Hail Mary

Christian prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The prayer is based upon the Gospel (Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42) and a reinforcement of basic Christian belief in the real divinity and real humanity of Jesus.

It is the central point of the Rosary, a prayer recited by Catholics, comprised of 4 sets of 5 Mysteries meditating upon the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Each of these Mysteries is prayed as a decade (literally ten), consisting of

• One Our Father (Pater Noster or The Lord's Prayer)
• Ten Hail Marys
• One Doxology ('Glory be to the Father')

The Words of the Hail Mary

English

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee,
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God,
pray for us sinners, now, and in
the hour of our death.

Amen.

Latin

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum,
benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus.
Sancta Maria mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.

Amen

Musical settings

The Ave Maria has been set to music numerous times. Among them is the version by Charles Gounod (1859), adding melody and words to Johann Sebastian Bach's first prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Franz Schubert's version (1825) was originally set to a German translation of an English poem, not to the Latin text of the Ave Maria prayer that is commonly sung today, often at weddings. Schubert's version was reused by Giuseppe Verdi in his 1887 opera Otello.

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A "Hail Mary" or a "Hail Mary pass", in American football, is a play in which the quarterback throws the ball as far downfield as possible, hoping one of his receivers can catch the ball or that a defensive player commits a penalty which allows the offense to gain possession of the ball at the point of the foul. This play usually occurs at the very end of a half, and especially when the team on offense is trailing in the score.

The phrase is often used outside of the sports context to refer to a desperate measure or a final effort in a project or business setting.