I have a theological problem with "Salve Regina"

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GloriousOrder

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Friends, it’s the second-most-famous Marian prayer in use, after the Ave. It’s more traditional than Friday fish and altar rails! We all know it if we’ve prayed even one full rosary. It is very beautiful, but its meaning seems to be confusing.

I’ve just learned it myself, and it is giving my conscience big problems. How can I call the Blessed Virgin “our life” and “our hope”? Are we not to hope solely in God, from whom all things emanate? The Blessed Lord is our hope, for He Is and we are not; even Mary, the greatest servant of God, is as the blades of grass. How can we hope in something that can pass away like flower petals in the wind, too? Your hope is in that which lasts forever. 🙂 Similarly, Christ tells us every day - by His Holy Spirit and the love of the Cross - that He alone is “The Life”, the life without which we are empty.

Why is the Virgin referred to in this way? I wouldn’t mind if it was just an unofficial prayer, but this is the official form of the rosary. God forbid me from attacking His holy Church, but where is the glory due to God in this prayer? Jesus sounds almost like an afterthought, while we call Mary “our” hope and “our” life! 😦
 
GloriousOrder said:
Friends, it’s the second-most-famous Marian prayer in use, after the Ave. It’s more traditional than Friday fish and altar rails! We all know it if we’ve prayed even one full rosary. It is very beautiful, but its meaning seems to be confusing.

I’ve just learned it myself, and it is giving my conscience big problems. How can I call the Blessed Virgin “our life” and “our hope”? Are we not to hope solely in God, from whom all things emanate? The Blessed Lord is our hope, for He Is and we are not; even Mary, the greatest servant of God, is as the blades of grass. How can we hope in something that can pass away like flower petals in the wind, too? Your hope is in that which lasts forever. 🙂 Similarly, Christ tells us every day - by His Holy Spirit and the love of the Cross - that He alone is “The Life”, the life without which we are empty.

Why is the Virgin referred to in this way? I wouldn’t mind if it was just an unofficial prayer, but this is the official form of the rosary. God forbid me from attacking His holy Church, but where is the glory due to God in this prayer? Jesus sounds almost like an afterthought, while we call Mary “our” hope and “our” life! 😦
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You have to understand that the prayer is in a poetic form and we address the Mother of Mercy as our mother, thus we refer to her the attributes of a mother (e.g. life, sweetness and hope). We should not forget that she is the Theotokos and the Salve Regina is really a Christocentric prayer where the Mother leads us to the fruit of her womb. In all the Marian prayers the Blessed Mother always leads/points us to Jesus, she is never the final goal.
 
Cristiano said:
You have to understand that the prayer is in a poetic form and we address the Mother of Mercy as our mother, thus we refer to her the attributes of a mother (e.g. life, sweetness and hope). We should not forget that she is the Theotokos and the Salve Regina is really a Christocentric prayer where the Mother leads us to the fruit of her womb. In all the Marian prayers the Blessed Mother always leads/points us to Jesus, she is never the final goal.
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Excellent. 👍
 
GloriousOrder said:
Friends, it’s the second-most-famous Marian prayer in use, after the Ave. It’s more traditional than Friday fish and altar rails! We all know it if we’ve prayed even one full rosary. It is very beautiful, but its meaning seems to be confusing.

I’ve just learned it myself, and it is giving my conscience big problems. How can I call the Blessed Virgin “our life” and “our hope”? Are we not to hope solely in God, from whom all things emanate? The Blessed Lord is our hope, for He Is and we are not; even Mary, the greatest servant of God, is as the blades of grass. How can we hope in something that can pass away like flower petals in the wind, too? Your hope is in that which lasts forever. 🙂 Similarly, Christ tells us every day - by His Holy Spirit and the love of the Cross - that He alone is “The Life”, the life without which we are empty.

