyes from the brightness of this star if you would not be overwhelmed by storms. If the winds of temptations rise; if you fall among the rocks of tribulations, look up at the star, call on Mary. If you are tossed by the waves of pride, ambition, detraction, jealousy, or envy, look up at the star, call on Mary. If anger, covetousness, or lust beat on the vessel of your soul, look up to Mary. If you begin to sink in the gulf of melancholy and despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in distresses, in perplexities, think of Mary, call on Mary; let her not depart from your lips; let her not depart from your heart; and that you may obtain the suffrage of her prayers, never depart from the example of her conversation. Whilst you follow her, you never go astray; whilst you implore her aid, you never sink in despair; when you think on her, you never wander; under her patronage you never fall; under her protection you need not fear; she being your guide, you are not weary.” Such are the sentiments of confidence, devotion and respect with which the name of Mary ought always to inspire us.
Next to this holy name the words of salutation come to be considered. “Hail” is a word of salutation, congratulation, and joy. The archangel addressed it with profound reverence and awe to this incomparable and glorious virgin. It was anciently an extraordinary thing if an angel appeared to one of the patriarchs or prophets, and then he was received with great veneration and honor, being by nature and grace exalted above them; but when the Archangel Gabriel visited Mary, he was struck at her exalted dignity and preeminence, and approached and saluted her with admiration and respect. He was accustomed to the luster of the highest heavenly bodies, but was amazed and dazzled at the dignity and spiritual glory of her whom he came to salute Mother of God, whilst the attention of the whole heavenly court was fixed with ravishment upon her. With what humility ought we, worms of the earth and base sinners, to address her in the same salutation. The devout Thomas a Kempis gives the following paraphrase of the Angelic Salutation: “With awe, reverence, devotion, and humble confidence do I suppliantly approach you, bearing on my lips the salutation of the angel, humbly to offer you. I joyfully present it to you, with my head bowed out of reverence to your sacred person, and with my arms expanded through excessive affection of devotion; and I beg the same may be repeated by all the heavenly spirits for me a hundred thousand times and much oftener; for I know not what I can bring more worthy of your transcendent greatness, or more sweet to us who recite it. Let the pious lover of your holy name listen and attend. The heavens rejoice, and all the earth ought to stand amazed when I say ‘Hail Mary.’ Satan and hell tremble when I repeat ‘Hail Mary.’ Sorrow is banished, and a new joy fills my soul when I say ‘Hail Mary.’ My languid affection is strengthened in God and my soul is refreshed when I repeat ‘Hail Mary.’ So great is the sweetness of this blessed salutation that it is not to be expressed in words, but remains deepeer in the heart than can be fathomed. Wherefore again I most humbly bend my knees to you, O most holy Virgin, and say: ‘Hail Mary full of grace.’ Oh! That, to satisfy my desire of honoring and saluting you with all the powers of my soul, all my members were converted into tongues and into voices of fire, that I might glorify you, O mother of God, without ceasing! And now, prostrate in your presence, invited by sincere devotion of heart and all inflamed with veneration for your sweet name, I represent to you the joy of that salutation when the Archangel Gabriel, sent by god, entered your secret closet, and honored you with a salutation unheard from the beginning of the world, saying ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee’; which I desire to repeat, were it possible with lips pure as gold and with a burning affection, and I desire that all creatures now say with me, Hail.”
In like sentiments of profound respect and congratulation with the angel, we style her full of grace. Though she is descended of the royal blood of David, her illustrious pre-eminence is not derived from her birth or any other temporal advantages, but from that prerogative in which alone true excellency consists, the grace of God, in which she surpasses all other mere creatures. To others, God deals out portions of his grace according to an inferior measure; but Mary was to be prepared to become the mother of the Author of grace. To her, therefore, God gave every grace and every virtue in an eminent degree of excellency and perfection. “Mary was filled with the ocean of the Holy Ghost poured upon her,” says Venerable Bede (in Mt. C. 1). It was just that the nearer she approached to the fountain of grace, the more abundantly she should be enriched by it; and, as God was pleased to make choice of her for his Mother, nothing less than a supereminent portion of grace could match her transcendent dignity. The Church therefore applies to her that of the Canticles: “Thou art all fair, and there is no spot in thee” (Song of Sol. 4:7).
In the words “the Lord is with thee” we repeat with the angel another eulogium, consequent of the former. God, by his immensity and omnipotence, is with all creatures, because in him all creatures have their being. He is much more intimate with all his just, inasmuch as he dwells in them by his grace, and manifests in them the most gracious effects of his goodness and power; but the Blessed Virgin, being full of grace and most agreeable in his eyes above all other mere creatures, having also the closest union with Christ as his Mother, and burning with more than seraphic divinity, she is his most beloved tabernacle, and he favors her with the special effects of his extraordinary presence, displaying in her his boundless munificence, power, and love.
