“Full of grace” is the new name that God gave Mary

Today let us contemplate the beauty of Mary Immaculate. The Gospel, which recounts the episode of the Annunciation, helps us to understand what we are celebrating, above all through the Angel’s greeting. He addresses Mary with a word that is not easy to translate, which means “filled with grace,” “created by grace,” “full of grace” (Lk 1:28). Before calling her ‘Mary,’ he calls her “full of grace,” and thus reveals the new name that God has given her and which is more becoming to her than the name given to her by her parents. We too call her in this way, with each Hail Mary.

What does “full of grace” mean? That Mary is filled with the presence of God. And if she is entirely inhabited by God, there is no room within her for sin. It is an extraordinary thing, because everything in the world, regrettably, is contaminated by evil. Each of us, looking within ourselves, sees some dark sides. Even the greatest saints were sinners and everything in reality, even the most beautiful things, are corroded by evil—everything, except Mary. She is the one “evergreen oasis” of humanity, the only one that is uncontaminated, created immaculate so as to fully welcome, with her ‘yes,’ God who came into the world and thus to begin a new history.

Each time we acknowledge her as “full of grace,” we give her the greatest compliment, the same one God has given her. A beautiful compliment to give to a woman and to tell her, politely, that she looks youthful. When we say “full of grace” to Mary, in a certain sense we are telling her this too, at the highest level. In fact we recognize her as forever youthful, because she never aged through sin. There is only one thing that makes us age, grow old interiorly—not age—but sin. Sin ages, because it hardens the heart. It closes it, renders it inert and withers it. But she, “full of grace,” is without sin. So she is always youthful; she is “younger than sin” and is “the youngest of humankind” (Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest).

Excerpt from Pope Francis’ Angelus, December 8, 2017

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