Hail Holy Queen.. our Hope

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I still have no answer to when a Protestant asks why we call the Blessed Mother our Hope…

Why do we call her that?
And how can I explain that it is not wrong to a Protestant?

thank you

God bless
 
I always think calling Mary “our life” would be more troublesome to non-Catholics than calling her “our hope.” Both, though, are intricately intertwined on a conceptual level. The parallelism often stated between Jesus and Mary are the fundamental concepts behind these statements, as well as calling Mary the “Co-Redemptrix.” None of this helps a Catholic sound sensible to a Protestant (or Muslim or Jew). 😛

Mary is “our hope” simply because we regard her as the Gate of Heaven. It is her body that separates the divine from the human, but it is also her body that unites the divine with the human. At the first advent of Our Lord, if we were to be in the position of Elizabeth, knowing full well that Mary’s womb contained the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, then we’d instantly make the logical connection that not only her womb but her very being is giving life to “the fruit of [her] womb,” Jesus.
 
J1Priest said:
I still have no answer to when a Protestant asks why we call the Blessed Mother our Hope…

Why do we call her that?
And how can I explain that it is not wrong to a Protestant?

thank you

God bless
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Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

or rephrased slightly for clarity:

Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, mother of our life, mother of our sweetness, and mother of our hope.

Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope all refer to Jesus.

Do protestants think that Jesus is not our life, our sweetness, and our hope?
 
Now who is she mother of again? Our mercy , our life , our sweetness and hope. Ah I just saw ricmat has it covered. I concur. Tim
 
The prayer reads as follows:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

Mary is the mother of whom? Mary is the mother of Jesus. Jesus is the source of our mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

Non-Catholics make way too much of our prayers that include Mary and the saints. Everything is Christ centered and all prayers ultimately go through the Lord because Mary and the saints are made aware of our prayers by the power of God. Likewise, our prayers that include Mary and the saints are prayers for intercession. These prayers of intercession are like the prayer requests that we make of our friends and family members.

The only difference is that Mary and the saints are in heaven and are in much greater unity with Jesus than we are. Scripture tells us that the “prayers of a just man availeth much.” Obviously, the saints in heaven are what scripture calls “the souls of just men made perfect.” Obviously, their prayers will availeth even more than those of the saints on earth.

I hope this helps.
 
Sorry to be repeating others…while writing my post everyone else was already on board.
 
Pax said:
The prayer reads as follows:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

**, our prayers that include Mary and the saints are prayers for intercession. These prayers of intercession are like the prayer requests that we make of our friends and family members.Mary is the mother of whom? Mary is the mother of Jesus. Jesus is the source of our mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

Non-Catholics make way too much of our prayers that include Mary and the saints. Everything is Christ centered and all prayers ultimately go through the Lord because Mary and the saints are made aware of our prayers by the power of God. Likewise

The only difference is that Mary and the saints are in heaven and are in much greater unity with Jesus than we are. Scripture tells us that the “prayers of a just man availeth much.” Obviously, the saints in heaven are what scripture calls “the souls of just men made perfect.” Obviously, their prayers will availeth even more than those of the saints on earth.**
I hope this helps.
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Ditto to what this poster said. Mary is mother of God. She is our mother too. We pray that Mary our Mother intercess for us. We don’t pray to Mary and believe that she is the one answering our prayers. Only God can do that.
 
Thank you guys.
Now I have to put those to test when opportunity comes… If something goes wrong, I’ll come back
 
ricmat said:
Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

or rephrased slightly for clarity:

Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, mother of our life, mother of our sweetness, and mother of our hope.

Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope all refer to Jesus.

Do protestants think that Jesus is not our life, our sweetness, and our hope?
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👍
 
ricmat said:
Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

or rephrased slightly for clarity:

Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, mother of our life, mother of our sweetness, and mother of our hope.

Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope all refer to Jesus.

Do protestants think that Jesus is not our life, our sweetness, and our hope?
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I see TOP and Pax agree with this. I hate to be the toenail in the yogurt, BUT. . .

