Let’s learn a little of the Old Language. Here’s the quote from S. Elisabeth, the mother of S. John the Baptist, when the BVM visited her towards the end of her pregnancy:
“Benedicta tu inter mulieres, et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Et unde hoc mihi, ut veniat Mater Domini mei ad me?”
Evangelium secundum Lucam, 1: 42-43 [link]
The English is this: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”
Some quick notes:
- The first word to note is ‘benedictus/benedicta,’ which follows the gender of the subject, benedicta for our Lady, benedictus for our Lord. The word means, of course, ‘blessed,’ and helps us to understand the Benediction service in church on a Sunday, which is the blessing of the people by the priest with the Most Blessed Sacrament, with which he draws a great cross over them. This is also a common name in the Catholic world, because of the great Saint Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism and of the Order of the Benedictines.
- Mulier is a Latin word that still survives in the so-called romanz languages such as Portuguese, where women are still mulheres, the word being pronounced in exactly the same way. Similarly, fructus survives in English as fruit, as does venter/ventris, which refers to the female womb.
- The words Mater Domini (‘Mother of the Lord’) should be familiar to us, because the words are still littered around our old churches and in our prayer and hymn books. Mater is of course mother, and transfers to English in words like ‘maternal.’ Dominus/domini, meaning ‘lord,’ refers to one who has command over the lives of his subjects. It has survived in the English language in many ways. In the Catholic tradition, the Mother of Christ is referred to as Domina – Lady – because her position as queen-mother gives her a degree of command over our lives. Several classical Catholic works of recent centuries that counsel Catholics to make a personal consecration of their lives to the Blessed Virgin, such as this one, work on that theme.
Finally, here is that wonderful prayer that many of us learnt on our mother’s knees:
Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
prayer for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 