Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B. preaching on the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin and Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Assumption/Dormition) for the Parish of Tazewell County.
“Most highly favored, Lady,” is how we shared in the praise of Mary at the beginning of Mass. We did so, in the words of the hymn, as "Christian folk through the world will ever say." These words refer to the angelic greeting of the archangel Gabriel to Mary, “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” Biblical experts have struggled for centuries as to how to properly translate the original Greek of the angelic greeting in a way that captures the its fullness and nuance. And so perhaps it is necessary to underscore this point: this greeting is far more than a “hey, how’s your golf game, Mary?” or “Mary, wonderful quiche last week!” These are words from God delivered by an angel, because that is what angels are: messengers of the heavenly word of Our Lord. And because it is in this moment of the Annunciation that we first encounter Mary, how she is described at the first is how to properly understand the entirely of her place in the economy of grace, her place in God’s plan of salvation.
The word for “Hail” in Greek is “chaire.” This word directly means “rejoice,” and as biblical scholars point out, it is a gesture of greeting that would have been highly unbecoming within Jewish rabbical culture addressed to anordinarwoman. It is a very reverent and courteous greeting as a queen would receive, and in custom it corresponds as well to the Hebrew greeting of shalom, which means peace. A fuller sense of “Hail” would be something like, “Be at peace my queen!”
Andthis is fitting because there is no one else in the Bible who is addressed in the same way as Mary is addressed: never a man, and never a woman save one: Mary. This in itself confers a theological dignity upon Mary, and by extension all women, simply as human persons, independent of the roles of wife or mother. It is also worth noting that the word “chaire” is the root of the English words chair and throne, and cathedral, itself based on the word “cathedra” which means throne upon which the bishop sits. Already we have a sense of the high honor and dignity of the angelic greeting, and a sense of who Mary is: someone the highest angels deeply respect.
After this, Gabriel addresses Mary as “kecharitomene,” or “full of grace.” I say addresses because biblical scholars point out that the way Gabriel speaks is as one would say a person’s name. In other words, it is not a quality of Mary that Gabriel utters—a quality or attribute such as beautiful, friendly, or intelligent. The Church has certainly seen Mary in all those ways, but Gabriel does something different in his greeting: he names her. Mary is “she who is the fullness of grace.” Mary is “she who is completely, perfectly, enduringly and has always been endowed with grace.” The word is a past perfect participle, which indicates that Mary has not been transformed by the angelic greeting and presence from lesser grace to full grace. Rather, it indicates Mary has always been the fullness of grace, and was created in that way by God. Completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace is Mary’s identity, and she has never been less than that, even in her mother’s womb, even her conception.
I want to stress this is simply the meaning of the biblical words “chaire kecharitomene,”—“Hail, full of grace,” or in the longer, clumsier rendering, “Be at peace, my queen, you who are completely, perfectly, and enduringly endowed with grace.” It is clumsier, but richer and accurate, and therefore necessary to understand Mary in the biblical sense.
Almost. There remains one word in the English translation to unpack, and that is the word, “grace” which in Greek is charis, and within both “kecharitomene” in the angelic greeting, as well as the word “eucharist.” The beginning of the definition of “grace” is that it is God’s favor towards us, and that is part of the reason our hymn addresses Mary as “most highly favored lady.”
But “God’s favor” is only the beginning. To fill it out we recognize that God’s favor is always His gift. And so Mary is the fullness of God’s favor, the fullness of God’s gift. And yet we know that God’s gift is Himself offered on the Cross and that His gift of Himself on the Cross passes into the Sacred Humanity of the sacramental life which we receive through the Seven Sacraments. And we also know that God’s gift of Himself is love, for His nature is love; and His gift is true peace, the heavenly peace which passes all understanding made aware to the apostles in the Upper Room on the first Easter Sunday evening and through them to us. Ultimately, grace is the source of Christian life and is participation in the divine life. Grace is the heavenly reality, and Mary is full of grace, so she is full of the heavenly reality, and has been from her conception: the heavenly reality of grace, of peace, of love, of eucharist.
This is why Christians can praise Mary without reservation—because of her name as seen in the biblical account by Saint Luke. Anglicans traditionally and rightly have placed a high value on tracing all doctrines of the Faith to the Bible. Yet we can rest assured that not only a mere devotion to Mary, but in fact a high devotion to her, is biblically based, even from the first words spoken to her we know of: the fullness of heavenly reality of grace, of peace, of love, of eucharist is who she is, entirely by the initiative of God, who made this wonderful creature gloriously, mysteriously, and joyfully. Her whole life was lived to be an example to others of how to love God, how to love her Son, Jesus and follow He Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—that her way of being would be able to be imitated by others through humility, through obedience which is listening with an open heart, and after understanding arises, to say Yes to God. Because when we say Yes to God, we proclaim with Mary the greatness of the Lord.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us.
Icon of the hand of Monica Thornton
"On the Meaning of Hail, Full of Grace"