Ave Maria

Description

The Hail Mary, also commonly called the Ave Maria (Latin), is a traditional Catholic prayer asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Roman Catholicism, the prayer forms the basis of the Rosary and the Angelus prayers. In the Oriental Orthodox Churches, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, a similar prayer is used in formal liturgies, both in Greek and in translations. It is also used by many other groups within the catholic tradition of Christianity including Anglicans, Independent Catholics, and Old Catholics.

The prayer incorporates two greetings to Mary in Saint Luke’s Gospel: “Hail, the Lord is with thee.” and “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” In mid-13th-century Western Europe the prayer consisted only of these words with the single addition of the name “Mary” after the word “Hail”, as is evident from the commentary of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the prayer.
The first of the two passages from Saint Luke’s Gospel is the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, originally written in Koine Greek. The opening word of greeting, chaíre, here translated “Hail”, literally has the meaning “rejoice” or “be glad”. This was the normal greeting in the language in which Saint Luke’s Gospel is written and continues to be used in the same sense in Modern Greek. Accordingly, both “Hail” and “Rejoice” are valid English translations of the word (“Hail” reflecting the Latin translation, and “Rejoice” reflecting the original Greek).