Hail Mary… or Not?

When I started learning about the rosary, I was both interested and wary. Interested, because I’d been discovering that repeated short prayers like the Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) really did help me to open my heart to God’s presence in a way that was different from other ways of praying. Wary, because the prayer that is most repeated in the Roman Catholic rosary is the Hail Mary: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou, 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.” I thought to myself: I committed myself to Christ as my Savior. Shouldn’t I be addressing my prayers to Him, not His mother? It was a question that led me to do some serious research on the theology and Scriptural basis of the Hail Mary – an interesting journey.

The Prepositional Challenge: To, For, With?

For Christians, the Roman Catholic rosary’s repetition of the Hail Mary brings up the theological issue of what place Mary and the saints should have in our prayer lives. The orthodox position is both clear and (as it so often is with truth) complex. We must never pray to Mary; we are to ask Mary, or other saints, to pray with us or to pray for us. With that balance in mind, we can appreciate the Hail Mary as orthodox. We are praying Scripture; fulfilling Mary’s statement in the Magnificat that “all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48); reflecting on the true Incarnation of Our Lord by honoring His mother; and asking Mary to pray for us, just as we might ask a friend at church.

Asking Mary to pray for us ought to be orthodox, but I found that some of the materials I found, both ancient and modern, interpreted “for” in a way that troubled me. A number of the suggested closing prayers and hymns ask Mary to intercede for us. The hymn “Hail Holy Queen” says, “Turn, then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us.” “Te Matrem Laudamus” says, “Intercede for us, O Virgin Mary, when he [Christ] comes to be our judge. Help your chosen people, bought with his precious blood. And bring us with all the saints into glory everlasting.” The image here is of Christ as a fearful judge, and Mary as the accessible divine person who can mediate and advocate on our behalf. But wait! There is “one mediator between God and humankind,” (1 Tim 2:5) and that is Christ Jesus. What we say affects what we think and what we do. I don’t want to end up unconsciously fearing to turn to Jesus because He seems distant or threatening.

Praying with Mary

It might seem safer to avoid Marian devotions entirely, but rightly understood, the Hail Mary helps safeguard a key Christian truth. Honoring Mary emphasizes the reality of the Incarnation, countering heresies both ancient and modern. Jesus was not just a great teacher or a spiritual awakening in the hearts of His disciples. He was and is the Incarnate Son of God, the Word made flesh: celebrating His mother reminds us that He became “like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” (Heb 2:18)

If we think of praying with Mary, we also have the right understanding of the community of saints. I have to admit that it seems odd to pray with someone who is dead. However, my discomfort with the idea speaks mainly to my limited perspective, and perhaps to lingering effects of my formerly atheistic worldview, in which being dead meant that there was no more “you” around anywhere. In this way, I think that the Hail Mary helps support right faith by acknowledging the reality of the communion of saints: all those who are dead but really alive in Christ.

With that perspective, I can see that the Hail Mary is in fact a scriptural and orthodox prayer, one that provides a valuable reminder of the reality of Christ’s Incarnation in my prayer life. On the other hand, I feel that the overwhelming repetition of this particular prayer in the Roman Catholic rosary puts the emphasis too much on Mary and not enough on Christ. What to do?

There’s actually another, newer and lesser-known rosary tradition – the Anglican rosary – which is the same type of spiritual discipline but uses prayers that the individual chooses for himself or herself. I’ve been experimenting with praying with the Anglican rosary, sometimes choosing the Hail Mary as one of several short prayers to cycle through. This gives me a chance to pray with Mary, and to celebrate the Incarnation of Our Lord, while in a context of prayer that is clearly focused on Christ. Because when all is said and done, the only purpose of the rosary, or indeed of any prayer or discipline, is to help me to draw closer to Christ, to open myself to Him so that He can do His saving work in and through me.

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