One Hail Mary well said fills the heart of Our Lady with delight and obtains for us indescribably great graces. One Hail Mary well said gives us more graces than a thousand thoughtlessly said. The Hail Mary is like a mine of gold that we can always take from but never exhaust.

Though the two verses are from the same book in the Bible, these lines were not put together until about the 11th century. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

In point of fact, there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050. All the evidence suggests that it took its rise from certain versicles and responsories occurring in the Little Office or Cursus of the Blessed Virgin which just at that time was coming into favor among the monastic orders. Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts at the British Museum, one of which may be as old as the year 1030, show that the words ‘Ave Maria’ etc. and ‘benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui’ occurred in almost every part of the Cursus, and though we cannot be sure that these clauses were at first joined together so as to make one prayer, there is conclusive evidence that this had come to pass only a very little later.

The Hail Mary prayer is a prayer that is addressed to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. It is a prayer that is used to ask for her intercession and help in our lives. The prayer is based on the words that the angel Gabriel spoke to Mary when he came to her to announce that she had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus. The Hail Mary prayer is a simple prayer that is easy to memorize, yet it is filled with deep spiritual meaning. The prayer is as follows: new blogs on scripture

“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 at the hour of our death. Amen.”