I like the interpretation, but it’s not linguistically warranted. In the original Latin of the Hail Holy Queen prayer, the “mercy” is an object (Mother of mercy), but the life, sweetness, and hope are nominative—meaning they refer to the subject of the sentence, Mary. They aren’t the object of “mother,” although that would solve a lot of questions. 🤷
 
cpayne said:
I see TOP and Pax agree with this. I hate to be the toenail in the yogurt, BUT. . .

I like the interpretation, but it’s not linguistically warranted. In the original Latin of the Hail Holy Queen prayer, the “mercy” is an object (Mother of mercy), but the life, sweetness, and hope are nominative—meaning they refer to the subject of the sentence, Mary. They aren’t the object of “mother,” although that would solve a lot of questions. 🤷
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How is the nominative translated then? If they were equivalent to Holy Queen, wouldn’t they be ablative? I dunno, it’s been centuries since I took Latin in school and then I drove the teachers around the bend by declining thus:

bubblegum, bubblegi, bubblego. Or something along those lines. I am appealing to the philosphers’ escape clause which is I know nothing!
 
Ani_Ibi said:
How is the nominative translated then? If they were equivalent to Holy Queen, wouldn’t they be ablative? I dunno, it’s been centuries since I took Latin in school and then I drove the teachers around the bend by declining thus:

bubblegum, bubblegi, bubblego. Or something along those lines. I am appealing to the philosphers’ escape clause which is I know nothing!
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Well, not that I’m rewriting the prayer or anything, but I think the sense of it is: “Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy. Hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.” Not “mother of” our life, sweetness, and so on. If I’m wrong, I’d like to be corrected, since I actually like the other sense of it better! 🙂
 
By the way: ablative, nominative, yikes, you could be right. I just am pretty sure they are not the object of “mother of.”
 
While we’re on this subject, how did the ancient world treat the word “Hail”. I heard recently that it’s not just a greeting among equals, like I thought. It’s actually a greeting from a lesser person to a greater.

Which sort of places greater meaning to the words of Gabriel, “Hail, Full of Grace” (or “Hail, favored one” if you read the NAB). Any linguistics experts want to take this one?
 
I took four years of Latin starting about 34 years ago. I wasn’t good at it then and I’m even worse now. I generally depend on the English translation. The translation as it normally reads seems to support the original contention on the thread.

Let’s get a Latin scholar!
 
Here is a tidbit taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The anthem figured largely in the evening devotions of the confraternities and guilds which were formed in great numbers about the beginning of the thirteenth century. “In France, this service was commonly known as Salut, in the Low Countries as the Lof, in England and Germany simply as the Salve. Now it seems certain that our present Benediction service has resulted from the general adoption of this evening singing of canticles before the statue of Our Lady, enhanced as it often came to be in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, which was employed at first only as an adjunct to lend it additional solemnity.” (Father Thurston; see BENEDICTION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT for some elaboration). Luther complained that the anthem was sung everywhere throughout the world, that the great bells of the churches were rung in its honour, etc. He objected especially to the words “Queen of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope”; but the language of devotion is not that of dogma, and some Protestants, unwilling that it should disappear from Lutheran churches, reconstructed it “evangelically” (e.g., a version in use at Erfurt in 1525: “Salve Rex aeternae misericordiae”.) The Jansenists found a like difficulty, and sought to change the expression into “the sweetness and hope of our life” (Beissel, I, 126). While the anthem thus figured largely in liturgical and in general popular Catholic devotion, it was especially dear to sailors. Scholars give instances of the singing of Salve Regina by the sailors of Columbus and the Indians.

Me thinks the translation may indeed fit the criteria of Protestant objection, but the question remains concerning doctrinal vs. devotional types and uses.

Comments?
 
i had been wondering the same thing about the Latin,

“Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo, et spes notra Salve.”

I suck with the whole declentions thing, but I always thought it was referring to Mary.

In spanish it is

“Dios te salve Reina y Madre de misericordia, vida, dulcero y esperanza nuestra”
in the way we pronounce it, we always say “mother of mercy” and a little break and then say “vida, dulsura y esperanza nuestra”, which does not sound as “mother of mercy, mother of our life, etc”… who knows…

but its true, they stumble with “hope” and not “life”…? lol
 
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