Day 4: Full of Grace

The fourth day of the Immaculate Conception Novena turns to the principal biblical text on which the dogma rests: the angel Gabriel's greeting to Mary at the Annunciation. The Greek phrase kecharitomene (translated as full of grace) has been read by the Catholic tradition since the patristic age as the biblical announcement of Mary's preservation from sin.

Today's invocation

O Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus and our Mother... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

The Gospel of Saint Luke records the Annunciation in chapter 1, verses 26 to 38. The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a virgin named Mary in the town of Nazareth, and he greeted her with the words: Chaire, kecharitomene, ho kyrios meta sou (in Greek), traditionally rendered in Latin as Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum and in English as Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

The Greek participle kecharitomene deserves close attention. It is a perfect passive participle of the verb charitoo (to grace, to bestow grace). The perfect tense in Greek indicates a completed action with continuing effects in the present: Mary is the one who has been graced in a way that continues. The kecharitomene is not a description of a quality Mary possesses (we might expect an adjective like charitōmene, gracious or graceful); it is a description of a state Mary is in, the result of a grace given to her completely and abidingly.

The Catholic Fathers and Doctors of the Church have read this verse, particularly in light of the dogmatic developments of the patristic and medieval centuries, as the biblical foundation of the Immaculate Conception. The grace by which Mary is full (the Latin Vulgate's gratia plena is a fair translation of the Greek perfect participle) is the singular grace that preserved her from original sin and that has continued to fill her soul throughout her life. The dogma of 1854 is the Catholic dogmatic articulation of what the angel announced at Nazareth.¹

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask the kecharitomene Mary to share with you a portion of the grace that fills her soul. Mother full of grace, in whom no sin has ever found a place, share with me the grace that the Lord gave to you. Let me, in my own small Catholic way, become more full of grace through your intercession.

A traditional Catholic devotional act, particularly suited to this day:

Pray the Hail Mary slowly, three times, with deliberate attention to the words full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Allow the words to descend from the lips to the heart. The simple act of praying the Hail Mary attentively over a Catholic lifetime is, by long tradition, the means by which the Catholic soul is gradually incorporated into Mary's fullness of grace.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the kecharitomene greeting names not a quality unique to Mary but a quality that the Lord intends for every soul. Saint Paul addresses the Christians of Ephesus as "the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus... whom he has graced [echaritōsen] in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:1, 1:6). The same root verb is used: every baptized Christian, by the gift of sanctifying grace, has been graced in Christ. Mary's kecharitomene is the perfect form of what every Catholic soul has begun to receive.

The Immaculate Conception is therefore not an exclusionary doctrine that places Mary at a distance from us; it is the eschatological doctrine that shows us what we ourselves are called to become. The fullness of grace that Mary received from the first instant of her conception is what the rest of us are receiving over the course of our lives, with the final fullness given in the Beatific Vision. Mary is the first of the redeemed not in the sense of being apart from us but in the sense of being ahead of us on the path we are walking.

Closing prayers

Pray three Hail Marys in honor of the Immaculate Conception.

O Mary, full of grace, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Footnotes

1. The exegetical and patristic tradition on kecharitomene is treated in Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary (2018), and in the standard Catholic Mariology manuals. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 490-493 (the Immaculate Conception). Available at vatican.va. ↩