Angelus
v. The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
r. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
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.
v. Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
r. Be it done to me according to Thy word.
Hail Mary . . .
v. And the Word was made flesh,
r. And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary . . .
v. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
r. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray.
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts;
that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ, Thy Son,
was made known by the message of an angel,
may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection.
Through the same Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Angelus is a workday prayer. It was, and is, an antidote to the belief that the workday is only about work. That we are the sum total of our production, or the sum deficit of our lack.
The prayer has its origins in the Middle Ages. Imagine the man pulling a plow like a beast of burden or the woman, her baby strapped to her back, stooped and sowing seed. What could it mean for them to stop work at noon and remember that it is “we to whom the Incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel,” and we who “may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection”?
To remember our hope of a share in the glory of God is to remember that we are more than our labors; we are human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
But it was not only laborers who prayed the Angelus. The man and woman in the field and the lord and lady in the castle, rich and poor alike, all stopped at noon and prayed that they might be “made worthy of the promises of Christ.” Whatever their place on earth, they were supplicants before God. In those moments, divisions merged into one prayer, one plea.
The Angelus seems like a Catholic antique to many of us, but in a time when class and economic divisions grow ever wider, try to imagine a moment when the executive behind her office desk and the janitor cleaning the office floor both stop their work, at the same time each day, to pray, to ask, one in their longing, one in their need. Now imagine that happening wherever Catholics live and work. Imagine all of us, those employed and those panhandling on the street, stopping to remember that we are not either the sum total of our production, or the sum total of our lack. We are the sons and daughters of God, who by Christ’s Passion and Cross alone may be brought to the glory of Christ’s resurrection.
[CREDIT]Melissa Musick Nussbaum, from the April 2018 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018). Use
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