Tuesday in the Third Week of Advent, December 14, 2021

Matthew 21:28-32

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ The son said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will?” They answered, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.”

Today’s Gospel reading follows hard upon that of yesterday.  As there is no break between the two, it is not entirely clear to whom the Lord is now speaking.  The lectionary adds “Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people”: these words are not found in the Scriptures.  Due to Matthew’s episodic writing style, the chief priests and elders may not have been present in this scene.  The Lord may have spoken only to a crowd.  As far as this reading is concerned, the identity of the hearers means that the Lord is continuing his rebuke of the chief priests and the elders, or he is rebuking the crowd.

“A man had two sons.”  When we read of “two” in the Gospels, we ought to be ready to understand the Jews and the Gentiles.  The questions of whether the Gentiles can be saved and whether the Jews are lost loom large throughout all four of the Gospels and the Letters of St. Paul.  “Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.”  The family farm needed constant work and everyone pitched in.  The sons would go out at the direction of the father and would direct the hired hands and even work alongside them.  The father’s orders were not to be disobeyed in the ancient world.  His rule was law.  “The son said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went.”  The first son’s refusal was a rebellion, indeed, an act of treason.  Short of a fatal illness or wound, there could be no excuse for not obeying his father.  But before repercussions set in, this son went out.  The son came to his senses and realized the grievousness of what he was doing.  We can see our refusal to obey the will of God in the same terms.  We take for granted what we have from God and attribute whatever success we have to ourselves.  But this is mere vanity.  It is as though we were complacently walking toward the edge of a cliff and stepped off — and then scrambled back to safety, having come face to face with reality.  True repentance consists of this.

“The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go.”  Perhaps this son initially intended to go, but through sloth he did not.  The matter here concerns not merely obedience but also the survival of the family.  Work not done would result in a smaller harvest.  The son who refuses to go out to work endangers his family.  He does not act even in his own best interests, let alone those of the father to whom he owed his life.

The Lord asks his hearers, “Which of the two did his father’s will?”  Now, the clearness of the answer ought to concern those who give it.  “The first.”  This begs the question, So who is the first son?  The Lord may have paused to give the crowd a chance to think.  “I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.”  For us, in this jaded age in which profanity has lost its taboo and shame is considered a problem to be solved with therapy and medication, it is hard to think of a modern equivalent for “tax collectors and prostitutes”.  Perhaps drug dealers.  The crowd would have been outraged.  Some of its members probably reached for stones to throw back.  The Lord explains and hardens his rebuke: “When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did.”  This leads us to think that the Lord was addressing the chief priests and the elders, for the people regarded John as a prophet.  The unspoken truth is that the chief priests and the elders did nothing themselves to bring back the tax collectors and prostitutes.  “Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.”  Repentance from sin is a greater miracle than any other wonder that could be performed.  The repentance of each of the common people as well as each of the tax collectors and prostitutes constituted a miracle that should have caused the chief priests and the elders to rejoice and to see that John was a prophet, and something more than a prophet.  But they saw no benefit for themselves and so held these conversions to be of no account.  The tax collectors and prostitutes had initially said No to God, but had repented and gone out to work in his vineyard to perform good works.  The chief priests and the elders had said Yes to God by taking their places in society, but had done no work at all for God.  They did not even serve their own best interests, thinking that they needed to do nothing to be saved.

We must work earnestly in the Lord’s vineyard so as to encourage others to do so and so as to bring home the most abundant possible harvest for the Lord.  He gives us the privilege of working there and so we ought not to see it as a burden, but as a chance to glorify him.

 Monday in the Third Week of Advent, December 13, 2021

Matthew 21:23-27

When Jesus had come into the temple area, the chief priests and the elders of the people approached him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them in reply, “I shall ask you one question, and if you answer it for me, then I shall tell you by what authority I do these things. Where was John’s baptism from? Was it of heavenly or of human origin?” They discussed this among themselves and said, “If we say ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet.” So they said to Jesus in reply, “We do not know.” He himself said to them, “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

The following link and information will take anyone interested to the live St. Matthew’s Gospel Bible Study tonight at 8:00 PM eastern time, 7:00 PM central time.  We have just begun to look at the Sermon on the Mount.

