“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”
The angel addresses Mary, not by her name, but as full of grace, as though this is the title that most perfectly identifies her.
"The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning “to fill or endow with grace.” Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present."
(see Catholic.com on the Immaculate Conception).
Mary was in fact already blessed in Christ "with every spiritual blessing in the heavens". She was chosen in him "before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him." And in her we too were chosen. It wasn't about what Mary had done, as if she somehow deserved to be given the grace of being the mother of God. That the grace was given at her conception was proof of just how entirely it was a gift. It was God's unmerited favor for which he saw no better outlet through which to pour it forth through her to all mankind.
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”
In order to be able to be free to give that unconditional yes to the Lord, Mary needed the grace given in advance by God, given indeed at her very conception. Sin had so infected and paralyzed the will that humans under its sway were not free to give themselves in unconditional freedom. They now needed to be concerned with self-protection, ever afraid of exploitation by others.
I was afraid, because I was naked
Sinners are in some sense always naked and trying to cover themselves. This new defensiveness that arose in our first parents quickly led to blame.
The woman whom you put here with me--
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.
And blame in turn led within a generation to murder. It was readily evident how tainted our will had become, how limited was now our ability to act in freedom. But already God had a plan for the restoration of all things. He understood the consequences of sin. But he had a plan to intervene directly by a woman and her seed who would finally crush the head of the serpent.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers
In Mary God gave man the privilege of freely saying yes were Eve had freely said no.
“the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by the obedience of Mary; what the virgin Eve bound by her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith”
(Saint Irenaeus - Adversus Haereses, III, 22, 4).
And it was a gift in the truest sense. Mary's yes was was possible only because she was conceived immaculately, and this was possible only because God allowed her to receive the merits of her son's death and resurrection in advance.
grant, we pray, that, as you preserved herfrom every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son,which you foresaw, so, through her intercession,we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence.
Only God in the person of Jesus Christ could finally and fully reshape the human will and make it able to obey God in the freedom of the Spirit. But he chose not to merely inflict this upon his creations without their consent. Instead he made special use of it in the case of Mary, keeping her free from the power of sin so that the yes that she offered for us all could be free.
Grace is never given for oneself alone, and the grace given to Mary was given for us as well. Her yes spoken in freedom paves the way from our own grudgingly given yes to one which can be spoken in true freedom of spirit.
Jesus gave Mary to be the mother of us all. When we accept this grace her yes begins to transform us, helping us to welcome Jesus entirely and unreservedly, just as she did.
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