The following praise was given to her in the same words both by the Archangel Gabriel and St. Elizabeth: “Blessed art thou amongst women.” Mary is truly called blessed above all other women, she having been herself always preserved from the least stain of sin, and having been the happy instrument of God in converting the maledictions laid on all mankind into blessings. When Judith had delivered Besthulia from temporal destruction, Ozias, the prince of the people, said to her; “Blessed art thou, daughter, above all women upon the face of the earth” (Judith 13:23). And “the people all blessed her with one voice, saying: thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou are the joy of Israel, thou are the honor of our people.” How much more emphatically shall we, from our hearts, pronounce her blessed above all women who brought forth Him who is the author of all manner of spiritual and eternal blessings to us. She most justly said of herself, in the deepest sense of gratitude to the divine goodness, “Behold, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).
By bestowing these praises on Mary, we offer principally to God a profound homage of praise for the great mystery of the Incarnation. The pious women mentioned in the Gospel who, upon hearing the divine doctrine of our Redeemer, cried out with admiration, “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and blessed are the breasts which gave thee suck” (Luke 11:27), meant chiefly to commend the Son. In like manner, the praises we address to Mary in the Angelical Salutation are reflected in the first place on her divine Son, from whom and by whom alone she is entitled to them: for it is for his gifts and graces and for his sake that we praise and honor her. On this account, the prayer is chiefly an excellent doxology for the great mystery of the Incarnation. Whence, having styled the Mother blessed above all women, we pronounce the Son infinitely more blessed, saying “And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” He is the source and author of all her graces and blessings; she derives them only from him; and to him we refer whatever we admire and praise in her. Therefore, in an infinitely higher sense of praise, love, and honor, and in a manner infinitely superior to her, we call him blessed forever by God, angels and men: by God, as his well beloved Son, and in his divinity coequal and coeternal with the Father; by the angels, as the author of their being, grace, and glory, inasmuch as he is their God; by men, in his Incarnation as the repairer of their losses and their Redeemer. We, considering attentively the infinite evils from which he has delivered us, the pains and labors which he sustained for us, the ransom which he has paid with his precious blood to redeem us, the everlasting and infinite advantages which he has purchased for us with the boundless felicity of heaven, the excess of his goodness, love, and mercy, and his infinite majesty and perfection-we, I say, bearing all this in mind, ought in a spirit of love and praise ever to call her blessed through whom we receive so great a Savior; but him infinitely more blessed, both for his own adorable sanctity and for all the graces of which he is the source.
The most holy and glorious name of Jesus, which is added to this doxology, is a name of unspeakable sweetness and grace-a name most confortable and delightful to every loving soul, terrible to the wicked spirits, and adorable with respect to all creatures. So that at its very sound every knee in heaven, on earth, and in hell shall bend, and every creature be filled with religious awe and profound veneration and respect.
The last part of the prayer is a supplication. The prayer of the blessed spirits in heaven consists chiefly in acts of adoration, love, praise, thanksgiving, and the like. We, in this vale of tears and miseries, join sighs even to our hymns of praise and adoration. So extreme are our spiritual wants and trials, that we never present ourselves in prayer before Almighty God without imploring his mercy and graces with the greatest earnestness possible and the deepest sense of our needs. It is in this sincere feeling of our necessities and the most humble and earnest cry of our heart that the fervor and very soul of our prayer consist. God knows, and with infinite tenderness compassionates, the depth of our wounds and the whole extent of our numberless and boundless spiritual miseries. But our insensibility under them provokes his indignation. He will have us sincerely feel and acknowledge the weight of our evils; our extreme spiritual poverty and total insufficiency, the baseness of our guilt, the rigor of his judgements, the frightful torments of an unhappy eternity which we deserve for our sins, and the dangers from ourselves and the invisible enemies with which we are surrounded. He requires that we confess the abyss of miseries in which we are sunk, and out of it raise our voice to him with tears and groans, owning our total dependence on his infinite mercy and goodness. If a beggar ask an alms of us, his wants make him eloquent-he sums them all up to move us to compassion; sickness, pains, hunger, anguish of mind, distress of a whole family, and whatever else can set off his miseries in the most moving manner. In like manner, when we pray we must feel and lay open before our Heavenly Father our deep wounds, our universal indigence, inability, and weakness, and with all possible earnestness implore his merciful aid. We must beg that God himself will be pleased to form in our hearts and sustain such sincere desires, that he inspire us with a deep sense of our wretchedness, and teach us to lay this before him in such a manner as will most powerfully move him to pity and relieve us.