Why is the Virgin referred to in this way? I wouldn’t mind if it was just an unofficial prayer, but this is the official form of the rosary. God forbid me from attacking His holy Church, but where is the glory due to God in this prayer? Jesus sounds almost like an afterthought, while we call Mary “our” hope and “our” life! 😦
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Mary is referred to as “our life”, “our sweetness” and “our hope” because with her Immaculate Conception, the sweet promise of new life and the hope of salvation entered the world in human form since God created her to be the Mother of God, the Theotokos, to use the Greek word. Mary is the Second Eve, you see. As Eve was the mother of all the living, so Mary is the Eve/Mother of all believers. She is our Mother because she is the Mother of God, our Redeemer and Savior. Therefore, we acknowledge her place in the salvific plan of God.
 
Hello, Glorious - One thing about the Catholic Church is its antiquity. Most of the “tools” of our faith, such as the sacraments, prayers, expressions, have a history that goes back over a thousand years, and longer in some cases. What we see, or say, is just “the tip of the iceberg.” This is the case with the Salve Regina.

The Salve Regina is a hymn that survives in common use, but go back 900 years or so, and it was one on a number of hymns and devotions that shared a common idea. The idea, of which the Salve Regina was a part, was this: Mary is the mother of God. Just as God entered the world through the body of the Blessed Virgin, so people can enter heaven through the intercession of the Mother of Christ. There is another hymn, called the Stella Maria, popular at the same time SR was composed, which uses the image of a sailor lost at sea. The sailor can see a star, like the north star, that guides him to Christ. The star is St. Mary (using a play on words in Latin: Maria is a homonym for mare, “sea”).

In this context, when we say “our life, our sweetness and our hope” we do not mean exclusively, but in the same sense that the mariner lost at sea would look to the pole star that will guide safely to port, which of course is Christ.

The Blessed Virgin is also a model for Christians, and then as now, her life was held up as the example of Christian devotion. The “our life and our hope” therefore seem more like aspirations on the supplicant’s part than as “titles.” We hope our life can be reformed to be like her life, we hope that God may grant us some of the graces that made the Blessed Virgin “full” of grace. This was the topic of much preaching 1000 years ago, and would have been a very familiar theme then, much like you immediately understand what a priest means if he says “culture of life.”

Before the rosary was said in the same way as now, the SR was a hymn that was used in the Little Office, which was very much like the breviary, or Liturgy of the Hours that priests and nuns recite, but shorter. The hymn was surrounded by psalms, most of which the Christian understands as relating, or prophysying Our Lord. If you spend 15 minutes praying the psalms, which are directed toward Christ, you are not likely to misunderstand the proper understanding of the words in the SR - the context was much more clear.

All that remains in common useage today is the SR. Placed next to the other prayers, it can seem “over the top.” But placed in its original context, it regains its proper focus.

You are liable to have this experience often in your faith life as a Catholic. When it happens, ask around. Without doubt, you will discover a fascinating explanation.
 
Cristiano, Della, and Warrenton: thank you very much for your quick replies. 🙂 It’s amazing to see the intense and zealous devotion so many of you have for the Blessed Virgin. Your beloved wish to set your fellow human being’s conscience at ease is laudable.

It is obvious that our lady is the kindest of all women, and the most graceful of any mother ever given a child. I thank her for this humility daily, and always ask for her (very meritorious!) prayers to God; however, even in poetry I can only ‘tolerate’ (as if I’m so special 😊) so much metaphor and indirectness. I think that, logically, such prayers ought to be direct and understandable by the most ignorant layman (me). If it must be explained by metaphors and inadvertent references to God, it is too convoluted, isn’t it? We must judge our deepest prayers by how many people understand them at face value, and are moved to glorify God directly, simply, and lovingly.

