Devotion of the Ave Maria, story of praise

from the book by René Laurentin, L'Ave Maria, Queriniana, Brescia 1990, pp. 11-21.

Where does this prayer to Mary come from, the most repeated formula in this world? How was it formed?

In the early church, the Ave Maria was not recited. And the first of the Christians, Mary, to whom this greeting had been addressed by the angel, did not have to repeat it. Even today, when he prays with the visionaries, holding a crown, he does not say the Ave Maria. In Lourdes when Bernadette recited the rosary in front of her, the Lady of the cave associated herself with the Gloria, but "did not move her lips", when the girl recited the Hail Marys. In Medjugorje, when the Virgin prays with the visionaries - which is the culmination of every apparition - it is to say with them the Pater and the Glory. without the Ave (which the visionaries recited before the apparition).

When did the prayer to the saints begin?

The Ave Maria was formed slowly, gradually over the centuries.

Once again, the essential prayer of the church is addressed to the Father through the Son. In the Latin missal, only two prayers are addressed to Christ; the first and third of the Corpus Christi feast. And there are no prayers addressed to the Holy Spirit, not even on the day of Pentecost.

This is because God is the foundation and support of every prayer, which exists, is formed and flows only in Him. So why prayers addressed not to the Father but to others? What is their function and legitimacy?

These are secondary prayers: antiphons and hymns, for example. They serve to actualize our ties with the elect in the Communion of Saints.

It is not a matter of smuggling rites which would challenge the essential prayer of the church. These formulas are inscribed in that same prayer, in that impulse towards God alone, because we go to him together, not without intercession, and find others in God, all in all.

So when did prayer to the saints begin? Very soon the Christians felt deep ties with the martyrs who had overcome terrible sufferings for fidelity to the Lord, and had prolonged in their own body the sacrifice of Christ, for his body which is the church (Col 1,24). These athletes showed the way to salvation. The cult of martyrs began from the second century.

After the persecutions, the apostates solicited the intercession of the confessors of the faith (faithful survivors, sometimes marked by their wounds), to obtain penance and rehabilitation. A fortiori they resorted to the martyrs who had reached Christ, giving all the proof "of the greatest love" (Jn 15,13:XNUMX).

Very soon, after all this, in the fourth century and perhaps a little earlier, people began to turn to the holy ascetics, and to Mary, privately.

How the Ave Maria became prayer

The first word of the Ave Maria: chaire, 'rejoice', with which the angel's announcement begins, seems to have been traced, since the third century, on a graffiti found in Nazareth, on the wall of the house which was soon visited by Christians as the place of the Annunciation.

And in the sands of the desert of Egypt a prayer was addressed to Mary on a papyrus which specialists date back to the third century. This prayer was known but was thought to be from the Middle Ages. Here she is: «Under the mantle of mercy we take refuge, Mother of God (theotokos). Do not reject our requests, but in necessity save us from danger, [You] alone caste and blessed ".1

Towards the end of the fourth century, the liturgy of certain Eastern churches chose a day to commemorate Mary, before the Christmas feast (as martyrs were already commemorated). Mary's memory could have no place except beside the Incarnation. The preachers repeated the angel's words and addressed them to Mary themselves. This could have been a "prosopope", a literary and oratory procedure with which one turns to a character from the past: "O Fabrizio, who would have thought of your great soul!" Jean-Jacques Rousseau exclaimed, in the Discourse on science and the arts, which made its glory in 1750.

But soon, the prosopope became prayer.

The oldest homily of this kind, attributed to Gregory of Nyssa, seems to have been pronounced in Caesarea de Cappadocia, between 370 and 378. The preacher thus comments on the greeting of Gabriel by associating the Christian people with it: «We say aloud, according to the words of the angel: Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you [...]. From you came out the one who is perfect in dignity and in whom the fullness of divinity resides. Rejoice full of grace, the Lord is with you: With the servant the king; with the immaculate one who sanctifies the universe; with the beautiful, the most beautiful of the children of men, to save the man made in his image ».

Another homily, attributed to Gregory of Nyssa himself, and intended for the same celebration, also echoes Elizabeth's praise to Mary: You are blessed among women (Lk 1,42:XNUMX): «Yes, you are blessed among women, because among all the virgins you have been chosen; because you have been judged worthy to host such a Lord; because you have accepted the one who fills everything ...; because you have become the treasure of the spiritual pearl ».

Where does the second part of the Ave Maria come from?

The second part of the Ave: "Santa Maria, Mother of God", has a more recent history. It has its origin in the litanies of the saints, which date back to the seventh century. Mary was invoked first immediately after God: "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis, Saint Mary pray for us".

