- Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, 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. Amen.
The Angelic Salutation, Hail Mary, or Ave Maria (Latin) is a traditional biblical catholic prayer asking for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Hail Mary is used within Roman Catholicism, and it forms the basis of the Rosary. The prayer is also used by Anglicans, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox as well as by many other groups within the Catholic tradition of Christianity. Some Protestant denominations, such as Lutherans, also make use of the prayer. Most of the text of the Hail Mary can be found within the Gospel of Luke
The prayer incorporates two passages from Saint Luke's Gospel: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee" (Luke 1 28) and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (Luke 1:42) .
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, "Hail", literally has the meaning "Rejoice", "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).
After considering the use of similar words in Syriac, Greek and Latin in the 6th century, the article on the Hail Mary in the Catholic Encyclopedia concludes that "there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050", though a later pious tale attributed to Ildephonsus of Toledo ( 7th century) the use of the first part, namely the angel's greeting Mary, without that of Elizabeth, as a prayer.
Saint Thomas Aquinas spoke of the name "Mary", which served to indicate who was the "full of grace" person mentioned, as the only word added at his time to the Biblical text. But at about the same time the name "Jesus" was also added, to specify who was meant by the phrase "the fruit of thy womb".
The Western version of the prayer is thus not derived from the Greek version: even the earliest Western forms have no trace of the Greek version's phrases: "Mother of God and Virgin" and "for thou hast given birth to the Saviour of our souls".
To the greeting and praise of Mary of which the prayer thus consisted, a petition "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen", was added later. The petition first appeared in print in 1495 in Girolamo Savonarola's "Esposizione sopra l’Ave Maria". The "Hail Mary" prayer in Savonarola's exposition reads:
- Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, 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. Amen
- Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.
Eleven years later, the sentence was included in the Catechism of the Council of Trent of 1566. The "Catechism of the Council of Trent" says that to the first part of the Hail Mary, by which "we render to God the highest praise and return Him most gracious thanks, because He has bestowed all His heavenly gifts on the most holy Virgin ... the Church of God has wisely added prayers and an invocation addressed to the most holy Mother of God ... we should earnestly implore her help and assistance; for that she possesses exalted merits with God, and that she is most desirous to assist us by her prayers, no one can doubt without impiety and wickedness."
In Roman Catholic use the Hail Mary is the essential element of the Rosary, a prayer method in use especially among Latin Rite (Western) Catholics, and that appears in the East only among Latinised Ukrainian and Maronite Catholics. The Rosary consists traditionally of three sets of five Mysteries, each mystery consisting of one "decade" or ten Ave Marias. The 150 Ave Marias of the Rosary thus echo the 150 psalms. These meditate upon events of Jesus' life during his childhood (Joyful Mysteries), Passion (Sorrowful Mysteries), and from his Resurrection onwards (Glorious Mysteries). Another cycle of mysteries, called the Luminous Mysteries, is of comparatively recent origin, having been proposed by Pope John Paul II in 2002. Each of these Mysteries is prayed as a decade (a unit of ten), consisting of one Our Father (Pater Noster or The Lord's Prayer), ten Hail Marys, and one 'Glory Be' (Gloria Patri) (Doxology).
The Hail Mary is also the central part of the Angelus, a devotion generally recited thrice daily by many Catholics, as well as some Anglicans and Lutherans.
