Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee we do cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us; and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus; O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
I really unexplainably absolutaly love this prayer, it gives me goose bumps when I pray this prayer. Our Darling Advocate is our example of a most Holy Servant of our Lord God.
Let us follow her example and love one another as she loved Christ. Let us love Jesus as she did and love each other just how the Father loves us! Amen.
This is my eternal prayer; that I become more like her! Amen.
Let’s dedicate this thread to Our Lady!
Mary is Queen because she is the Spouse of the King and the Exemplar of a holy life.
Mary is Mother of Mercy because she is the Mother of God, and God is Mercy Itself.
Mary is our life, our sweetness, our hope because we are spiritually born in her womb, because she is the channel of God’s graces, and because she points us to the Son by her participation in His Mysteries. Also “life, sweetness, and hope” is hyperbole, which is a type of exaggeration used to convey a truth (for example, “Sue is my sun and my air”).
We cry to her, the New Eve, as the children of Eve, banished from the earthly paradise and poor in grace and virtue; she is our true Mother and she loves us with a tender love.
We send up our sighs to her as we weep and mourn in the valley of the shadow of death in that we look to her for comfort and ask for her intercession, confident in her powerful prayers, as a child sighs to its mother in order to get her attention or to seek comfort. All things in this world are passing, so we look to the happiness that will never end.
She is our Advocate because the Son and the Holy Spirit are our Advocates; she imitates God in His Self-Advocacy, being so Benevolent to us that He constantly reminds Himself of His graces and the Cross by which He won them for us; the Father is so loving to us that He allows both His Son and His Spirit to ceaselessly plead to Him on our behalf.
The merciful eyes of Mary are the windows to her Heart; her Heart is so full of compassion for us that, after Jesus, she has the most mercy on us, just as after the Lord, she is the most holy, the most wise, the most powerful, the most just, and the most loving of beings. Her compassion is so great that she allowed her Son to be spared for us, yet, her mercy toward Jesus is also so great that she shared in His sufferings even unto immolation at the foot of the Cross, and this should give you an idea of how great her sorrow was.
The exile we are in is the exile from our home, Heaven, just as the Israelites were exiled from their home when taken captive by their enemies. We long for Heaven, yet also must do our earthly duties like Mary did; we must have eyes raised to Heaven but our feet on the ground. After our exile, we pray to enter Heaven, to be greeted by Jesus and Mary.
Mary is clement because she is quick to compassion.
Mary is loving because she has a tender love for us her children.
Mary is sweet because she is the perfect and holy mother.
To be made worthy of the promises of Christ means to be made worthy of Heaven, especially at Holy Communion, where we become one with Jesus just as the Church is One with Him.
