The Immaculate Conception I

To look at the Immaculate Conception, we must begin with an examination of language.

We start with Luke 1:28.

From the Douhy-Reims Bible: “And the angel come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

From the Latin: “et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit: have gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus.”

And from the original Greek: No, I’m not going to do that to you. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with the Greek either. But the original story of the Annunciation was written in Greek, not Latin, and it is to the Greek that we must look for our initial answers.

The Latin “gratia plena” is the part that’s translated as “full of grace” in English. The problem here isn’t with the Latin to English translation. The problem is between the Greek and the Latin. The thing is, the Greek for “gratia plena” would be “pleres charitos”. Pleres charitos is used in other places in the Bible (for example, John 1:14 and Acts 6:8) and is there translated into Latin as gratia plena. However, in the Greek version of the Annunciation, the word kecharitomene is used. Kecharitomene doesn’t translate into either Latin or English very well.

The Greek kecharitomene indicates a transformative grace, a grace-runneth-over situation, a “permanent and singular kind of grace” (Karl Keating’s phrase). Kecharitomene is a perfection of grace that is permanent. In the footnoot in Keating, he says “At least the New Jerusalem Bible, in its footnote to Luke 1:28, says that ‘you who enjoy God’s favor’ means ‘you who have been and remain filled with the divine favor.’” [My emphasis. It should be pointed out that this is not a Catholic edition Bible.]

The logic would go something like this. When we are born, our souls are without Sanctifying Grace. As our lives progress, we work to gain this grace through faith, repentance of sin and the sacraments, and works done for the love of God. As we gain grace in our souls, our ability, willingness and desire to sin decreases (but we mere mortals can’t be rid of the desire and willingness entirely). As our souls grow in grace, we may well achieve a point of being pleres charitos. Now, if a soul could be utterly filled with grace, it would have no room for sin. It would, in this case, be beyond pleres charitos. The only mortal soul ever called Kecharitomene in the bible is…you guessed it…Mary. She is Kecharitomene, and she is the only one. She is beyond pleres charitos. She is beyond sin.

The use of Kecharitomene is understood to mean that Mary was in a state of sanctifying grace from the moment of her conception, and that she enjoyed this favor of God for her entire life. Sanctifying grace, remember, is what saves us. Mary was thus saved from sin from the moment of her conception. This is exactly what the Catechism says (CCC 419): “Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, ‘full of grace’ through God, was redeemed from the moment of conception.” And from Lumen Gentium (LG 53, 56), Mary had the “splendor of an entirely unique holiness.” The doctrine itself says that Mary, “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, savior of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception acknowledges that Mary was indeed saved and was in need of a savior, as she herself says in the Bible. From Ephesians 4:7 – “But to every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the giving of Christ.” The Catholic interpretation is that Christ gave the utmost measure of grace to his mother.

The fathers of the Church also say that Mary was “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.”

I know this post isn't as fulfilling as many would want, but hopefully we'll be able to flesh it out some in the not too distant future.

And, just for grins, we’ll add the Greek:

Now, that part at least, is all Greek to me…