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POSIT: The Hail Mary (a.k.a. Ave Maria) is a biblical prayer. God gave it to
us. It's in the Bible in black and white.
RESPONSE: Some co-workers of mine who soldiered in Viet Nam during the
decade of the 70's, related to me how they were detailed to go out into the
jungle and tally the number of VC dead so that high command could
evaluate the effectiveness of heavy bombing runs.
The enemy's bodies were often ripped to pieces making the dead difficult to
count; so what the guys did was scrounge up enough body parts to
assemble a John Doe; then they could enter the man they assembled into
the log as a dead soldier. That came to be known as a kick-count.
What Rome has done is cobble up an alleged biblical prayer by piecing
together excerpts; in effect, scrounging up a kick-count prayer.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the "Hail Mary" is not an in-the-Bible
prayer, but is a developed prayer; and it was developed over a number of
years.
Here's the entire text of the so-called Hail Mary.
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.
"Hail, the Lord is with thee" was plagiarized from Gabriel's greeting at Luke
1:28 (Douay-Rheims version).
"full of grace" is fabricated.
"blessed art thou amongst women" was plagiarized from Elizabeth's greeting
at Luke 1:42 (Douay-Rheims version).
"blessed is the fruit of thy womb" was also plagiarized from Elizabeth's
greeting at Luke 1:42 (Douay-Rheims version).
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our
death. Amen." is stated by the official Catechism of the Council of Trent to
have been fabricated by the Church itself.
Obviously then, portions of the Hail Mary, in its official form, are borrowed
from the Bible; but the body text of the prayer itself, is not actually in the
Bible; viz: rather than God-given, it's a man-made supplication concocted
from plagiarized excerpts; with an ending invocation composed entirely from
somebody's imagination.
Q: What's so bad about a prayer like the Hail Mary?
A: Well; for starters, it's impersonal; viz: it's a scripted performance; thus it
fails to comply with a very straight forward command to pray from the heart.
● Heb 4:15-16 . . For we do not have a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in
every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of
grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
The Greek word for "confidently" is parrhesia (par-rhay-see'-ah) which
means all out-spokenness, i.e. frankness, bluntness, and/or candor.
Reciting the lines of the Hail Mary is not what I call forthright, nor blunt, nor
out-spoken, nor candid. It's actually not much different than mindlessly
reading from a siddur like one of those Jews bobbing back and forth at the
Wailing Wall.
When speaking to God via the priest spoken of in Heb 4:15-16, get down to
business and tell Him exactly what's on your mind instead of wasting God's
time and insulting His intelligence like one of those mindless robocallers that
annoy everybody to no end with their pre-recorded messages.
So then, here's my recommendation.
Christ left behind no recorded instructions to contact his mom. So then, just
to be on the safe side, and to avoid a crisis of conscience, leave off on the
practice. Since it's not required; then don't.
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