The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Friday, March 25

I had a rough morning and afternoon with lightheadedness and confusion, but I feel better now.  Please keep praying!

Luke 1:26–38

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

The Church calls St. Paul “the Apostle of Grace” because of his development of the doctrine of grace in his Letters, particularly in that to the Romans.  He adapts the common Greek word charis (Latin gratia), meaning “favor” or “free act of good will”, to mean the free gift of God which forgives sin and imparts divine life.  As Paul writes in Romans 5, 17: “If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”  Paul is speaking of the Original Sin, committed by Adam and Eve, which brought death to themselves and their descendants, as overpowered by the grace which was won for us by the Lord Jesus.  Although we do find other Apostles and Evangelists also speaking of grace, Paul emphasized it in his teaching and it became an important part of what his disciples, such as St. Luke, also taught.  

The account of the Annunciation in St. Luke’s Gospel comes across in Greek as spoken with a heavy Hebrew accent.  That is, the text reads as though it were largely translated from Hebrew into Greek.  We may account for this by considering that it was the Virgin Mary herself who related her experience of this event to Luke.  He could easily have met her among the relatively small groups of Christians that existed during that time.  Also, he must have talked to her, for after the death of her husband Joseph, only Mary would have known what had occurred when the archangel visited her.  Gabriel would have spoken to her in Hebrew or Aramaic, and Mary, who probably did not know Greek, would have spoken to Luke in one of those languages.  Luke, then, would have translated what Mary told him into Greek for his readers.  And he used the Greek charis to translate the Hebrew word Gabriel used when he addressed the Virgin Mary, which we translate as “Full of grace”.  There are those who would translate this as “Highly favored”, but Luke, the disciple of the Apostle of Grace, knew exactly what he was doing when he used the word Paul had adapted, and which his readers would also have understood. Simply put, it is impossible that what Gabriel said to Mary was, “Greetings, you who are (highly) favored”.

But this translation — “Full of grace” — does not quite suffice either.  The actual Greek word is a perfect passive participle, meaning that an action has been completed in the past and its effect is enduring.  With St. Paul’s understanding of “grace” in mind, we can see, from Gabriel’s greeting, that the Virgin Mary was given the gift of divine life at some point in the past, that this action was completed (or, “perfected”), and the effect of this gift of divine life continues in her up to the present.  She was perfected in grace at the instant of her creation and remains in that state.  This describes not only an action that was done to her but it becomes her name as well, as we can also see from Gabriel’s greeting.  He wishes her peace (“hail”) and then instead of calling her “Mary”, he calls her “the one who has been perfected in grace” (which, in Greek, is one word).  This is not simply what happened; this is who she is.  Just as Almighty God is “I am”, so Mary is “the one who has been perfected in grace”.  In fact, the more we know about sanctifying grace, the more we can know about her.  Romans 5 is a good place to start learning more.

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”  In response to Gabriel’s name for her, the Virgin Mary gives her name for herself: the handmaid of the Lord.  We may see the two names as opposed to each other, for one speaks of greatness and the other of lowliness, but they are the same name in different words, for the one who is perfected in grace becomes, of her own volition, the handmaid of the Lord.  The service of God obtains for us grace, which in turn enables us to perform more and greater service for him: “To every one who has, more shall be given, and he shall abound” (Luke 19, 26).  And the Virgin Mary abounds more than any of us in the love of Almighty God.