Hail, Mary, … Let us take a moment in our prayer after these first words. Just as a mountain stream must first be regulated to flow calmly and slowly, so it is with prayer. We must calm ourselves and pause its course.
Perhaps even the angel, right after greeting Mary, lost his words for a moment… At least one thing we know for certain about him – he is an intelligent being. He fell silent where there was a comma in the sentence. Therefore, let us treat punctuation marks at least as respectfully as he did.
(Father Jerome /1907–1985/, monk of the Trappist monastery in Sept-Fons,
excerpt from the text Prelude to the Angelic Greeting)