https://us05web.zoom.us/j/3806645258?pwd=MUNuU0ZxNFM3NnpiclZCcFF6SFhyQT09

Meeting ID: 380 664 5258

Passcode: 140026

The Lord Jesus, having entered Jerusalem with a large crowd of supporters, went directly to the Temple as though to take possession of it.  When he found the usual sellers of animals and money changers in the courtyard, he violently threw them out.  These two actions — his entrance to the city and his suppression of trade in the Temple — alarmed the chief priests and the elders.  They saw that he was challenging their legitimacy and so they accosted him: “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?”  As if to say, We did not authorize you to do this.  However, they themselves possessed no authority.  The chief priests were not the descendants of Aaron, as the Law stated they must be.  Annas had been appointed by the Roman procurator when Jesus was just a boy, and he was later deposed.  A few years later, his son-in-law Caiphas was appointed as high priest.  In fact, several men were appointed as high priest and then were deposed by the Romans during this time.  Their authority, such as it was, came not from their office so much as from the Romans.  As for the elders, these were older men who simply assumed a role.  They possessed no authority at all.  These priests and elders have no foundation for demanding that Jesus tell them on what authority he acts.

As though to signify that they have no basis for making demands of him, he does not answer their question, but makes them an offer: “I shall ask you one question, and if you answer it for me, then I shall tell you by what authority I do these things.”  Clearly, the authority here is Jesus, and the priests and elders acknowledge this by agreeing to his terms.  It is interesting to speculate as to what sort of question they thought he would ask them.  Certainly a theological one, and one they thought they could answer with some vague allusion to the Scriptures.  They were not ready for the question he did ask them: “Where was John’s baptism from? Was it of heavenly or of human origin?”  The men of no legitimate authority are trapped and they know it.  Quite apart from answering honestly, though, they try to figure out an answer using their cunning.  Their lives might depend on it: “They discussed this among themselves and said, “If we say ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet.”  With only the appearance of importance and power to back them up, people are concerned with their personal survival and nothing else.  The question the Lord asks is a reasonable one and one which deserved an answer.  But these men were not eager to give one.  The facade of their authority came crashing down if they answered that John’s authority came from God; and the crowd would tear them apart if they responded that it was merely of human origin.  The reply they finally give amounts to a surrender: “We do not know.”  But of all people, they were supposed to know.  And how could the crowd know if they did not?  Their answer confused the crowd so much that they were able to slither away safely.  “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”  Jesus reaffirms that he owes them nothing.  

The meaning of his coming to the Temple and taking possession of it was to show that the old priesthood — the line of Aaron — had come to an end.  The animals, which were to be sacrificed, were set free, signifying that the sacrifices of the Old Law had come to an end.  Now had arrived the true high priest, restoring not the compromised line of Aaron, but the original line of Melchizedek, and he himself was the new Sacrifice.  When Jesus defeats the priests and elders in this reading, he shows them that a new age was dawning.

 The Third Sunday of Advent, December 12, 2021

Luke 3:10–18

The crowds asked John the Baptist, “What should we do?” He said to them in reply, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized and they said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He answered them, “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.” Soldiers also asked him, “And what is it that we should do?” He told them, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.” Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Exhorting them in many other ways, he preached good news to the people.

In context, St. Luke has described the preaching of St. John the Baptist, calling on the Jews to repent before the Messiah comes, for he would judge them severely on account of their sins.  The people ask, “What should we do?” They ask John, not the scribes and Pharisees.  He replies, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.”  John offers this not as a penance but as a way of life.  Those who have lived selfishly must now live generously.  We note that John does not say “can share” but “should share”, as if urging those with an extra coat or food to find someone to share this with.  “Even tax collectors came to be baptized.”  Perhaps the future St. Matthew was among these.  Luke’s remark tells us of the broadness of John’s appeal and how deeply it was felt.  “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.”  Another man, preaching on his own and only interested in stirring up the people, would have condemned the tax collectors out of hand or at least made impossible demands on them.  But John is preaching under the influence of the Holy Spirit and so makes righteousness attainable for these men.  When soldiers came to him, he merely told them, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.”  He does not tell them to give up being soldiers but to avoid abusing others.  We can understand John as taking to us, here.  He does not command us to live in the radical way that he does in the wilderness, but to live generously with others and to forsake using others to advance ourselves.

“Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.”  Through his righteousness, John resembled the long-awaited Messiah.  Through our own righteousness and sanctity we can nudge people into thinking of Jesus.  “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.”  Jesus tells us, “Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11, 11), and even he is undeserving of carrying our Lord’s sandals.  That should give us pause.  And yet, through our response to the Lord’s call to faith in him, he will allow us to do this and, indeed, one day to touch the wounds in his hands and side which he incurred for our sake.

