The Roman Catholic Church’s prayer “Hail Mary” is familiar to
many, even those who are not Roman Catholic. In football, it is often used to
describe a last second effort to try to score a touchdown to win or tie the
game. Sadly, many people are unfamiliar with the origin of this common Roman
Catholic prayer that is repeated worldwide.
The origins of the Hail Mary prayer is found in the Latin Vulgate
Bible, in the account by Luke describing the visitation of the angel Gabriel to
the Jewish virgin named Mary.
Luke 01.26-28 “26 Now in
the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called
Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the
descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And coming in, he said
to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is
with you.”” (NASB95)
The first word of the angel Gabriel to Mary was a common
greeting of “to be well” (Greek-caire), or in the King James Version “Hail”.
There are four other times in the
New Testament that this same Greek word is used in the same tense, and each
time it is used as a greeting (Matthew 26.49; Matthew 27.29; Mark 15.18; John 19.03).
In the year 382ad, Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome to make
a revision of the old Latin translations, and what he produced ultimately
became the official Latin Version of the Bible in the Roman Catholic Church,
known as the Latin Vulgate (LV).
The Latin Vulgate translates Luke 01.28
as:
And the angel being come in, said unto her:
Hail, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
The familiar Roman Catholic prayer known as Ave Maria (Hail
Mary) is based off of the Latin Vulgate’s translation of “full of grace” (gratia plena):
The Hail Mary
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 death. Amen.
What is translated in the Latin Vulgate and in the Hail Mary
is that Mary has been granted full grace, she possesses fullness of grace, and
because of this she then is able to impart grace on others.
This is what
inspires the Roman Catholic Church to worship Mary still to this day.
When Erasmus (16th
Century) learned Greek and got ahold of the New Testament Greek manuscripts, he
noticed that the Greek translation was mistranslated into Latin.
Erasmus noted
that Luke 01.28
should be translated as “Hail thou that are highly favored”
(like it says in the King James Version)
or “Hail
thou that has found grace in the sight of God” (much like what we are
told about Noah in Genesis 06.08).
This twisting of
the words is what is responsible for the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching that
you have to go through Mary to get to Jesus.
They argue, even
to this day that Mary is full of grace, meaning she has all of God’s grace.
Notice that Gabriel did not worship Mary or pray to her; he
simply greeted her. He did not say that she was “full of grace” but that she
was the “favored
one” (Luke 01.28).
In his encyclical
Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum (February
2, 1904), Pope Pius X, denied what
Scripture teaches by affirming that Mary was not the recipient of grace like
the rest of us but instead the “…Dispensatrix (or dispenser) of all the gifts that Our Savior purchased for us by His Death and
by His Blood.” (Paragraph 12)
“…the supreme Minister of
the distribution of graces” (Paragraph 14)
“…as the distributor, by right of her Motherhood, of the
treasures of His merits, - she is, for all these reasons, a most sure and
efficacious assistance to us for arriving at the knowledge and love of Jesus
Christ. Those, alas! furnish us by their conduct with a peremptory proof of it,
who seduced by the wiles of the demon or deceived by false doctrines think they
can do without the help of the Virgin. Hapless are they who neglect Mary under
pretext of the honor to be paid to Jesus Christ! As if the Child could be found
elsewhere than with the Mother!” (Paragraph 15)
“For can anyone fail to see
that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind
and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and
immaculate in the sight of God?” (Paragraph 05) http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_02021904_ad-diem-illum-laetissimum_en.html
Pope Leo XIII in
his encyclical Octobri Mense
(September 22, 1891) stated “Mary is the
intermediary through whom is distributed unto us this immense treasure of
mercies gathered by God...Thus as no man goeth to the Father but by the Son,
so no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother.” (Paragraph
04)
“How grateful and magnificent a spectacle to see in the cities,
and towns, and villages, on land and sea - wherever the Catholic faith has
penetrated - many hundreds of thousands of pious people uniting their praises
and prayers with one voice and heart at every moment of the day, saluting Mary,
invoking Mary, hoping everything through Mary. Through her may all the faithful
strive to obtain from her Divine Son that the nations plunged in error may
return to the Christian teaching and precepts, in which is the foundation of
the public safety and the source Of peace and true happiness. Through her may
they steadfastly endeavour for that most desirable of all blessings, the
restoration of the liberty of our Mother, the Church, and the tranquil possession
of her rights - rights which have no other object than the careful direction of
men’s dearest interests, from the exercise of which individuals and nations
have never
suffered injury, but have derived, in all time, numerous and
most precious benefits.” (Paragraph
13)
Pope Pius IX said
in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus
(December 8, 1854) that the Roman
Catholic Church’s belief that Mary “…all divine graces and is adorned with all gifts of the Holy
Spirit.”
