Its hard to believe how much history we run through when we say the Hail Mary.

It began some thousand years ago when Christians took the  brief greeting of the Angel Gabriel and added the name: Mary.  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” (Luke 1:28).

Some fifty years later, about 1050, the year King Macbeth of Scotland made a pilgrimage to Rome, Christians began adding to the prayer Elizabeth’s greeting to the Lady Mary: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” (Luke 1:42.) No Name yet.

Then, two centuries later, 1261, as the cathedral in Chartres was being dedicated, a pope officially put the Holy Name at the end of the greeting: “…blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

It was recited that way during three more centuries. By then, in the 1540s, the Jesuits were using the Hail Mary as an assigned prayer in their Spiritual Exercises. It may be that some of them were changing it, because when Peter Canisius published his Catechism in 1555, he added: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.” It may also be that the men who joined the Jesuits needed the Lady Mary’s prayers for sinners. Some things don’t change.

Anyhow, a  little more than ten years after Canisius’ Catechism, the Council of Trent produce its own Catechism, in 1566—a  year when  the Black Plague was killing people in London—Canisius helped the Council make the final addition to the prayer: “now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

And that’s how we come to say our Hail Mary. And all along, the Mother of God was attending to His faithful people.