Full of Grace - Perfect in Love

Homily for the Annunciation, on the third anniversary of my priestly ordination, preached in the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury de Urbe - the Venerable English College, Rome.

Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary - Blessed 'Fra Angelico'

In the sacristy yesterday evening, I had an argument with one of the seminarians it was a good natured disagreement, so I won’t name and shame him, but the substance of our argument was this: is the Annunciation a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary or not? It was that special and enjoyable kind of argument, where neither of you is really wrong: I said yes, this is a feast of the BVM, he said no it is a Solemnity of the Lord – the feast of the incarnation. At various times this feast has been called the Annunciation to the BVM, or the Annunciation of the Lord.

When Pope Benedict XVI preached on the Annunciation (at the 2006 Consistory) he drew out this double nature of today’s feast, he said

‘It is [Christ] that we are constantly celebrating: Emmanuel, God-with-us, through whom the saving will of God the Father has been accomplished. And yet - today of all days we contemplate this aspect of the Mystery - the divine wellspring flows through a privileged channel:  the Virgin Mary.’[1]

When we think of the incarnation, we might perhaps call to mind that famous dictum of Saint Athanasius ‘God became man so that man might become God’ and in St Luke’s account of the Annunciation we begin to understand what it means to become like God.

    Listen again how the Archangel greets the Blessed Virgin:

Hail, full of Grace, the Lord is with you.

There are still some of us lurking about the building, who took our first Greek classes up at the North American College, with the late Fr Randy Soto. And those of us who took that class, if we remember nothing else, will remember how every class began – Fr Randy hammering home again and again the uniqueness of that Angelic Greeting in Greek:

Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ

First, we note that the Blessed Virgin is not greeted by her earthly name. Unlike us, when we pray the Rosary, the Angel does not say ‘Hail, Mary’ (χαῖρε Μαρία) but by a heavenly name, the name by which She is known by God and his angels – he says Hail, full of grace Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη. This word, κεχαριτωμένη, is important for three reasons.

First, it is unique: nobody else in the whole of scripture is addressed with this word, only the Blessed Virgin Mary. Second, because it is a past-perfect passive participle - describing one who is already and continuously filled with the grace of God - you who are already full of grace. Third, because there is a word within the word – until now we have translated it as full of Grace because saint Jerome translated κεχαριτωμένη as ‘Gratia plena’ – but when you look at the word within the word you’ll find, χαριτω, Charity – love - Mary is filled, perfectly, continuously, and already with Charity – she is filled with the inexhaustible, perfect, and perfecting love of God. We could just as easily translate κεχαριτωμένη as perfected in love as we do full of grace.

What does it mean, to say that the Blessed Virgin is full of grace or perfect in love? This fullness means a fully changed and transformed way of being human – of living so completely in the love of God such that even the possibility of sin was excluded. And we see, in this short passage on the Annunciation the greatest effect of that change.

Mary is given a radical kind of freedom – to see what God is asking of her, to know that it is good, and to choose it without hesitation even though it might put her in personal danger – we see later on in the Gospel what happens to women caught in adultery, and there was a real risk that her husband would publicly divorce her, or could even have had her stoned to death. And yet she responds ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me.’

This response, the Blessed Virgin’s answer to the Archangel, repeated in the letter to the Hebrews, and the response to the psalm: behold, Lord I am come to do your will, is the response of every Christian soul inflamed by grace: to draw close to the Lord, to seek to know what he is asking of us, to desire it, and to do it without fear or hesitation. The Annunciation of the Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a call to imitate her, to put ourselves and our lives at the Lord’s disposal and to do what He asks of us, so that we too might be perfected in love.

This is a feast, then, of a double joy: we rejoice in the feast of the incarnation, and we rejoice with the blessed Virgin on this day, because we see in her the prefiguration of the great work that the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ will work in each one of us: that we are given the possibility of being filled with Grace, and perfected in love.  

If I might be permitted to say something directly to the Seminarians and Priests now, because today (as well as being a great feast for the whole Church) is also a deeply personal feast for me – because on this day three years ago I was ordained as a priest. If I might skip ahead one verse on today’s Gospel, and look ahead to what Mary does, immediately after surrendering herself to the will of God – she immediately goes out to Elizabeth, her cousin, to stay with her through her pregnancy.

Perfection in divine love brings us close to God, and God in turn pushes us out and commands us to bring His love to others. This is true of every Christian, but especially true of us priests. St Jean Vianney famously said the priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus. Our closeness to God, which comes from prayer and study, has to be the motor that drives each one of us out to share that perfect and perfecting love with others. We do this by witness, and by works of charity, but most of all by doing the things which have been especially entrusted to us as priests, and not to anyone else:

The special love of Jesus that empowers us to preach in His name and make His Words known, and the perfecting love of Jesus, by which He allows us to stand in His place – to purify His beloved children in Confession and the Anointing of the Sick, and to sanctify them by offering the Divine Sacrifice of the Mass for them and for their needs. Just as today Mary is given the awesome dignity of carrying Christ into the world, we who are priests are given an awesome responsibility, in our own particular way, to bear Him out to those given to our care.

The day after my ordination, I celebrated my first Mass in my home Parish. In the order of service I included a prayer of Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. I want to leave you with this prayer, to make it your own on this feast of the Annunciation, to pray for the increase of grace, that each of us might better imitate the blessed mother, perfected in love and bearing Christ out to the world.

Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve you as you deserve;

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not to heed the wounds,

to toil and not to seek for rest,

to labour and not to ask for reward,

save that of knowing that I do your will.

Amen.

^[1] Benedict XVI, Homily for the Ordinary Public Consistory for the Creation of New Cardinals, Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord (Rome, 25 March 2006)