“When the Fathers and writers of the Church meditated on the fact
that the most Blessed Virgin was, in the name and by order of God himself, proclaimed
full of grace by the Angel Gabriel when he announced her most sublime dignity
of Mother of God, they thought that this singular and solemn salutation, never
heard before, showed that the Mother of God is the seat of all divine graces
and is adorned with all gifts of the Holy Spirit. To them Mary is an almost
infinite treasury, an inexhaustible abyss of these gifts, to such an extent
that she was never subject to the curse and was, together with her Son, the
only partaker of perpetual benediction. Hence she was worthy to hear Elizabeth,
inspired by the Holy Spirit, exclaim: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed
is the fruit of your womb.””
Ludwig Ott (Roman
Catholic theologian, priest, and professor of dogmatics) wrote in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
(1952):
“Since Mary’s assumption
into Heaven no grace is conferred on man without her actual intercessory
co-operation.” (171)
“Mary is the Mediatrix (mediator) of all graces by her co-operation in the
Incarnation.” (172)
“Mary is the Co-Redemptrix (co-redeemer)” (173)
“Mary is the Mediatrix (mediator) of all graces by her intercession in
Heaven.” (174)
Pope Francis
tweeted on July 24, 2013 “Never forget, young friends: The Virgin Mary is our
Mother and with her help we can remain faithful to Christ.”
Pope Francis also
tweeted on August 15, 2013 “Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, and guide us
on the way that leads to Heaven.”
From these few
examples, we have seen that the Roman Catholic Church has taught and still teaches
that you get grace through Mary, she is who mediates for sinful man, and
through her we can get to the Son.
But what the Roman
Catholic Church teaches is in direct contradiction to what the Bible says.
The Bible says
that we are saved by God’s grace (Ephesians 02.08-10).
In just about
every Roman Catholic Church there are Statues of Mary (and in many front
yards), and many come and bow down to pray to her, which goes against the Word
of God. Mariolatry (the
adoration and worship of Mary) is blasphemy and condemned by God because it is
the worship of someone or something other than God Himself (Exodus 20.04-06;
Isaiah 44.09-19; Isaiah 45.18-21; Jeremiah 10.03-10; 1John 05.21)!
Mary, contrary to
the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching (Catechism of the Catholic Church,
paragraphs 496-511 http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p122a3p2.htm), did not remain a virgin (Matthew 01.24-25),
and he Bible tells us that Joseph and Mary had other kids (Matthew 12.46-47; Matthew 13.55;
Mark 06.02-03;
John 02.12;
Acts 01.14;
1Corinthians
09.04-05; Galatians 01.19).
Praying the
Rosary, or saying the Hail Mary repeatedly goes against the command of Jesus not
to vainly repeat prayers (Matthew 06.07).
Praying to the
dead is sorcery and is in direct violation of the Word of God (Exodus 22.18; Leviticus 19.31; Leviticus 20.06;
Deuteronomy
18.10-14; 1Samuel 28.07-20; Isaiah 08.19-20).
Mary is never
mentioned in the Bible after Acts 01.14, and nowhere in the Bible are we
ever commanded to pray to her, and we never read about any follower of God ever
praying to her.
Mary is not the
co-redeemer of the human race. Paul tells us that it is Jesus in Romans 03.19-26.
Mary does not
hear and answer prayers, and she doesn’t intercede for anyone. Paul tells us that
there is only one mediator between God and men, and that mediator is Jesus (1Timothy 02.05).
Mary acknowledged
her need for a savior, calling God her Savior in Luke 01.47.
Pope Pius X stated
how to worship Mary:
“For to be right and good, worship of the Mother of God ought to
spring from the heart; acts of the body have here neither utility nor value if
the acts of the soul have no part in them.” (Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum
Paragraph 17.)
There are more Roman Catholic Churches named after Mary than
after Jesus.
All over the world, people claim to have visions of Mary, and
many Roman Catholics believe these apparitions are Mary’s attempt to help
relieve the world from war, famine and spending eternity in Hell.
The vision of Mary at Fatima (Portugal) reportedly said (in
1917), “You have seen hell where
the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the
world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls
will be saved and there will be peace...I will never forsake you. My Immaculate
Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God…In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.
The vision of Mary at La Salette (France) reportedly said (September
19, 1846, “If My people do
not wish to submit themselves, I am forced to let go of the hand of My Son. It
is so heavy and weighs Me down so much I can no longer keep hold of it.”
The Word of God warns us about these lying signs and wonders. Paul
wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in 2Thessalonians 02.08-12 that
these lying signs and wonders are from Satan. (See also Matthew 24.24;
Mark 13.22;
2Timothy
03.08; 2Timothy 03.08).
From all this, it is plain to see that the Hail Mary is
unscriptural.
We need to pray for those who are caught up in the lie of the
Roman Catholic Church, and that they would realize the error of their ways, and
come to a true saving knowledge of Jesus as their Lord and Savior (Romans 10.09-13).
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