This formula was developed with different expressions, and thus added, here and there, to the biblical formula of the Ave Maria.

The great preacher Saint Bernardino of Siena (XV century) already said: "To this blessing with which the Ave ends: You are blessed among women (Lk 1,42) we can add: Saint Mary, pray for us sinners" .

Some breviaries of the second half of the fifteenth century contain this short formula. We find it in s. Pietro Canisio in the XNUMXth century.

The final: "now and at the hour of our death" appears in a Franciscan breviary of 1525. The breviary established by Pius v in 1568 adopted it: it prescribed the recitation of the Pater and the Ave at the beginning of each Hour. This is how our Ave Maria found itself to be divulged and promulgated in its entirety, in the form we know.

But this formula of the Roman breviary took some time to spread. Numerous breviaries who ignored her disappeared. The others gradually adopted it and spread it among the priests, and through them among the people. The integration will have fully occurred in the XNUMXth century.

As for the epithet "poor" before "sinners", it does not exist in the Latin text. It is an addition from the 2,10th century: a humble appeal to piety and compassion. This addition, which some have criticized as an overload and a pleonasm, expresses a twofold truth: the sinner's poverty and the place assigned to the poor in the gospel: "Blessed are the poor," proclaims Jesus, and among them he includes sinners, which the Good News is addressed primarily: "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mk XNUMX:XNUMX).

The translations

If the Latin formula is well established since the time of Saint Pius V in the sixteenth century, the Ave Maria was translated in slightly different ways which sometimes create some uncertainty in the acting.

Concerned about improving the formulas, some exegetes believe (with good reason as we will see) that the first word of the Ave is not an ordinary greeting, but an invitation to messianic joy: "Rejoice". Hence a variant to which we will return.
The translation of fructus ventris tui with the fruit of your womb seemed coarse to someone. And even before the council, some dioceses preferred "the fruit of your womb". Others have proposed: "and blessed be Jesus your son": which sweetens the realism of the biblical text so expressive of the incarnation: "Behold, you will conceive in your womb," says the angel in Lk 1,31:1,42. He uses the prosaic term gastér, preferring it to koilia: the womb [= womb], for profound theological and biblical reasons to which we will return. But Lk XNUMX in which Elizabeth's blessing is found, appropriately uses the specific term: koilia. Blessed be the fruit of your breast.
Some prefer to eliminate the poor addition before sinners, out of fidelity to the Latin text.
In accordance with post-conciliar use, instead of So be it, Amen is said, but there are those who eliminate this final clause.
After the council, the prayers of the missal and the ritual were translated with tu. This solution was adopted out of fidelity to the languages ​​of the Bible and to Latin, which ignore the you of deference. Bible translations have long been unified with tu. The logic and homogeneity of the post-conciliar translations recommended this solution. It was not an innovation, because popular songs gave the word to God long before the council. Dignifiedly: «Speak, command, règne, nous sommes tous à Toi Jésus, étende ton règne, de univers univers sois Roi (Speak, command, reign, we all belong to You Jesus, extend your kingdom, of the universe be King! ) "
The French episcopal conference took advantage of the opportunity to elaborate an ecumenical translation of the Pater, which was accepted by all confessions for the French-speaking countries. It would also have been logical to propose a new official translation of the Ave Maria. Why wasn't it done?

The bishops did not want to reawaken the recriminations about 'you', because they would not have failed on a sensitive point such as Marian devotion.
The ecumenical French translation of the Pater (so happy from the ecumenical point of view, since it allows Christians of all confessions to recite the Lord's Prayer together) had sparked another controversy. The preconciliar translation: Do not allow us to succumb to temptation has become Do not submit to temptation. Abbé Jean Carmignac, a prominent Judaist, has fought all his life against this translation that he believed unfaithful and offensive to God:
- It is the devil who tempts, not the Creator, he pointed out. Consequently, he proposed: Guard us from consenting to temptation.

Carmignac made it an affair not only of science, but of conscience. For this reason he left the parish that required him to perform the official performance, and moved to another Parisian parish (San Francesco di Sales) which allowed him to use his formula.

In order not to provoke further controversy in the already stormy atmosphere that led to the schism of Monsignor Lefebvre, the episcopate avoided elaborating a translation of the Ave Maria.

Some took the initiative of revisions closer to the biblical text, consistent with the "you" of the missal. Which leaves the play in a floating situation, to which everyone adapts as best they can.

Although I personally prefer the translation: Rejoice, I stick to the preconciliar formula, never officially reformed and widely predominant, when I recite the rosary with a group of people from all over the world. Instead in the communities that preferred the other solution, I gladly stick to their use.

It seems wise, to define this matter, to wait for a fully pacified situation.