It’s my strong suspicion that here at the Church of the Good Shepherd, the 1992 film Sister Act is not frequently a topic of discussion from the pulpit. We have been rather free-wheeling on Locust Street for a long time, so we are used to this kind of thing, but I hope it will not trouble you too much, in this venerable parish, if I mention this well-known film, in which one of the musical numbers is introduced when Whoopi Goldberg comes out to greet her fellow nuns. In that wonderful scene, Whoopi greets her sisters with these words: “Hail, girls,” to which the other nuns reply, “Hail, Mary; what’s up?”
Hail, Mary; what’s up? Although this question is not strictly scriptural (part of it is), and it does not come from the text assigned for tonight, I ask you to indulge me in adopting it as my text on which to base a few thoughts as we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary tonight. Hail, Mary; what’s up?
The obvious answer from Mary on today is, “I am,” since in many places the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven is being celebrated today.
Hail, Mary; what’s up?
I am.
This is an anachronistic greeting: “Hail!” And I think it bears some consideration. “Hail” is a complicated word. I turn to the OED at times like this. Of course, the great dictionary reminds us that as a noun, “hail” is “ice or frozen vapor falling in pellets.”
It reports on the adjective, or descriptive “hail,” which suggests “health, safety, welfare.” But it can be construed to say even more, according to the OED: “free from injury, infirmity, or disease; sound, unhurt, safe, healthy, robust.” Hail Mary.
It provides for the word as a verb, meaning “to pour down like hail;” or in another sense “to call out in order to attract attention,” as in “hail a cab.”
And of course, it tells us that “hail” is “a salutation expressing well-wishing or reverence.” Hail, Mary; what’s up?
It’s important to keep our orientation when we reflect on this greeting. For, if you thought about it, and you imagined how God might send his Son into the world, how the God of God, the Light of Light, the very God of of Very God might make his way to God’s people on earth, you might think that such a Son would be born of a heavenly Mother. Perhaps the Son of God should be born of some angelic womb, pure and spotless. It makes sense that the Prince of Peace should be born of the Queen of heaven. And if the bees can produce a queen for their own hives, surely God could have found or made for himself a Queen in heaven with whom to consort and to produce the Holy Child. And then to send them both down from on high, to debase themselves among mere mortals.
But curiously, mysteriously, this is not what God chose to do. Instead of debasing the divine, he exalted the humble and meek. Mary may have been pure, but she sure was lowly. It’s not her lineage the scriptures tell us about; it’s Joseph’s; what with patriarchy and all. It is integral to the story of the birth of our Savior that his Mother has no place to go but up. She did not swoop down from heaven on a cloud. She was not even the daughter of Pharaoh. She was a handmaiden of lowliness. Hail, Mary; what’s up?
Ask her that on the way to Bethlehem for the rude and inadequate circumstances of her labor and delivery. Or during the flight into Egypt when the Holy Family was just trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities. What’s up?
Ask her that when she was frantically looking for her missing son in the streets of Jerusalem. Hail, Mary; what’s up?
Ask her that at the foot of the Cross, where she watched her Son die. Hail Mary.
She had no superpowers, no mystical vision that enabled her to keep track of her son. She had only the memory of that extraordinary greeting, “Hail, Mary. Hail.” No, she was no goddess sent down from heaven to parent a divine child. She was as lowly as they come. And when we say, “Hail, Mary,” we track her transformation, her exaltation, her magnification as she, because of her faithfulness and because of her humility, becomes the Queen of heaven, the first believer to be worthy of a crown.
Something can be done to the word, “hail,” to turn it from a greeting into what one dictionary (not the OED) calls public “praise or [a] show of approval for a person.” And it’s this subtle shift that we make in the use of the word as we consider the implications of Mary’s answer to our question, “What’s up?” When we realize that he that is mighty hath magnified her - this lowly handmaiden - our “Hail Marys” take on this new meaning, and our “Ave,” our “Hail,” carries so much of the word’s larger meaning with it. And when we say, “Hail Mary,” we identify in her our health, our safety, and welfare, because of the Son she bore for us. We see that if Mary can be free from injury, infirmity, or disease; sound, unhurt, safe, healthy, robust, by the grace of God, then maybe we can be too. Hail Mary!
We see in Mary the signs that God is pouring down grace into our lives like hail, just as he did in her life. When we find in Mary the exaltation of the humble and meek, we are grateful for God’s wisdom and mercy in sending his Son to us by lifting her up, rather than by sending some heavenly queen down to us. And this gives us hope!
We ask, “Hail, Mary; what’s up?” And the answer is so much more fulsome than it might have been, because she has, by the grace of her Son, become what she was not. No, she did not start out as the Queen of heaven, but she may be so now!
Hail, Mary; what’s up? “I am,” she says. “Lowly handmaiden, though I was, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath magnified me. He hath exalted the humble and meek - by which I mean me and you, and holy is his Name.”
To which we may reply, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!”
Hail Mary, what’s up?
You are! Thanks be to God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, 2023
The Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA
