English:
We fly to thy protection,
O holy Mother of God.
Despise not our petitions in our necessities,
but deliver us always from all dangers,
O glorious and blessed Virgin.
Latin:
Sub tuum praesidium confugimus,
Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.
Latin text as published by the Holy See Press Office.
Many people assume the Hail Mary is the oldest prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but the Sub Tuum Praesidium is widely regarded as the oldest known prayer addressed to her. The oldest surviving copy is written in Greek on a papyrus from Egypt, now kept at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. Scholars still debate its exact age.
Sub tuum praesidium are the prayer’s first words in Latin: “under your protection.” The English version begins, “We fly to thy protection” (some prayer books say “We fly to thy patronage”). The prayer calls Mary Sancta Dei Genetrix, “holy Mother of God,” the same title the Greek original gives her: Theotokos.
In 2018, Pope Francis asked the faithful to end the Rosary each day in October with the Sub Tuum Praesidium and the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. He recalled that “the Russian mystics and the great saints of all the traditions advised, in moments of spiritual turbulence, to shelter beneath the mantle of the Holy Mother of God pronouncing the invocation ‘Sub tuum praesidium.’” Many Catholics still end their Rosary this way. The prayer is short enough to learn by heart and pray in any moment of danger or need, in English or in Latin.
The Church teaches: “From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 971).
About our Blessed Mother, the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us (paragraphs 967 and 968, 970):
“By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a ‘preeminent and…wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary realization’ (typus) of the Church.
“Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. ‘In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.’
“‘Mary’s function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. But the Blessed Virgin’s salutary influence on men…flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it.’
For more prayers asking Our Lady’s help, see the Memorare and the Hail Holy Queen.
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