After all, when a letter is delivered to you, do you write your reply to the letter-courier, or the person who wrote the letter? The courier does indeed bring you good news in a letter from family or friends, but you address yourself to the family and friends who wrote it, not the man who led you to your family and friends by giving you the letter. I don’t think this allegory is too secular to be applied to Mary, because she is supremely real and alive in Heaven with all the saints… even more alive than the postman, you might say! 🙂

Sorry if I seem to be nitpicking, but I am very scrupulous about avoiding prayers that can be misunderstood easily at face value. An individual prayer must stand on its own, regardless of the context around it, right? It seems to me that a prayer isn’t clear enough if it loses its true meaning because the prayers which used to come before and after it are gone. If you’re supposed to pray A, B, and C, and then you lose A and C, B should still be able to stand by itself. Think of all the simple lay people and not-theologically-oriented brothers and sisters who are led to an unjustified concept of the Blessed Virgin by such poetical veneration!

All my questions are asked in calm mind and with love.
 
And lest we forget; without Mary there would be no redemption, no Savior, no sacrifice of the Mass. It was through her that we are redeemed by her Son to the Father.
 
youtube.com/watch?v=ZBad3iCxK6Q&feature=related
If I would go up to God, and be united with Him, I want to use the same means he used to come down to us and be made man and to impart His graces to us. This means is a true devotion to our Blessed Lady.
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This devotion is an easy, short, perfect and secure way in attaining union with the Lord, in which union the perfection of a Christan consists. It is the way which Jesus Christ Himself trod in coming to us in which there is no obstacle in reaching Him.
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It is true that we can attain divine union by other roads, but it is only by many crosses and strange deaths, and with many more difficulties which we shall find hard to overcome.
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Devotion to our Blessed Lady is a short road to find Jesus Christ, because Jesus, who has come to us most perfectly, took no other road for His great and admirable journey.
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The Most High has come down to us perfectly and divinely, by the humble Mary without loosing anything of His Divinity and Sanctity. So it is through Mary that very little ones may ascend perfectly and divinely, without any fear, to the Most High.
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GloriousOrder said:
Friends, it’s the second-most-famous Marian prayer in use, after the Ave. It’s more traditional than Friday fish and altar rails! We all know it if we’ve prayed even one full rosary. It is very beautiful, but its meaning seems to be confusing.

I’ve just learned it myself, and it is giving my conscience big problems. How can I call the Blessed Virgin “our life” and “our hope”? Are we not to hope solely in God, from whom all things emanate? The Blessed Lord is our hope, for He Is and we are not; even Mary, the greatest servant of God, is as the blades of grass. How can we hope in something that can pass away like flower petals in the wind, too? Your hope is in that which lasts forever. 🙂 Similarly, Christ tells us every day - by His Holy Spirit and the love of the Cross - that He alone is “The Life”, the life without which we are empty.

Why is the Virgin referred to in this way? I wouldn’t mind if it was just an unofficial prayer, but this is the official form of the rosary. God forbid me from attacking His holy Church, but where is the glory due to God in this prayer? Jesus sounds almost like an afterthought, while we call Mary “our” hope and “our” life! 😦
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GloriousOrder,

I too was going through RCIA just two short years ago, and I also had a bit of trouble with this. I think the explanations already given are PERFECT. Think about those themes very carefully and meditate upon them.

May I just add my own two penny worth:

Mary is the MOTHER of the CHURCH, as John clearly teaches us in his gospel (John 19:27). **She is “our hope” because, although she is fully human, she is presently living bodily in heaven. That IS our hope, is it not? **Furthermore, Jesus has fulfilled the commandment to honour His mother by crowning her “Queen of Heaven”. I see that you are also a Canadian, like myself…so you are no doubt aware of the honour the Monarchy bestows on the mother of the reigning monarch; she is given the title “Queen Mother”. This tradition isn’t just British, it is very ancient and goes back to the days of old testament Israel. The king would NEVER say, do or decree anything that would hurt or offend his mother. She always had the ear of the king. **In the spiritual realm then, Christ is our “King” and Mary is our “Queen Mother”. **Remember the Angelus; the spirit of God chose Mary because she was worthy enough to be the Mother of His only begotten Son. Just how far do you think you will get obtaining the King’s mercy, or of convincing Him of your piety, if He perceives you ignoring His mother or treating her like a commoner?