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  John uses water; Jesus uses fire.  This is to show the immense difference between the sign of John’s baptism and the reality that is Christ’s.  “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn.”  John speaks of how we will face the Lord at the end of our lives when we have been reaped from the field of this life at the time when we should have matured spiritually, and at the end of the world when he brings his own into heaven.  “But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  The chaff is good for nothing once the wheat is harvested and is to be burned.  While actual chaff burns quickly and is no more, those who did not obey the will of God on earth and so proved themselves useless to him will be burned forever: “Their fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9, 47).

 Saturday in the Second Week of Advent, December 11, 2021

Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

As they were coming down from the mountain, the disciples asked Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said in reply, “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.

God’s revelation that he would send a Messiah, an anointed Savior, into the world was made gradually through the Scriptures.  The pattern of a savior sent by God was revealed in the lives of the judges who ruled various tribes of Israel in the years before King Saul: a tribe would be overcome by a neighboring king as a result of its sins; the people would cry out to God for help; he would raise up a person to defeat the enemy and then take up the rule of the tribe.  During the years of royal rule, God raised up prophets to warn the people to give up their idolatry and to live justly or they would be conquered by enemy armies.  Even as the God warned them through the prophets with increasing vigor and urgency, he promised that he would eventually bring them back from the exile they would suffer.  It is during this period that Isaiah prophesied of a Prince of Peace, and also of a “servant” who would suffer for the people.  After the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, God sent them prophets who spoke of a great judgment to come and of a “Son of Man” whom God would send to rule the earth.  Jewish books written after the death of their last prophet elaborate on this ruler and judge who would come at the end of the world.  Although the prophecies of the one whom the Jews came to call the Messiah were scattered in the biblical books, by the time Jesus was born the scribes had pieced together their own model for how he would appear and what he would do.  The scribes opposed Jesus in large part because the people regarded him as the Messiah even though he did not fit their model.

“Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”  The Lord’s disciples know him to be a powerful worker of miracles and a superb, if often puzzling, preacher.  His way of life was beyond reproach as far as they were concerned.  Yet they also wondered about him because the scribes had told them all along that the Messiah would be military leader and Jesus showed no inclination at all for this.  Here they ask a question that plagued them as they tried to reconcile what they had seen and heard and what the scribes had told them.  They allude to a teaching by the Prophet Malachi: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4, 5).  Since Elijah was said to come before this day, he would necessarily come before the Messiah.  It seemed odd to the disciples — and certainly to many other Jews — that the Messiah would need a herald, as Elijah was evidently meant to be.

“Elijah will indeed come and restore all things.”  The Lord’s answer also replies to Malachi 4, 6, where it is said that Elijah would “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”  The Greek word translated here as “restore” can also mean “to reestablish”, “to reinstate”, “to return”, and “to deliver”.  That is, Elijah would come and begin the work of restoring creation — severely damaged by the original sin — to the state in which God had intended it.  This restoration or reestablishment would be completed in Christ: “[It is God’s will] in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to reestablish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in him” (Ephesians 1, 10).

“But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased.”  As St. Matthew remarks at the end of the reading, “Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.”  It seems so obvious to us today that John the Baptist was the herald, the fore-runner of Christ, fulfilling the office of Elijah, but for the people of the time, this came as a great revelation.  The Lord makes it to them as he is about to enter Jerusalem for the last time.  The announcement that Elijah had already come told them that the “great and terrible day of the Lord” was about to dawn, though they had little idea yet as to what this really meant.  “So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.”  John had been rejected by the Pharisees and the scribes because they had thought he might be the Messiah and he had told them he was not.  Thereafter they had no time for him.  They also found his lifestyle incompatible with their ideas for how a righteous Jew should live.  And finally he was arrested and killed by Herod.  Jesus tells his disciples that he, the Son of Man, would suffer similarly.  Now, this was a teaching they were not prepared for.  In Daniel 7, 13-14, the Son of Man is shown in his glory.  There is no hint that he would suffer.  What the Lord said seemed to contradict the Prophets and the scribes.  Still, the disciples had their answer and they continued to follow him even as they struggled to understand.  Even at the point of the Lord’s Ascension into heaven they showed confusion: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?” (Acts 1, 6).

How grateful we ought to be that the Lord in his mercy established his Church so that we might be taught the full truth about him.  And as we have received this knowledge freely, let us be prepared to share it with those who do not have it.

