Hail Mary!

Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said,

"Blessed are you among women,

and blessed is the fruit of your womb!"

Luke 1:42, NKJV

Did you know the Hail Mary is Scriptural? Well, what I mean to say is, did you know that the words of the Hail Mary are found in Scripture? Well, what I should say is, some of the words of the Hail Mary are taken from the Scriptures. But they were said as greetings, not prayers.

Gabriel spoke them first, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women (from the KJV). Elizabeth added, Blessed is the fruit of thy womb. But the rest of it...since I'm not a Catholic, I'm not familiar with the origin of the Hail Mary prayer, so I googled it. The rest of it was added and developed into a prayer by "the Church itself" once the paganized organized church began to worship Mary as the "Mother of God," a designation the Bible never gives her.

I have spent a lot of time promoting the integrity of Mary's character as a Jewish girl, and her virginity as the chosen mother of God's Son. The Virgin Birth is a foundational element of Christian faith...but the virgin is not the one who brought about the Virgin Birth. It was the Holy Spirit who worked it in her womb, and honestly, God could have chosen anybody to accomplish the birthing of Jesus...but He did choose Mary, a righteous Jewess, to be mother to His son, and He did choose her betrothed husband Joseph, a just man, to foster that Son as his own. But the choice of God's vessels should never be mistaken as an exaltation to near-godhood.

Jesus Himself will later comment on this in Luke 11:28, when a woman cried out, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts which nursed you." To this Jesus replied, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it." Mary was just a girl who, following the conception and birth of her extraordinary Son, went on to lead a rather ordinary life as a daughter of Israel, wife of the gentle carpenter Joseph and mother of his four sons and two daughters. At Jesus' death on the cross, He as her oldest Son passed his responsibility for her care over to His dearest disciple John, and church history says that she accompanied John to Ephesus after the destruction of Jerusalem...where she died a natural death. She was part of the early church, but after Acts 1, there is no further mention of her anywhere in the Scriptures. And why? Because it was never about her...it was about her Son, Jesus, the Son of God.

Yes, Mary was an extraordinary girl, both for being chosen and because she was chosen. But she was just a vessel, the instrument of fulfilling God's Plan of the Ages. That action brought salvation to the world, but it did not save her. She had to come to salvation just like everyone else...through belief in Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God and her personal savior. She was a righteous girl by the measure of the law, but she was not perfect. But those who exalt above what is right would have us believe that not only did she give birth to a sinless Son, she was also sinlessly conceived herself...the Immaculate Conception. And that she remained sinless because she never had sex with her dutiful husband, and was therefore so holy that she was received, body and soul, into heaven through the Assumption. Thus she is living today, sitting somewhere as the Queen of Heaven (another pagan designation) and making intercession for the saints. There is even a move underway to actually name her the co-redemptrix with Christ in Catholic dogma!

Don't' get me wrong. Mary is a significant figure in the Christ story, but like John, she must decrease, that Christ may increase. She was the most blessed among women because God chose to use her womb. She carried there the most blessed of Sons ever conceived, the Son of Man and the Son of God who would bring salvation to all who believed on Him. But it's never been about Mary. Never once did Jesus instruct us to honor her or venerate her, and certainly not to pray to her or through her. The apostles neither acknowledged her nor suggested that she held some special place in Christology beyond being his mother. Never does the Bible indicate that she is anything beyond that. We have one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ the righteous. One advocate, one intercessor, one Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

I'm not trying to offend and alienate Catholics here, but I have to tell you...one of the saddest developments in the church has been the constant exaltation of that Jewish girl while leaving her son as a helpless infant or a hopeless corpse. I serve neither the infant, the corpse, or His mother. I serve the resurrected glorified Lord Jesus Christ...and He is all that we need.