The Hail Mary Prayer: Full Text, Latin, Meaning and History

The Hail Mary: Full Text

What the Hail Mary Means, Line by Line

The Hail Mary is two movements of prayer: first we praise God with the words he sent to Mary, then we ask her to pray for us (CCC 2676 to 2677). Here is what each line carries.

• "Hail Mary": Gabriel's greeting, chaire in Luke's Greek, which also means "rejoice". It echoes the prophets' call to the Daughter of Zion: "Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion... the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst" (Zephaniah 3:14-15). We greet her with heaven's own word.
• "full of grace": Luke's word kecharitomene describes someone already and completely filled with God's favour. The Church sees in it the grace by which Mary was preserved from original sin from her conception (CCC 490 to 492).
• "the Lord is with thee": the words God's messengers spoke to those he called to a great task, like Gideon (Judges 6:12). With Mary they become literal: the Lord is about to dwell in her.
• "Blessed art thou among women": Elizabeth's cry, filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:42), echoing the praise of the heroines Jael and Judith (Judges 5:24; Judith 13:18).
• "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus": the centre of the prayer. Every Hail Mary turns on the name of Jesus. Mary is blessed because of him.
• "Holy Mary, Mother of God": the title Theotokos, God-bearer, defended by the Council of Ephesus in 431 (CCC 495). To call her Mother of God is a claim about Jesus: the child she bore is God.
• "pray for us sinners": we admit what we are and ask the holiest of creatures to pray for us, as we would ask a friend (James 5:16).
• "now and at the hour of our death": the only two moments we can be sure of. The Catechism says we give her "the hour of our death wholly over to her care" (CCC 2677).

Where the Hail Mary Comes From

The Hail Mary grew slowly over more than a thousand years, from two Gospel verses into the prayer Catholics know today.

1. The Gospel. Gabriel's greeting (Luke 1:28) and Elizabeth's blessing (Luke 1:42) were joined in early liturgies of East and West, and the Roman liturgy used them together as an antiphon in Advent.
2. The medieval prayer. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the first half was a common private prayer in the West, prayed by lay people and monks alike, often many times over and counted on beads, the seed of the Rosary.
3. The name of Jesus. In the later Middle Ages the name "Jesus" was added after "the fruit of thy womb", making the Holy Name the hinge of the prayer.
4. The petition. Through the fifteenth century various endings asking Mary's prayers circulated, and "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners" became widespread. "Now and at the hour of our death" was attached in the same period.
5. The fixed text. Pope St. Pius V's Roman Breviary of 1568 set the full prayer as we pray it now, and from there it went into every Catholic catechism and prayer book.

The prayer's shape tells its story: Scripture first, the Church's request second. The faithful took the Bible's words to Mary and, over centuries, added what every Christian needs to ask.

The Hail Mary in Latin, With Pronunciation

The Latin Hail Mary is the Ave Maria. Here it is phrase by phrase, with an approximate guide to the Church Latin pronunciation used in Rome and in most sung settings.

The famous musical settings carry this text. The "Bach-Gounod Ave Maria" is Charles Gounod's melody, laid over the first prelude of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and later set to these Latin words. Schubert's "Ave Maria" began in 1825 as a song to verses from Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake, in which a girl prays to the Virgin, and it is now usually sung with the Latin prayer instead.

When Catholics Pray the Hail Mary

Catholics pray the Hail Mary in the Rosary, in the Angelus three times a day, morning and night, in temptation, and at the bedside of the dying. A few of the classic ways:

• The Rosary. Fifty-three Hail Marys in five decades, each prayed while meditating on a scene from the life of Christ. Our guide to how to pray the Rosary takes you through it.
• The Angelus. At 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m., the Church remembers the Incarnation with three short verses and three Hail Marys (below).
• Three Hail Marys at night. A traditional devotion, urged by St. Alphonsus Liguori, often followed by the aspiration "O Mary, by thy pure and Immaculate Conception, make my body pure and my soul holy." Many people keep it for purity, and confessors often give it as a penance.
• In temptation. One Hail Mary, the moment the temptation starts, before you argue with it.
• At the hour of death. Pray it at the bedside of the dying. "Now and at the hour of our death" becomes literal there.

Is the Hail Mary Biblical? What Other Christians Say

The first half of the Hail Mary is Scripture word for word (Luke 1:28, 42), and the second half asks Mary to pray for us, as Christians ask each other to pray (James 5:16). Christians weigh it differently.

• Many Protestants are comfortable with the biblical first half and object to the second, believing prayer should be addressed to God alone. Some also cite Jesus' warning against "empty phrases" (Matthew 6:7). Catholics answer that asking the saints to pray for us is asking for the prayers of the living members of Christ's body (Hebrews 12:1; Revelation 5:8), and that Jesus himself prayed "the same words" three times in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:44). Repetition is empty only when the heart is.
• The Orthodox pray their own form, which ends differently: "Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne the Saviour of our souls."
• Catholics hold that every word of the Hail Mary points to Christ. Mary is blessed because of "the fruit of thy womb, Jesus", and she is asked to pray for us because she is the mother of the Lord (Luke 1:43).

For the wider question, see our guides to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the communion of saints and Catholic and Protestant beliefs.

How to Pray the Hail Mary Slowly and Well

To pray the Hail Mary well, slow down, picture the scene of the Annunciation or the Visitation, and put your weight on the name of Jesus in the middle. Most of us learned it as children and now say it in four seconds. It deserves ten.

1. Pause at the comma. Breathe between "the Lord is with thee" and "Blessed art thou".
2. Bow your head at "Jesus". It is an old custom, and it keeps the centre at the centre.
3. Mean "sinners". Bring one specific sin to the word.
4. Picture your death. Briefly, calmly. Ask her to be there. She stood at the foot of her Son's cross (John 19:25), and she will not leave you alone at yours.

Teaching a child? Start with the first half only, from the Gospel. Add the second half once it is known. Our page of Catholic prayers for children has more.

Other Marian Prayers to Learn Next

Once the Hail Mary is part of your day, learn the prayers that grow from it.

• The Memorare, the prayer for the moment you have nowhere else to turn.
• The Hail Holy Queen, prayed at the end of the Rosary.
• The Our Father, which comes before every decade. Our page on the Our Father gives its Latin and meaning.
• An act of consecration. The 33-day consecration to Mary takes the Hail Mary's trust all the way: everything you have, given to Jesus through her.