Well, that’s my take on it. Hope it helps. I also hope I’ll see you soon (next Easter?) on this side of the Tiber! 😉
 
Context is everything My friend … “Hail holy Queen,MOTHER OFmercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope”…

She Is reffered to as the mother of mercy, life, sweetness , and hope, which is non other than our Lord Jesus Christ … 🙂 Hope this helps
 
Hi GloriousOrder,

I would like to share a few of my thoughts, though admittedly I am not sure if they will be of any help…But I’ll try. 🙂

Sorry if I seem to be nitpicking, but I am very scrupulous about avoiding prayers that can be misunderstood easily at face value. An individual prayer must stand on its own, regardless of the context around it, right?

I am not quite sure I understand why that must be the case, though…after all, the prayer is not prayed outside a specific context, as if simply in a cultural vaccum. At the very least, it is presupposed that it is being prayed within the context of a specifically Catholic “culture”, so to speak, and thus, that the person praying the prayer knows what is meant. If for some reason or other he does not, then the problem would not be with the prayer, but a lack of basic catechesis (and which should be corrected as soon as possible, of course, quite apart from the question of this specific prayer).

Again, it is true that the prayer does use poetic language, but it also presumes the person knows the “language”. While it might be confusing to people who are not Catholic, for instance, that would be true of any language. But it does not mean it is inappropriate for those who know the “language” to employ it.

To make an analogy, English, as other languages, has certain idioms which, taken literally and without knowledge of the meaning they are supposed to convey (as distinct from what the words actually say, going simply by their literal meaning) would seem quite strange to a person who does not know English, to put it mildly. In other words, the idioms cannot “stand on their own” (i.e., going by the literal meaning of the words), but must be understood within a certain “context” (The same is true of other languages, of course, including the language of Scripture itself). Yet this does not mean we must cease from using such idioms, simply because they are capable of being misunderstood by people who do not know the language. And I believe the same applies to poetic language, even if it is in prayer. )Indeed, in this case, the “language” of the prayer as a whole is abounding in poetic images, and is therefore easily recognized to be situated in a poetic context, an advantage not always the case when it comes to idioms of foreign languages.

Of course, if one does not feel comfortable praying the prayer, that is a matter of personal choice. There is no obligation to pray it, and if you do not wish to, you need not do so. I am simply trying to give a little help as to understanding why I do not believe there is anyhing wrong in itself with such prayers…

Hope that helps a little… 🙂
 
I may have this wrong, but I thought I saw in a previous thread on this subject (the search feature has let me down!) that “Mother” should be thought of as applying to the entire remainder of the verse, i.e.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
mother *of *our life, *mother of *our sweetness and *mother of *our hope.
showing that our life, our sweetness and our hope are Jesus.

I will give this another look…
 
=TheDoctor;7320536]Found it. Read here, it should give you more info.
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forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=493742&highlight=salve+regina
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***Hey Doc, way to go:thumbsup: GREAT QUESTION.

The answer lies in a few key areas:*
  1. The singular honor, Faith, Hope and Love of Mary. She is after all the GREATEST Saint, in the history of humaity.Past; Present and Future. She is the very Mother of our God.
  2. Just as God inflicts Just Judgment of evil dores, so does He award GREAT honors to hose who actually PROVE thet hey Know, Love and Serve God as is our Created purpose.
  3. Mary did this more fully and completely than any other human person. **
***So is Mary our Faith? Yes in an EXTRODINARY way. Consider:

An Angel of God appears* to teenage “Temple Virgin” and informs her that God is REQUESTING her assent / permision to become the Mother of the Long awaited Messiah."

The ONLY question that we know Mary asked is “HOW?” I’m a Virgin. Then Incredibly Mary is told that God will be the father! And Mary say’s YES! WOW! On Faith surely not understanding the mechanics of what as to take place. THAT FRIENDS IS TRUE FAITH!

