Ave Maria

Posted by Illuci (Hurdegaryp, Netherlands) on 1 October 2007 in Lifestyle & Culture.

In the Roman Catholic church May and October are months dedicated to Mary. If Jesus is God's son, and if He was born from Mary, then we may call her God's mother, because God is indivisible and cannot have a Son without the Son being God. She stands for female dignity, strength, motherhood, in short all female virtues. She crushes the devil's head, who once seduced a woman to pick an apple from the forbidden tree, thus compensating for this evil act.

In my childhood, and recently in May again, I sung with the people gathered in the church this centuries-old song:

Salve Regina, mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevæ, ad te suspiramus,
gementes et flentes in hac lactrimarum valle.
Eia ergo, advocata nostra,
illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte,
et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exilium ostende.
O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.

Hail to thee, queen, mother of mercy,
Life, sweetness, and our hope, hail to thee.
We invoke thy help, we children of Eva, sighing, complaining and beseeching (1), in
this valley of tears.
Well then, our mediator,
Direct thine merciful eyes towards us,
And reveal to us, after this exile, the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus,
O gentle, o pious, o lovely virgin Maria (2)

(1) In ancient Latin religious texts qualifications are often repeated in synonyms to be sure that no relevant qualification would be forgotten. In modern ears it sounds overdone.
(2) Mary is considered to be both mother and virgin because of rejection of sexual activity by religious tradition: lust and directedness to the lover would distract us to earthly pleasures, instead of being concentrated to the holy birth.

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