563. How does the Church pray to Mary? (part 2 continuation)
(Comp 563 repetition) Above all with the
Hail Mary, the prayer with which the Church asks the intercession of the
Virgin. Other Marian prayers are the Rosary, the Akathistos hymn, the
Paraclesis, and the hymns and canticles of diverse Christian traditions.
“In brief”
(CCC 2682) Because of Mary's singular cooperation with the
action of the Holy Spirit, the Church loves to pray in communion with the
Virgin Mary, to magnify with her the great things the Lord has done for her,
and to entrust supplications and praises to her.
To deepen and explain
(CCC 2677) Holy Mary,
Mother of God: With Elizabeth we marvel, "and why is this granted me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Lk 1:43). Because she
gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust
all our cares and petitions to her: she prays for us as she prayed for herself:
"Let it be to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). By entrusting
ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with
her: "Thy will be done." Pray
for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death: By asking Mary to pray
for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to
the "Mother of Mercy," the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to
her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at
the present moment, to surrender "the hour of our death" wholly to
her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she
welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing (cf. Jn 19:27) to lead us
to her son, Jesus, in paradise.
Reflection
(CCC 2678) Medieval piety in the West developed the prayer
of the rosary as a popular substitute for the Liturgy of the Hours. In the
East, the litany called the Akathistos
and the Paraclesis remained closer to
the choral office in the Byzantine churches, while the Armenian, Coptic, and
Syriac traditions preferred popular hymns and songs to the Mother of God. But
in the Ave Maria, the theotokia, the hymns of St. Ephrem or
St. Gregory of Narek, the tradition of prayer is basically the same. [END]
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