The Power of the Hail Mary

The Power of the Most Holy Name of Mary

I have no image of God from my childhood, having been brought up in complete atheism…. Humanly speaking, my childhood should have been very happy…. I lacked for nothing. However, I can say that my childhood was a long drawn out moral Calvary. From the time I was five I liked to be alone in order to think. The problem of life was what tormented me. Why life? What was its purpose? To what did it lead? A painful mystery, because there was no answer. After every pleasure, every caprice satisfied, the void became greater. I felt an immense need of plenitude, of the Infinite; the transitoriness of everything oppressed me…. A little crumb, far from satisfying me, increased my hunger….

My first knowledge of God came to me as a gratuitous gift of mercy, granted to me at eleven years of age. For the first time in my life I heard the Hail Mary. It was being recited by a little girl. I did not know to whom it was addressed, and took good care not to ask. But having a good memory I remembered the first part of the prayer; and when I was alone, or in bed at night, I used to say instinctively this half of the Hail Mary, I do not know why. I found a certain pleasure in saying these strange words, without reasoning what they meant. The meaning came of itself. That is all. When I was thirteen we visited Lourdes when on a tour in the Pyrenees. As we arrived inside the Domain of the Grotto a poor little procession was coming out of the Basilica. I gazed at it in astonishment. What kind of people were they? Choir-boys, bishops, priests in surplices. “Play-actors out of doors,” my grandmother told me. The evening before, on coming on a Calvary, I had asked who was the man hanging on the cross? “A malefactor of long ago.” Ah, they did well to punish him…I replied. And now, in order to have a laugh at “those play-actors,” we followed them up to the grotto.

They all went down on their knees and began to say the rosary. And I said the words of the Hail Mary with them in a complete community of spirit…. I do not know what happened after that…. I followed all the prayers, and in spirit adored the Christ on the cross whose image I had seen the evening before. He was my God whom I ardently loved. Everything was clear, luminous, fulfilled, for the first time in my life. I was happy! It was a happiness which was never to leave me again, and which has become more profound with the years. I look upon their passing with joy, because each day brings me nearer to the time when, enveloped in his love, I shall rejoice with Christ in the life of the Holy Trinity.

An anonymous Carmelite nun, aged 53