 Friday in the Second Week of Advent, December 10, 2021

Matthew 11:16-19

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”

“To what shall I compare this generation?”  Although the Lord does particularly mean this for the Jews to whom he preached, he also means it for all the people who have lived since the time of his coming upon the earth.  He has been and will continue to be very censorious of “this generation”, as when he characterizes it as “an evil and adulterous generation [that] seeks for a sign” (Matthew 16, 4).  He speaks this way not to raise himself above the crowd but to induce introspection and repentance.

“Jesus said to the crowds: “It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another.”  The Lord talks to the people in simple terms using everyday examples.  He is not like the Pharisees who prefer to answer questions with obscure quotations from the Scriptures or with twisted reasoning.  “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.”  St. Matthew preserves the words of this ancient children’s game by quoting the Lord, who uses them for his purpose.  The gist of his meaning is that the people have expectations for him that are contrary to his true mission and so they are annoyed with him.    He reminds them that the Messiah will take orders from no human.  In fact, so repugnant to him were the common beliefs about the Messiah that he did not identify himself in this way except once: to the high priest on the night before his Death.  “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ ”  Although many people followed John and a certain number of them had thought that he was the Messiah, we see here that he was not universally respected.  His austere lifestyle was also seen as evidence of demonic possession.  “The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ ”  The crowd does not know what it wants, and so he aptly compares them to children.  “But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”. That is, Wisdom is justified by her works.  One of his meanings is that in order to perform his miracles and in order to convert sinners, he must enter fully into the lives of the people.  He eats with sinners in order to draw them back to God.  He goes into homes in order to raise people from their sickbeds. But he also means that the Son of God enters fully into human life in order to die for the sins of the world.  He must become one of us and so he joins us in every part of our lives, from his Birth, his growing up, and his enduring rejection as well as achieving success.  He makes friends and experiences betrayal.  Finally, he enters our death.  

As the Lord and John the Baptist were criticized, so is every saint who has walked the earth, and many have been killed.  Let us not fear criticism for our belief in the Lord Jesus but humbly carry out his holy will in our lives.

Thursday in the Second Week of Advent, December 9, 2021

Matthew 11:11-15

Jesus said to the crowds: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

St. John the Baptist’s ministry lasted only a few years and he spent his time only along the Jordan River, yet he left a legacy that stretched into the years after the Resurrection of the Lord.  The Evangelists felt it necessary to write about him in order to explain to their readers who he was, to emphasize that he did not claim to be the Messiah, and to clarify the relationship between him and Jesus.  What they tell us shows that they held him in great esteem, and that the Lord praised him.  Indeed, the Gospel reading for today’s Mass begins with the Lord’s lauding of John: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.”  The Lord makes quite a statement here.  Quite apart from the great non-Jews who had created empires, written epics, made discoveries, he ranks John above Abraham, Moses, and David.  The crowd must have wondered what they were hearing.  And then the Lord adds, “Yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”  The Greek word translated as “least” can mean “little” in terms of size, age, importance, quantity, or number.  We might think of the Lord speaking of someone who lived the least significant or noticeable life on earth, but who lived faithfully and so entered the Kingdom.  To be least in heaven, then, is far better than to be recognized as great on earth.  It would seem from the context of the Lord’s words that John the Baptist is still alive at this time.

The Lord Jesus then elaborates on John as a sort of milestone: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence.”  This seems a very strange saying.  How can the Kingdom of heaven suffer violence?  The key here is that Jesus says “from the days of John the Baptist”.  John ushered in a time of preparation that required people to do penance for their sins.  Those who heeded him did violence to themselves in this way — fasting and giving alms.  Jesus also preached penance, and further demanded that people “hate their own lives” (Luke 12, 46) in order to follow him.  These are the “violent” who are taking the Kingdom “by force”.  

“All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.”  The prophets and the law began to be fulfilled in the days of John.  Before him was the time of signs; with him comes the time of the fulfillment of the signs that were the law and the prophets.  In this way too, Jesus praises John and marks his importance.  “And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”. The words “if you are reading to accept it” is an idiom with which the Lord urges people to take seriously what he is saying, as is the phrase “whoever has ears ought to hear”.  The notion of Elijah returning to earth to act as the herald of the Messiah comes from Malachi 4, 5: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”  The renowned Prophet Elijah had preached repentance in the days of the kings and had spent much time in the wilderness before he was caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot.  He “returns” in John the Baptist in terms of John “completing” his mission in preparing the people for their Redeemer.

The Kingdom of heaven is not reserved for great figures like Elijah and John the Baptist but is open to all of us, even the “least” among the faithful.

 The Solemnity of The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

December 8, 2021

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.

