Full of Grace
 | The Immaculate Conception, |
| Readings Genesis 3:9-15, 20 Psalm 98:1-4 Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 Luke 1:26-38 " Good morning ! You're beautiful with God's beauty, Beautiful inside and out ! God be with you." Luke 1:28 ..... The Message Bible " And he came to her and said, ' Hail, O favored one ( endued with grace ) ! The Lord is with you ! Blessed ( favored of God ) are you before all other women ! " Luke 1:28 ......... The Amplified Version Bible ) |
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| In today’s Gospel, the angel Gabriel greets Mary in an unusual way: “Hail, favored one” (see Luke 1:28). Kecharitomene, the Greek word translated as “favored one,” is very rare, used in only one other place in the New Testament—in the text selected for today’s Epistle. The word comes from charis, the Greek word for “grace” and basically means “made full of grace” or “transformed by grace.” This is how the word is used in today’s Epistle, where Paul describes how God “granted” or bestowed His grace to all of us in Jesus (see Ephesians 1:6-7). In this instance, Paul uses the word to describe how God’s grace causes a transformation in us—forgiving our sins, making us His adopted sons and daughters. Paul’s words were originally addressed to every believer in Christ. Read in the Liturgy, they apply first and foremost to Mary—who is to be the forerunner of every Christian. “Before the foundation of the world,” she was chosen “to be holy and without blemish” by the “grace that God granted” her in the Beloved, Jesus. The grace given to Mary in her mother’s womb, is to be the destiny of all who believe in her Son and are baptized. This sheds light on what the angel means—Mary has been “transformed by God’s grace.” Mary has been favored by the bestowal of God’s grace. Notice that the angel doesn’t mention Mary’s name. That’s odd, too. There’s no other angelic greeting like this in Scripture. It’s as if Mary’s name is “favored one” or “made full of grace.” In Scripture, when God gives a person a new name, it reveals the person’s role in His saving plan. Think of Abraham—the father of all nations (see Genesis 17:5), or Peter, the Church’s “rock” (see Matthew 16:18). Mary is God’s favored one, transformed by God’s grace to be the sinless mother of His only-begotten Son. That’s why the angel’s greeting is one of the biblical foundations for Mary’s Immaculate Conception. The dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception states that Jesus’ mother, alone among the billions born since the beginning of the world, was conceived without inheriting the curse of Adam and Eve’s original sin. In God’s plan, and by His grace, she was kept free from sin in order to become the all-holy Mother of God, as she was declared by the Council of Ephesus in 431. In the dogma of the Immaculate Conception we see the Church peering deeper into the mystery of God’s plan. In today’s First Reading we hear what the Church’s Tradition calls the proto-evangelium (“first gospel”)—an inaugural announcement of the salvation that would come from a “woman” and her “offspring.” In this first gospel, God himself promised that there would be perpetual enmity between this woman and the serpent, and this enmity would culminate in the crushing of the serpent’s head by the woman’s “offspring” (seeGenesis 3:15). The scene in Genesis depicts punishment for “original sin.” That sin was caused by the temptation of the serpent, who is revealed elsewhere in Scripture to be the devil (see Revelation 12:2,9). This sin is inherited by every human being as Eve became “the mother of all the living” (see Genesis 3:20). And as a result of this sin, humans are under the power of death (see Wisdom 2:24; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22). This is one of the reasons that Jesus said of the Devil, “He was a murderer from the beginning” (see John 8:44; Hebrews 2:14). In punishment, God promised there would be “enmity” between the “woman” and the serpent, and between their offspring. ”Enmity” means mutual hatred. