Mary

After Christ, Mary has the distinction of being the most decorated Catholic. Just take a look at her titles:

Gate of heaven;  Star of the Sea;  Cause of Our Joy;
Queen of Heaven; Queen of the Angels; Queen of All Saints;
Theotokus; Mother of God; Blessed Mother;
Ever Virgin; Madonna; The New Eve
Our Lady of Lourdes;
Our Lady of Fatima;
Our Lady of Knock;
Our Lady of Guadalupe;
Our Lady of Loretto;
The Eschatological Icon of the Church;
The New Eve.

Just to name a few.

Catholics worldwide have been beseeching her intercession through the rosary ever since it was reborn and exploded in popularity through the work of the Dominicans in the 12th century. 1 Anytime anyone prays the rosary they say the Hail Mary 53 times, and just look at the thing!:

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.

Or better yet, in Spanish! 2

Dios te salve Maria, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita tu eres entre todas las mujeres y bendito es el fruto de su vientre, Jesus. Sancta Maria, madre de Dios, rega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y a la hora de nuestra muerte, Amen.

But despite (or perhaps because of) her pivotal role in salvation history Mary is greatly misunderstood by the world, by Protestants, by Catholics, and even by myself, so in the following 3 posts (ish) I'm going to dive into Mariology.

The Mary Series!

Beyond the Incarnation: Why Mary is not Superfluous 

"My Soul Magnifies the Lord"
Correctly Phrasing Prayers to with Mary

(to be hyperlinked later)

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1 I don't know my history of the rosary well enough so I tried to phrase that as vaguely as I could. The two things I do know are that a) the rosary existed even very early in the Church and certainly predates the 13th century; and b) Our Lady gave the rosary to St. Dominic in the 13th century as his weapon to fight the Albigensians and its current form is owing to this. How closely the rosary was tied to Mary prior to this I do not know, however.
2 I actually prefer the Hail Mary in Spanish to the English translation, I think mainly because rega has more significance for me than pray. I think a lot of it is that we are overly acclimatized to the word pray and thus overlook its deeper significance, whereas when I see a conjugation of rogar I think of begging, pleading, and all out supplication on your knees. Sometimes we need to go back to antiquated English to understand our language (eg. "Pray tell?")