Traditional prayer
Hail, Holy Queen (Salve Regina)
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us,
and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Latin
Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Evae.
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.
Et Iesum benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis, post hoc exsilium, ostende.
O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria!
About this prayer
Salve, Regina: “Hail, Queen.” It is the Church’s great cry to Our Lady, and it hails her by the title this house bears: Regina, Queen. It does not pretend that life is easy. It speaks of exiles, of sighs, of a valley of tears, and it carries all of that to a Mother who is also a Queen, asking for one thing above all: after this our exile, show unto us Jesus.
Why a Queen? Scripture shows “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1, Douay-Rheims; Revelation 12:1 in modern Bibles). The note in the Douay-Rheims reads the woman first as “the church of God,” adding: “It may also, by allusion, be applied to our blessed Lady”; the Catechism calls Mary the Church’s model and type (CCC 967). And it teaches that Mary, assumed body and soul into heaven, was made Queen over all things by the Lord, so as to be more fully like her Son (CCC 966). Hers is a mother’s reign. The Church calls on her as Advocate, and every bit of her help draws its power from Christ and never competes with Him (CCC 969–970).
The anthem is medieval. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) says its authorship is “now generally ascribed to Hermann Contractus,” though older writers named others. The Dominicans began singing it at Compline, the Church’s night prayer, about 1221, and spread the custom rapidly. On 6 January 1884 Pope Leo XIII prescribed it among the prayers after every Low Mass, which is where Father Lasance’s prayer book of 1911 prints the English given here. A story that St. Bernard added the closing “O clement, O loving, O sweet” is a legend; the same encyclopedia calls it “very doubtful.”
Today it most often closes the Rosary. St. John Paul II pictured the Rosary ending in praise, “either in that splendid prayer the Salve Regina or in the Litany of Loreto” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 37).
When to pray it
- At the end of the Rosary.
- At night, the hour at which the Church’s night prayer has long ended with it.
- In grief, when “mourning and weeping” is simply the truth.
- On feasts of Our Lady.
- For anyone far from home: the exiled, the deployed, the dying.