On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX wrote the apostolic constitution entitled Ineffabilis Deus, in which he stated: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”  The Father granted her this Immaculate Conception for the sake of her Son, that his pure Son might be born of a pure Mother.

The key to understanding how this doctrine is found in the Scriptures is in examining the Gospel reading for this Feast, particularly the Angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary.  In the English of the reading, it is translated: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”  These words are familiar to us, and yet they only barely convey the full meaning of the Greek.  Now, the typical Hebrew form of greeting in Biblical times combined the wish for peace with the words, “The Lord be with you” (cf. Ruth 2, 4).  With a formal greeting, the person’s name or title would be used: “O King, may you live forever!” (Daniel 8, 6).  Gabriel’s first word of greeting is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew shalom, chairē, literally meaning, “rejoice”.  But instead of a name following the greeting, the Angel addresses Mary as the kekaritoméneh, a word which means something like, “having been filled with grace”.  It is not the adjective “full”, but a verb.  Mary does not receive grace at the time of the Angel’s visitation, but has already been filled with it.  That the Virgin Mary was filled with grace by God at the instant of the beginning of her life is the Immaculate Conception.  Prepared by this unprecedented gift of God, she is capable of being the Mother of his Son.

The old Breviary puts the following words from Sirach 24, 24–31 on the lips of the Blessed Virgin: “I am the Mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations. They that eat me, shall yet hunger for more: and they that drink me, shall thirst for more. He that hearkens to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.”  This is the traditional translation is from the Vulgate.  Reflecting on these verses helps us to understand better what it means that she is “full of grace”.  

“I am the Mother of fair love.”  She is the Mother of Love incarnate, for God is love.  She who is free of sin and from our fallen human nature has an ability to love that goes far beyond what we little ones are capable of imagining.  This is the love owed to the Son of God who took his Flesh from her so that this Flesh could be nailed to the Cross for our salvation.  “And of fear.”  Not servile fear, for love drives out this kind of fear (1 John 4, 18), but of that awe which comes from gazing upon the newly born Son of God in her arms, and even nursing him.  “And of knowledge.”  That is, knowledge that God has entered his creation and takes our sins upon himself.  “And of holy hope.”  Hope is holy when it is in the salvation offered by God to us if we abide in his love and rely on the motherly intercession of the Blessed Virgin.

“In me is all grace of the way and of the truth.”  In the Blessed Virgin is “all grace” since her Son is the Author of all grace.  Even in her holy womb, the Savior’s grace could be felt, as St. Elizabeth felt it and also the son she carried in her own womb.  And “all grace” is in her beginnings, in the moment of her conception.  It is called “all grace of the way”, that is, the way of Christ, and of the truth, for he himself is the Truth.  “In me is all hope of life and of virtue.”  Jesus, whom Mary carried, is our sure and certain hope of life and of virtue.  She intercedes for us to have this, and gives us her example.

“Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits.”  As the Magi found, the way to Jesus is through Mary his Mother.  She does not wait for us to find her but calls us to her so that we may approach her Son, the Fruit of her womb.  And she wishes us to be filled with this Fruit so that we may love him with great tenderness.  “For my spirit is sweet above honey.”  The graces in her soul make it so beautiful  that it can be described in terms of the other senses as well.  Nothing surpassed honey for sweetness in the ancient world, and no beauty but that of God surpasses hers.  “And my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb.”  We long for heaven, the inheritance the Lord promises to his elect, and its prize jewel is the Virgin Mary, increasing our longing for it.  “My memory is unto everlasting generations.”  The holy Virgin herself says, “All generations shall call me blessed.”  And this because of all that God has done for her.  His grace enabled her to conform herself perfectly to his will, and in honor of her accomplishing this, we cry out, “You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you are the honor of our people” (Judith 15, 10).

“They that eat me, shall hunger for more: and they that drink me, shall thirst for more.”  As glorious as the Blessed Virgin is, she leads us to God himself who feeds us Bread and gives us Wine to drink which alone can fill us.  She gives us great joy; he gives us perfect happiness.  “He that hearkens to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.”  Those who have recourse to her throughout the day will enjoy the result of their labors and can look forward to the eternal reward God will bestow on them for laboring well in his service.  Those who stay close to the Virgin, meditating on her mysteries and calling upon her in time of need will defeat temptation, or, she will defeat it through them.

The traditional prayer for this feast:

“O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, prepared a worthy dwelling for Your Son, and who, by your Son’s death, foreseen by you, preserved her from all taint, grant, we beseech you, through her intercession, that we too may come to you unstained by sin.

Through Christ our Lord.”