Answer to: "What's so special with Mary?"

Hello everyone!  Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it  : )

I get this question a lot:  "What's so special with Mary?  Why do you worship her, shouldn't you be worshipping God?"

Let me make this clear:  We do not worship Mary, we honor her!

Very important point there.  So why do people think that we worship her?

(There are two main forms of "worship" that we use.  Adoration and veneration.

Adoration is reserved only for the Holy Trinity, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  This is the highest form of worship in the Catholic church.

Veneration is quite different.  It is honoring someone, not worshipping.  We honor this person and, by honoring them, honor God who made them in His likeness.

For Mary, she has a special type of veneration.  We believe that she is the Mother of the Church; she is also a saint.  That is why we pray to her.)

-Inserted from post "A Study of the Differences between the Christian Religions (Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist)".

Now I will explain the "Hail Mary" prayer, a main prayer we use to honor her.

It started from these two Bible verses:

"Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women" (Luke 1:28) and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (Luke 1:42).

The prayer, titled the "Hail Mary" or "Ave Maria" in Latin, incorporates both of the passages from above.  Those passages are part of the greeting that Gabriel gave Mary when he was explaining that she was about to be the mother of Jesus.  Other words have been added to the prayer, such as Mary after "Hail" at the beginning, and even a petition at the end:  "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen".  That passage was added in the mid-1500s around the time of the Council of Trent.

So, the full prayer sounds like this:

"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."

As Catholics, we use this prayer a lot.  We use it sometimes as a prayer for help, and we also use it when we pray the Rosary, which I will post about soon.

Thank you all for reading!  We are working on some changes to the site so it will be easier to post questions!  You can also comment on this note; that would be swell!

God bless you all!

Your sister in Christ,

Emily

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