Pope Francis - Ave Maria: the mystery of a most beloved prayer

Copyright 2018 by Rizzoli Libri, S.p.A., Rizzoli, Milano

Copyright 2018 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano

Translation copyright 2019 by Penguin Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Image, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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Originally published in Italy as AVE MARIA: IL SANTO PADRE CI RACCONTA IL MISTERO DI MARIA CON LE PAROLE DELLA PREGHIERA PI AMATA by Rizzoli Libri, S.p.A., Milan, in 2018.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN9781984826503

Ebook ISBN9781984826510

Cover design: Sarah Horgan

Front cover image: Madonna at Prayer (oil on canvas), Il Sassoferrato (Giovanni Battista Salvi)/Bridgeman Images

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Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.

Mysteries engage our senses and our intellect. They challenge us to solve a puzzle or pay attention to people, places, or situations we may normally overlook. That is why we can call the Blessed Virgin Mary and her prayer the Ave Maria grand mysteries, because both call us to pause, look, and listen to how we live our lives and how we respond to the often mystifying callings of God. Both Mary and the prayer that honors her stimulate us and bring new life to our hearts and our imagination in ways that challenge and deepen our faith.

It is with great reverence that Image Books is publishing Ave Maria: The Mystery of a Most Beloved Prayer by Pope Francis, a follow-up to his 2018 book Our Father: Reflections on the Lords Prayer. Pope Francis has a deep devotion to Mary, and his love for our Heavenly Mother is demonstrated on every page that follows.

As with Our Father, this book is a conversation with Father Marco Pozza, a priest and prison chaplain from Padua, Italy, and is supplemented with some of Pope Franciss most attentive and heartfelt meditations on Mary, her role in Jesuss life, and the need for all of us to follow her example of loyalty and service. Certain adjustments to the original Italian texts, including colloquialisms, punctuation, and grammar, have been made for the sake of cohesion and consistency.

Blessings,

Gary Jansen, Director of Image Books

March 5, 2019

In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God the Father has inaugurated the new creation, a way of living by the standard of God. As the apostle Paul says, Jesus is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh (Eph 2:14).

For all of us who belong to different cultures, traditions, histories, this opens up the concrete possibility of truly becoming one, like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is what the Church isthe holy faithful people of God, the family of the children of God. The leader of this work of reconciliation and unity is the Holy Spirit, who always creates relationships, builds bridges, strengthens bonds, consoles in sorrow, and gives the strength and joy of forgiveness and mercy.

The Holy Spirit is in fact the one who ceaselessly, day and night, pours into our hearts the love of the Father (cf. Rm 5:5) and thus helps us to become more and more the children of God, true brothers and sisters among ourselves.

In this way our vocation, the great gift that the Father has given to us, is that of allowing ourselves, even though we are poor, lowly, ordinary human beings, to resemble Christ, to participate in his life and his joy. Jesus is our big brother, the new man, the true man; and in him we too as children finally begin to resemble our Father and to resemble one another.

The Church is thus the community of those who have been offered the possibility of being new men and women, clothed in the Spirit, men and women whose hearts resemble that of Christ: the complete gift of self and unconditional acceptance of every other person.

This possibility is for all of us a journey, often rough, grueling, made up of setbacks and breakthroughs, in which the light of Gods love is still hidden by the veil of our poverty, our meager faith, our lack of love. And indeed by the gift of the Father, we are already truly his children; however, our resemblance to him is not yet realized, and at times seems to be nothing but an illusion. All of this requires a great deal of patience, with ourselves and with others, a patience as great as that of the Holy Spirit. As an author once wrote, the Holy Spirit is precisely the master of slow maturations.

All of this can give rise in us to the great temptation of discouragement, because in spite of our many giftswe are truly a stiff-necked people (cf. Ex 33:3, 34:9).

In the face of this risk of discouragement, then, the Father has given us a presence of pure hope, a firm foothold, a certainty that what he is bringing about in us is effective if it is welcomed with faith and cooperation, even though the results so far may not seem to mean much.

Mary is in fact this masterpiece of the Father, the one who is full of grace (cf. Lk 1:28). In her we see the result of Gods action, meaning she is the example of what happens to a human being who welcomes the Holy Spirit completely. The person becomes a splendor of goodness, of love, of beauty, one who is blessed among women (cf. Lk 1:42). The Lord Jesus, dying on the cross, gave us Mary as our Mother, precisely because she is his real Mother and he has really become our brother. So that in Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Risen One, of all of us who rise again in him in baptism, we see the result of Gods work in humanity. Mary is the masterpiece that the Lord seeks to realize and is realizing with his infinite patience in the Church, in every one of us and in the holy people of God in its entirety.

Mary is thus the universal Mother who gives total attention, care, closeness to each son, to each daughter. In her we see in fact the heart of a woman that beats like that of God, a heart that beats for all, without distinction. She is truly the human face of Gods infinite goodness.

Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the God-man. In her Son she encounters both God and man; when she speaks with him, she is addressing both God and man. So in her we see that it is really true that loving the Lord means truly loving humanity, and vice versa. And so, when we are looking at her, Mary constantly helps us and teaches us to turn to the Lord. When Mary realizes that the wine for their friends wedding banquet in Cana has run out, she does not take the initiative to find the solution, saying, Now Ill take care of this; go do this and that No, on the contrary, she always points to her Son, and suggests to the servants: Do whatever he tells you (Jn 2:5).