By Olivia Obijiaku
Parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, have been charged to pray the Hail Mary with boldness. The Dean of Samaru Deanery of the Catholic Diocese of Zaria, Very Rev Fr. Peter Bauna Tanko gave this charge in the parish on the Feast of Visitation, Friday, 31st June, 2024.
Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading, Luke 1:39-56, on the conversation between Elizabeth and the Blessed Virgin Mary, he explained that the mother of John the Baptist was prompted by the Holy Spirit to pronounce the words that now make up the first part of ‘Hail Mary.’
He said, “Elizabeth said, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the Fruit of your womb’ because was filled with the Holy Spirit. She did not say this ordinarily. In other words, she was prompted by the Holy Spirit to say those words. For Christians who do not like Mary, that is their own. But for we who are Catholics, we believe firmly in what we profess.”On ‘why is it that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?’ the priest taught that ‘in Hebrew we use the word, ‘lord’ in six different ways.
But in the context in which Elizabeth used the word, ‘Lord’ the Hebrew word means the one who has control over my life and the one who gave me life. So Elizabeth recognized that this is the Mother of the one who gave her life. That was why she said, ’The mother of my Lord.’ You can call a human being lord.
You call Bishops My Lord. Slaves can call their master lord but it does not have the same meaning with the one that points to the person who has given us life and who has the power to take that life.”“When you say, ‘Jesus is Lord, you are saying that Jesus is the owner of my life and I give my life back to Him.
So there is no one earth that has the power to take somebody’s life, except the God in heaven. Jesus would say ‘Do not call anyone Father because you have one Father and He is in heaven.’”Throwing light on ‘The moment I heard your voice, the Child in my womb leapt for joy,’ the clergyman noted that some theologians believe that was the moment when Jesus in the womb baptized John in the womb.
He opined that the act might have been the spiritual baptism of John the Baptist, whose baptizer some people seek to know.Fr. Tanko catechized that Elizabeth’s acknowledgment of how blessed the Mother of Jesus was shows that she recognized Mary as superior to her. He nudged participants to hold firm to the faith of the Catholic Church and to keep saying Hail Mary and similar prayers to Mary as directed by the Church because, “They are scriptural prayers.”
