Luke 1:26-38 : Year B (Advent 4) – Hail Mary

Given the sort of risk and physical crap the bible says Mary had to survive in order to have a baby I’ve always thought that Lara Croft (from the video game Tomb Raider) might be a more appropriate image of the mother of Christ rather than domesticated, insipidly pale faced, blue veiled, watery eyed portraits we’re used to. If you consider that talk of a new Davidic line would have likely been considered seditious in the then occupied Palestine and consider the content of Mary’s Song in the next passage “The rich are sent, empty, away” (A passage that appears nowhere in the 3 year lectionary cycle!), it becomes clear that Mary stands in the radical prophetic tradition of her culture and knows just what’s at stake when one births a “Messiah”.

In this vein I put together my own ‘Hail Mary’ which uses some bits of the traditional Catholic Hail Mary Prayer and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. Read the rest of this entry »