The Hail Mary

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. 
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. 

The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin opens with these words of the Angel Gabriel to the humble Virgin in her obscure home at Nazareth, and indeed no more appropriate prelude to Our Lady's Little Office could be found, since they contain the first announcement to the world of her extraordinary holiness and of the exalted dignity to which she had been chosen. How pleased Mary is with this introduction to her Little Office we may learn from the fact that when Blessed Gonsalvo was seeking light from her as to his vocation, she told him to enter that Order which began the daily Office with the Ave Maria. 

According to the Dominican rite only the first part of the Hail Mary is said here because the second part, or Holy Mary, was not added until the fourteenth century; whereas the Dominican Breviary contained the Little Office as far back as 1256.