So is Mary “Our Hope?” YES INDEED! …WHY?

Several reasons; among them are:

Mary NEVER LOST HOPE: Not having Jesus in a cave, not being forced to abandon everything and everyone and move to Heathen Egypt, Not when confronting Jesus in the Temple, Not at Cana knowing that she was goingto Lose jesus [even hough she may not have had all the details at that point, and Not at the Passion an Death of her Son.

So She is the par excelece, model of Hope. A model hat we can lok to and for help in our own Faith journey.
  1. Many believe [with prudent judgment] that Mary has been GRANTED by God the SINGULAR Honor of being NOT the SOURCE of Grace [which of course is God Himself] but nevertheless, the One who distributes all Grace to humanity.
  2. No human being has demonistratd Greater Faith, Hope, and Love, or has suffered more, or is more humble and completely Obedient to God than was and is Mary.**
ANY title SHORT of GOd is fitting and approiate.🙂

God Bless,

Pat
 
FRANKYG said:
Context is everything My friend … “Hail holy Queen,MOTHER OFmercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope”…

She Is reffered to as the mother of mercy, life, sweetness , and hope, which is non other than our Lord Jesus Christ … 🙂 Hope this helps
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TheDoctor said:
I may have this wrong, but I thought I saw in a previous thread on this subject (the search feature has let me down!) that “Mother” should be thought of as applying to the entire remainder of the verse, i.e.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
mother *of *our life, *mother of *our sweetness and *mother of *our hope.
showing that our life, our sweetness and our hope are Jesus.

I will give this another look…
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This is grammatically impossible, for those who know Latin. The words are:
Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
Misericordiae is in the genitive case, making it “of-mercy,” but Mater, vita, dulcedo, and spes nostra are not. They are all in the vocative case, used in direct address. As a Latin matter, it is obvious that Mary is addressed as:
  • Mother of mercy
  • Life
  • Sweetness
  • Our hope,
and not, “Mother of {mercy, life, sweetness, hope}.” If that were the case, the Latin would have had to say, “Mater misericordiae, vitae, dulcedinis, et spei nostrae, salve.”
 
In my opinion you can see it as Mother of our Hope, Mother of our Life etc…

but there nothing wrong considering Mary to be "Our Life, Our sweetness, and Our Hope.

Have you ever heard a mother say “My kids are my life” or “Your the light of my world” to a loved one.

Do they literally mean that thier kids are the entirety of thier life? Or that thier spouse is the literal light of thier world? No its just an expression.

I love the Salve Regina, espically when you learn about the writer of it.
 
MarkThompson said:
This is grammatically impossible, for those who know Latin. The words are:Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.Misericordiae is in the genitive case, making it “of-mercy,” but Mater, vita, dulcedo, and spes nostra are not. They are all in the vocative case, used in direct address. As a Latin matter, it is obvious that Mary is addressed as:
  • Mother of mercy
  • Life
  • Sweetness
  • Our hope,
and not, “Mother of {mercy, life, sweetness, hope}.” If that were the case, the Latin would have had to say, “Mater misericordiae, vitae, dulcedinis, et spei nostrae, salve.”
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Since I don’t know Latin, I appreciate your effort in trying to explain this.
 
MarkThompson said:
Unfortunately, that opinion doesn’t stand up to the actual (Latin) text of the prayer.
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All the posts up to FRANKYG’s and TheDoctor’s answers really seemed helpful. I was half-convinced by their arguments, but I can see that the Latin is very clear. My grasp of Latin is horrid, but I’ve learned a few things from the 1962 Missal with regards to grammar. It’s clear what the Latin says, however much we’d like to translate it in a less spiritually-confusing manner.

Thank you for your insights into the language, by the way. If nothing else, that gives me some clarity and fresh air. I do apologise about not utilising the search function… let’s see if the answer is in that other thread! 🙂
 
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