We have recourse to the angels and saints to beg their joint intercession for us. For this we address ourselves in the first place to the Blessed Virgin, as a refuge of the afflicted and of sinners. In this prayer we repeat her holy name to excite ourselves to reverence and devotion. By calling her Mother of God, we express her most exalted dignity, and stir up our confidence in her patronage. For what can she not obtain for us of God, who was pleased to be born of her! We at the same time remember that she is also spiritually our Mother, for, by adoption, we are brothers and coheirs of Christ. She is to us a mother of more than maternal tenderness:; incomparably more sensible of our poverty and weakness, and more ready to procure for us all mercy and assistance, than mothers according to the flesh can be, as in charity she surpasses all other mere creatures. But to call her mother, and to deserve her compassion, we must sincerely renounce and put an end to our disorders, by which we have too often trampled upon the blood of her Son.
These words, “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” are a kind of preface to our petition, in which we humbly entreat her to pray for us. We do not ask her to give us grace; we know this to be the most precious gift of God, who alone can bestow it on us. We only desire her to ask it for us of her Son, and to join her powerful intercession with our unworthy prayers. We mention our quality of sinners to humble ourselves in the deepest sentiments of compunction, and to excite her compassion by laying our extreme miseries and wants before her, which this epithet of sinners expresses beyond what any created understanding can fathom. Mary, from her fuller and more distinct knowledge of the evil of sin, and the spiritual needs of a soul infested with it, forms a much clearer and more exact idea of the abyss of our evils than we can possibly do and, in proportion to them and to the measure of her charity, is moved to compassionate us under them. But we must mention our sins with sincere sentiments of contrition and regret; for the will which still adheres to sin provokes indignation, not compassion, in God and in all the saints, who love his sanctity and justice above all things. We must, therefore, mention our guilt with the most profound sentiments of confusion and compunction. In proportion to their sincerity and fervor, we shall excite the pity and mercy of God and the tender compassion of his Mother Mary, having borne in her womb the Author of grace and mercy, has put on the bowels of the most tender compassion for sinners. By this mention of our quality of sinners, we sufficiently express what it is that we beg of God-namely, the grace of a sincere repentance, the remission of all our sins, and the strength to resist all temptation to sin. We ask also for all graces and virtues, especially that of divine charity. All this is sufficiently understood by the very nature of our request without being expressed; for what else ought we to ask of God through the intercession of her who is the Mother of the Author of grace? We beg this abundance of all graces, both at present, because we stand in need of it every moment of our lives, and for the hour of our death, that great and most dreadful moment, which must be a principal object of all our prayers. The whole life of a Christian ought to be nothing else than a constant preparation for that tremendous hour which will decide our eternal lot, and in which the devil will assail us with the utmost effort of his fury; and our own weakness in mind and body, the lively remembrance of our past sins, and other alarming circumstances and difficulties, will make us stand in need of the strongest assistance of divine grace and the special patronage of her who is the protectress of all in distress, particularly of her devout clients in their last and most dangerous conflict.
Amen, or so be it, expresses an earnest repetition of our supplication and praise. As the heart in the ardor of its affections, easily goes far beyond what words can express, so neither is it confined by them in the extent and variety of its acts. In one word it often comprises perfect acts of faith, hope and charity, adoration, praise and other such virtues. Thus by amen it repeats with ardor all the petitions and acts of the Lord’s Prayer and the Angelical Salutation. Some devout persons have made this short but energetic and comprehensive word one of their most frequent aspirations to God during the course of the day-meaning thereby to assent to, confirm, and repeat, with all possible ardor and humility, all the hymns and perfect acts of profound adoration, humility, love, praise, zeal, thanksgiving, oblation of themselves, total resignation, confidence in God, and all other virtues, which all the heavenly spirits offer to God, with all their power and strength, and with the utmost purity of affection, without intermission to eternity. In these acts we join by the word Amen, and desire to repeat them all with infinite fervor, were it possible, for ever, and with them we join the most sincere sentiments and acts of compassion and a particular humility, condemning ourselves as infinitely unworthy to join the heavenly choirs or faithful servants of God in offering him a tribute of praise; most unworthy even to pronounce his most holy name or mention any of his adorable perfections, which defiled lips and faint divided affections rather profane and depreciate than praise and honor.
Such are the sentiments of faith, hope, charity, gratitude, humility, and sorrow which we express in reciting the Hail Mary: such are the graces and favors which we ask in a few words of which the Hail Mary is composed. Were we to say the prayers of all prayer books we could not express deeper sentiments of religion than we do in the Hail Mary, nor ask for greater favors than we pray for in the Angelic Salutation. No wonder, therefore, that all good Christians always delighted in repeating most frequently the Our Father and the Hail Mary.