Luke 1:28; Luke 1:42; Revelations 5:8; Matthew 6:9-13
Hail Mary…
The Rosary is such a beautiful prayer in which we ask for the intercession of our Holy Mother.. Think about it, every single time you start praying, “Hail Mary Full of Grace,” you are specifically asking Mary to intercede for you. But what many find the hardest to decipher between is how the Rosary can be linked through scripture. In the twelfth to fifteenth centuries they would pray what was the beginnings of the rosary called the ‘paternosters,’ or the Our Father in Latin, because it was a string with bead attached that helped them count the amount of times they prayed the Hail Mary and Our Father. Then the ‘paternosters’ moved to a version called the rosarium, or ‘rose garden.’ With the rosarium, they would pray 50 Hail Mary’s and would link specific verses or psalms to each bead that connected with Jesus and Mary’s lives. As you can see it is quite the contrary that our rosary is not linked to scripture. We have only built on the ‘rosarium,’ and created the mysteries to help us see scripture through and through. But today, at the heart of the devotion of the Rosary, is the Hail Mary. It is filled with biblical translation, which so many other faiths struggling seeing with the rosary, is that the biblical connection is laced through the rosary the whole time. But lets start seeing the biblical connection of the Hail Mary before anything else.
In this prayer the prayer begins, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” Remember this is when the angel, Gabriel, appeared and greeted her. Luke 1:28
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” This was exactly what Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin said to her when they saw each other. The only thing that is changed? They added names so that it would clarify who is being referred to. Luke 1:42
This second part of the Hail Mary isn’t entirely biblical but it is in what it expresses.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
So Mary was the first Christian, actually the first one to accept Jesus and the Bible describes Christian as holy. So this is where we get ‘holy Mary’, despite the fact that she was indeed holy for being the mother of Jesus Christ.
In our Catholic beliefs we believe that God is three persons in one. So when we say Mother of God, we do not mean it in such a way because she is older, but because she carried Jesus in her womb and was His mother. Because He is part of the Trinity we can refer to her as the Mother of God.
We were given this prayer to ask for the Virgin Mary’s intercession. After all one of the best things about prayers is that the Saints and Angels bring our prayers to the Father;
And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; Revelation 5:8
When we ask for Mary’s intercession specifically through the Hail Mary, we are asking her to directly bring our prayers to the Father as well! How awesome is that.
