A long-term reader of this blog recently wrote to me and posed this question:
Carl, what do you think the last line of the Hail Mary means?
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death?”
I think it is a plea for salvation at the last moments of our lives. I see that as pathetic and yet frightening. I stopped praying the Rosary some years ago because of it. I don’t like praying the Hail Mary once, let alone 53 times in the Rosary, imagining myself dying and pleading for my salvation.
But what do you think?
A lot here for us to look at. Let’s begin with the Hail Mary itself. More properly called the Angelic Salutation, it is a prayer long associated with devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, popular among Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, and some Protestants. Other Protestants and Evangelicals reject the prayer because it is addressed to a human being (Mary) rather than to God. But for Catholics and others, praying to Mary is an act of veneration (not worship), revering her as the mother of Jesus and regarding her as someone with honor and influence in the court of heaven. It is the central prayer in the Rosary, the popular devotional practice using prayer beads; as my reader pointed out, it is recited 53 times over the course of praying the Rosary!
Here’s the current English-language version of the Angelic Salutation:
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among 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.
My reader is asking about the last line of the prayer, a supplication to Mary that she would pray for “us sinners” (all of humanity? Or maybe just those who pray the Hail Mary?), not only in the present moment, but at some future point in time when we are “at the hour of our death,” i.e. when we are making our transition from earthly life into the silence of eternity.
So the question is, what do I think of this prayer?
The Hail Mary… and Our Image of God
First, I’ll point out that, on the surface, it’s a very simple prayer that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It’s a request for Mary’s intercession on our behalf, now and at the end of our lives. Simple enough. But I’m being asked about what kind of subtexts are at play in this prayer: what can we see when we read between the lines? So let’s pursue that line of inquiry.
Let’s consider the reader’s own interpretation. He interprets it as a pathetic and frightening plea for salvation. I certainly can see why some people would interpret it that way, but we need to acknowledge that this is an intepretation of the prayer. Perhaps a reasonable interpretation, for I think it is anchored in the idea that God is frightening, and death is frightening — not the prayer itself is frightening, but the subjects that the prayer is concerned with. I rather imagine that the person(s) who first created the Angelic Salutation may very well have held to the idea that God and death are frightening. If we accept this supposition (that God and death are inherently frightening), then praying to Mary and asking for her kind and compassionate help could actually make a lot of sense: it’s a prayer of appealing to Mary’s graciousness to help mitigate those fears.
I imagine that this way of seeing things — of seeing God as frightening, because of a belief in God’s capacity to punish us in hell — remains true for many people today, including people who pray the Rosary (or just the Hail Mary as a “stand alone” prayer): it’s a prayer of consolation, as a way of dealing with a pre-existing image of God that is fearful and unpredictable. If you are afraid that God might condemn you to hell because of some unforgiven sin that might be lurking deep in your forgotten past, then asking for a bit of help from a friendly face who might have some influence over that God makes all sorts of sense.
I think such theology (and such an image of God) is tragic, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
But what if you don’t fear the punishing, judgmental God? How might that change the way that the Hail Mary is understood and interpreted?
What if your image of God is primarily and simply that of a kind and loving parent, who wants us to be good people but whose love is always greater than any threat of punishment? If that were the case, then I would see the final petition of the Hail Mary as simply an expression of the desire to be connected to both God and to Mary. “Pray for us, Mary”: commend us in your love to the love of God. And “now and at the hour of our death” can be interpreted simply to mean “our whole lives long.” It doesn’t have to be weighted toward a kind of frightened (pathetic) terror at life’s inevitable ending. It could be shaped by trust rather than fear. Pray for us always, from now until the end of our earthly lives. Here, the emphasis is not on trying to get God to be less pissed off on us, but rather to simply try to strengthen the loving bond that is already there.
I think the difference between my reader’s interpretation and this alternative interpretation is all based on one’s image of God. If you think God is a monster, than yes, the Hail Mary can be a pathetic prayer made by cowering people who are filled with fear. But if you think God is more love than judgment, more compassionate than condemning, then this prayer lands more as an expression of on-going love than as a pathetic attempt to placate.
Now, let me try to anticipate how my reader might respond to this.
“But far too many Catholics (and indeed, many Christians of all stripes) do believe in a fearful, punishing God. They pay lip service to a God of love, but they are so judgmental of sin — their own, but especially the perceived sins of others — that their prayer really is an expression of fear.”
I won’t dispute that; indeed, I suspect it’s true. But I have long said that you shouldn’t judge a piano by someone who plays it badly. The fact that the vast majority of Christians have not truly accepted the radical message of unconditional love and grace, that Jesus and the mystics have taught us, is a great tragedy, and perhaps evidence of the colossal failings of the institutional church — but if we are able to see that this is a failing, then we have an obligation to orient our lives toward grace and love, rather than pathos and fear, right?
So many people may pray the Hail Mary as some sort of craven attempt to ward off God’s anger, because they misunderstand God. But that doesn’t mean we have to pray the Hail Mary (or any prayer) with those same theological suppositions. In fact, if our theology has evolved beyond the fear/punishment/reward paradigm to a paradigm based in contemplative love and nondual wisdom, then I believe we have a spiritual obligation to perform all of our religious and spiritual practices from that place of radical trust, wisdom and love.