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word translated “enmity” implies a mortal rivalry, a hatred which causes each party to desire the death of the other (see Numbers 35:21; Ezekiel 25:15; 35:5). The word is used only to describe rivalries between persons or nations. It isn’t ever used to describe a hatred between a person and an animal. This suggests that this passage of Genesis is meant to be read symbolically. In other words: although the text depicts God literally promising to put enmity between a snake and a woman, symbolically the text speaks of enmity between whom or what the snake “stands for” and whom or what the woman “stands for.” Indeed, this is how the Church’s earliest saints and theologians interpreted the passage, beginning in the pages of the New Testament (see Romans 16:20; Revelation 12). Note that it is God who establishes the enmity (“I will put enmity”). This is no natural aversion. This is a divinely created opposition, one that God has established for all time. Note also that this enmity is “two-fold”—between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpent’s offspring and the offspring of the woman. The Hebrew word translated “offspring” is literally, “seed.” It refers to the seeds of plants (see Genesis 1:11; 12:29; Leviticus 26:16). It also refers to the children of individuals (see Genesis 4:25; 15:3; 2 Samuel 7:12) and to a person’s descendants or to the race of a people (see Genesis 12:7; 13:15; Isaiah 14:20; Finally, God promises that the woman’s seed will “strike” or crush the head of the serpent. To crush the head of a serpent is to kill it. So what we have here is the promise of the serpent’s death under the foot of the seed of a woman, that is under the foot of the woman’s child. From a close reading, we can see how the Church—beginning in the New Testament—has long seen this text as supporting a belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception. First, it forsees a new “woman,” a new Eve, and her “seed,” Jesus. This passage is the source of the description of Mary as “woman” in John’s Gospel (see John 2:4; 19:26). This woman and her child were the focus of Christian expectations for a messiah, as Paul says: “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman . . .” (see Galatians 4:4) Also, the dramatic conflict between “the woman” and the “serpent” in the Bible’s last book are heavily influenced by the proto-evangelium (Revelation 12).This, also where we get the interpretation of the serpent in Eden as Satan (see Revelation 12:9). In Revelation, we’re shown that the woman’s offspring is both Jesus (see Revelation 12:5) and “those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus” (see Revelation 12:17). Finally, the proto-evangelium envisions the defeat of Satan by the woman’s seed. Paul alludes to this when he writes: “the God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet” (see Romans 16:20). How does this interpretation foresee “the woman” (Mary) being born without original sin? It is true Scripture teaches that all men and women have been conceived “in sin” (see Psalm 51:7). Paul wrote that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve and, as a result, “all sinned” and “condemnation came upon all” (see Romans 5:12,18). But the proto-evangelium seems to envision at least two people—the woman and her offspring—who will not be conceived under the rule of the serpent and the consequences of the serpent’s deceit. Recall what the text says—the enmity is “put” by God, and that enmity is a mortal rivalry —an absolute hostility, a struggle to the death. If Mary was conceived with original sin, there couldn’t be the perpetual enmity promised by God himself between the woman and the serpent. To the contrary, if Mary was conceived with original sin, the serpent would be victorious, subjecting the woman to his power. If this were the case, God’s promise would prove to be untrue. God's promise in Genesis 3:15 is " I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your offspring and Her Offspring." Rather, it appears that Mary, the woman promised in the beginning, must be born outside of Satan’s power in order to fulfill God’s promise of absolute enmity. As Paul noted, for the sake of our salvation, God caused grace to overflow, and caused Jesus "who did not know sin" to reign over the power of sin and death (see Romans 5:20; 2 Cor 5:21). If the woman’s seed, Jesus, was not to know sin, how could His mother? Mother Mary was sinless at the time of her conception by the redemptive work of Christ and was preserved sinless throughout her life by the action of God's sanctifying grace. That is why we have so much devotion to her next only to God.This feast should not be confused with the sinless incarnation of Jesus through the Holy Spirit and that of His virginal birth celebrated on the 25th. March and 25th. December respectively and similarly feast of the Immaculate conception of Mary and her birth are celebrated on 8th. December and on 8th. September respectively. PS. It was not until 1854 that Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted between 1851–1853, promulgated the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus (Latin for "Ineffable God"), which defined ex cathedra the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:[27]
God Bless.(Some of the above portions have been adapted from 'DavidScottWritings.com' and from Wikipedia.) |
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