The Angelus: the full text and the three times of day
The prayer
V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
V. And the Word was made flesh. R. And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God. R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the incarnation of Christ thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by his passion and cross be brought to the glory of his resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
In short
The Angelus is a prayer said three times a day at the sound of a bell: morning, noon and evening. In three versicles with responses, three Hail Marys and a closing prayer, it recalls the annunciation and the incarnation. In Eastertide it is replaced by the Regina Caeli. This page gives the whole text.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 7 min read
When to pray it
Three times a day: at six in the morning, at noon and at six in the evening, traditionally at the ringing of a bell. Those who say it only once usually choose noon, which is when it interrupts the day rather than framing it.
The Angelus is built as a dialogue, and that is not a detail of form. One says the versicle, the other answers — it was made to be prayed by two voices, at home or in a field, and not in silence. Someone praying alone says both parts, which feels strange at first and stops feeling strange after a few days.
The three versicles tell one story in three tenses: the announcement, the consent, the outcome. Declared, be it done, the Word was made flesh. It is a narrative compressed into three sentences, and the Hail Mary after each one works as the interval in which the sentence settles.
The middle line is the most important and the least discussed. “Be it done unto me according to thy word” is a teenager’s answer to an announcement she did not ask for and did not understand, and the Angelus puts it at the exact centre of the prayer. Whoever says it is repeating a consent, not celebrating a privilege.
The bell is part of the design. The prayer was meant to happen in the middle of something else — mid-harvest, mid-shift, mid-street — and to be interrupted by a sound coming from outside. Today the bell has become a phone alarm, which preserves what mattered: somebody does not choose the hour, and that is what keeps the prayer from being put off.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared Assembled between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries
The Angelus was not written in one go: it accumulated over three centuries around a practical custom. The oldest element is the evening bell with a Hail Mary — a habit spread by the Franciscans and encouraged by bishops through the thirteenth century, at a time when the bell was any town’s public clock. The morning ringing came later, and the noon one later still.
The noon bell is the most recent of the three and the only one with a political context. It is traditionally associated with an order of Callixtus III, in 1456, calling for prayer in the face of the Turkish advance in central Europe. The full set — three versicles, three Hail Marys and a concluding collect — only appears in the form said today in the sixteenth century.
The three versicles are liturgical formulas gathering two New Testament scenes: the annunciation in Luke 1, and the opening of John’s Gospel. As with the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, they are not the wording of any biblical translation published on this site — they are text fixed by liturgical use. The corresponding passages appear below, for comparison.
Little-known details
The name is the first word of the Latin text
In Eastertide it disappears from the calendar
The closing prayer does not mention Mary
One of the most reproduced paintings of the nineteenth century shows this prayer
What the passages say
26Then, in the sixth month, the Angel Gabriel was sent by God, to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
27to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the name of the virgin was Mary.
28And upon entering, the Angel said to her: “Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.”
29And when she had heard this, she was disturbed by his words, and she considered what kind of greeting this might be.
30And the Angel said to her: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God.
31Behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name: JESUS.
The scene behind the first versicle. Notice that the biblical text does not use the word “declared”: it describes a messenger who enters, greets and explains. The compact vocabulary of the Angelus is liturgical summary, not quotation.
38Then Mary said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” And the Angel departed from her.
The source of the second versicle, and the only line of the Angelus spoken by Mary. Compare with the text above: Scripture here reads “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word”, where the recited formula keeps the older English wording.
14And the Word became flesh, and he lived among us, and we saw his glory, glory like that of an only-begotten Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The source of the third versicle, and the point where the prayer changes register: it leaves the domestic scene of Luke and moves to the solemn opening of John. Two halves of one claim, one told and the other defined.
4But when the fullness of time arrived, God sent his Son, formed from a woman, formed under the law,
5so that he might redeem those who were under the law, in order that we might receive the adoption of sons.
The oldest formulation of the incarnation in the New Testament, earlier than the Gospels: born of a woman, born under the law. It is the summary the Angelus collect picks up when it links the angel’s message to the cross and the resurrection.