And fortunately, the language of the Hail Mary is sufficiently ambiguous enough that it can be prayed as a “love” prayer just as easily as it can be prayed as a “fear” prayer — as long as we are grounded in that love for ourselves.
Praying the Hail Mary as a Mystical Prayer
I am sure that there are people who pray the Hail Mary from a fearful place; after all, too many people worship a frightening God, so it only stands to reason that they would pray in a fear-based way. But here’s the question: is it possible to pray the Hail Mary not as an expression of fear, but as an expression of mystical love?
I think so — and here’s what I think that would look like….
The first part of the prayer: “Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus” — simply acknowledges that the person praying accepts (on some level) that Mary and Jesus are worthy of our devotion. For fear-based Christians, this means Mary and Jesus are helpful allies for placating the angry God. But for mystics, this can mean Mary and Jesus are viewed as icons of Divine love and grace. We acknowledge Mary and Jesus as “blessed” not because we are so afraid of the punishment, but because we so fully honor the God of love by seeing that Divine love truly embodied in the lives of Jesus and his mother.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.” This is the part of the prayer that my reader interprets as “fearful” and “pathetic.” But I don’t believe anyone who is truly immersed in a contemplative/mystical appreciation of God as infinite and unconditional love has to see it that way. Seen in the light of mystical love, asking Mary to pray for us is simply an act of celebration. We ask for Mary’s prayer not because we need help in appeasing a wrathful God — but rather, we desire for Mary to be present in the love that flows between us and the Divine. In other words, asking Mary to pray for us is like asking her to dance with us. Here, “prayer” does not mean begging God for mercy (or at the very least, not just crying for mercy) but instead means “entering into a deeper relationship with God.” So a mystical reading of the prayer might look like this: Mary, we join you as you enter ever-more deeply into your loving relationship with God, the Divine Mercy, and we ask you to invite us to participate in that sacred dance with you and God. And we seek this ever-deepening intimacy with you and God beginning in the present moment but extending throughout our lives, even to the point where we trust God by returning our body to the earth and our soul to the care of the Spirit.
It’s all a matter of interpretation, isn’t it? “Pray for us, now and at the hour of our death” really says very little. We can interpret it in many ways, and that interpretation will largely be shaped by our image of God. When we trust in a God who is infinite love and mercy, this prayer loses any feeling of desperation and instead carries more of a sense of intimacy and celebration. Certainly, that’s how I like to pray this (or any) prayer!
Now, what about the word “sinners” — which in this prayer is applied to us mortals? Again, it’s a matter of interpretation. Every human being makes mistakes, and some of those mistakes hurt people, intentionally or unintentionally. We hurt ourselves, we hurt one another, and we hurt Mother Nature. So it is not a lie to call ourselves “sinners” — but many Christians (myself included) shy away from that word because of how it has been weaponized by fundamentalists and other conservative Christians to imply that we human beings are deeply unworthy. That, to me, seems to be a heresy, where human failings are seen as more important than Divine love and mercy. So in general, I tend to avoid the word, not because it’s untrue, but because it has been over-emphasized and used in hurtful ways. But when I do recite a prayer like the Hail Mary, or traditional forms of the Jesus Prayer, that labels us humans as “sinners,” I try to keep it in perspective. According to Isaac of Syria, the sins of all humankind throughout history or like a clump of muddy dirt you could hold in your hand — and by comparison, the grace and love and mercy of God is like the ocean. It’s easy to wash away even the grimiest dirt in the powerful surf of the ocean. So for me, “sinners” does not have to be a negative word: it can be a humble reminder that yes, human beings do make mistakes: but Divine care and compassion are so much bigger, like the ocean is bigger than a handful of mud. That analogy, to me, is the key for having a healthy understanding of what it means to be a “sinner.”
So, is the Hail Mary a prayer of fear and pathos, or a prayer of trust and love? I think the answer is, it depends. It depends on the understanding of the person who is saying the prayer. If that person is afraid of a punishing god, then they will pray this prayer in a fear-based way. But if their image of God is grounded and immersed in love, then the words of this (or any) prayer will resonate not with angst, but with compassion and care.
A Final Thought
So is my reader wrong for refusing to pray the Hail Mary? Absolutely not. I imagine he stopped praying it when he realized he was no longer comfortable with a fear-based image of God. It may always be too painful for him, because it reminds him of a toxic theology that he has courageously left behind: just like there are certain songs you can never listen to and enjoy, because they remind you of an unhappy period of your life. For some people, religious prayers, rituals, sacraments, etc. can feel traumatizing, because they remind us of religious traumas we have experienced in the past. For such people, it may be wisest and most caring to simply avoid praying prayers like this, perhaps even for the rest of their lives. I respect that, and as for my reader, I respect how his refusing to pray the prayer is an act of meaningful self-care. But perhaps this blog post can help him (and others) see that it’s not the prayer that is messed up, it’s the image of God that people bring to the prayer. Heal the image of God, and the prayer can be seen (and prayed) in a new and different light (if you want).
