“Hail Mary, full of grace” by Fr. Thomas for Texas Catholic.
St. Luke gives us the angel Gabriel’s annunciation greeting to Mary as “Chaire, kecharitōmenē” (Lk 1:28). There are thrilling grammatical and theological mysteries packed into these two Greek words.
Both have a connection to the root word for grace, “charis.” Both words are also impossible to translate adequately. “Chaire,” pronounced Kai-ray, is a normal greeting, and Gabriel’s intention could be simply to say “Hello” to Mary. But the word could also be a command: “Rejoice!” The latter seems more likely, given the momentous occasion. Angels appear frequently and abruptly in the Old Testament, and they are not bound by our conventions of polite conversation.
In the Hail Mary prayer, Mary’s name is added to this angelic greeting, but in Luke’s account of the Annunciation, Gabriel speaks her name only after his cryptic greeting frightens the poor girl: “Do not fear, Mary, for you have found grace [charis] with God” (Lk 1:30).
When Gabriel calls her “kecharitōmenē” (don’t worry about pronouncing it), he is indicating why he has been sent by God to this particular young woman. The word is a perfect passive participle which, literally, translates to “you who have been graced.” The perfect tense implies that she has already received a distinct favor from God. This grammatical point grounds the Church’s traditional teaching that Mary was both sinless and, in the language of the dogma, immaculately conceived. Gabriel thus informs Mary, and St. Luke informs us, that the Lord had prepared her for the most lofty vocation ever bestowed upon a human being: to be the spotless ark of the new covenant to house God in the flesh.
At stake in this encounter is nothing less than the salvation of the human race. St. Bernard of Clairvaux imagines all of creation eavesdropping on this dialogue between angel and girl, desperate to hear the “yes” that will set the Incarnation in motion: “Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, o loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it; David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed, salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race.”
The best St. Jerome could do with these two Greek words in his translation was “Ave, gratia plena:” “Hail, full of grace.” Another theological mystery revels itself in this translation, one made possible by a Latin wordplay. “Ave,” the greeting or salute, is the name of Eve, “Eva,” spelled backwards in Latin. What Gabriel announces to Mary, then, is her role in reversing the original sin: By her obedient “fiat” (“Let it be done unto me,” Lk 1:38), Mary will undo the knot of selfish disobedience that Eve had tied around the will of every human being. For this reason, St. Irenaeus, writing around the year 190-200 A.D., speaks of Mary as “the advocate of Eve,” since God orchestrates salvation to come from a woman who sets right what the first woman (together with Adam, it should be noted) got wrong.
This “Ave-Eva” wordplay is highlighted in a Gregorian chant sung in praise of Mary, the “star of the sea:”
“Sumens illud Ave / Gabrielis ore / Funda nos in pace / Mutans Evae nomen.”
“Taking that Ave / From the mouth of Gabriel, / Establish us in peace, / You who altered the name of Eve.”
That God should summon the virgin Mary to this maternal adventure for the sake of all humanity is marvelous enough. That we can admire and imitate Mary’s obedient fiat in our own way is cause for greater wonder still.