Let us Shout with Joy "Hail, full of Grace"


This is the month of May a month dedicated to Our Lady.   There is something I must unburden myself with, however, no matter how boring others may find it.  I do not believe that, let us say, 'modern scholars' are being truthful when treating Mary in the Gospel of Luke.   When it comes to scripture the Catholic teaching is that we do not rely on 'scripture' as the authority of who catholics believe and do not believe.  We are not a 'sola scriptura' Church, but if we were I would be even more outraged ,for the idea that you could in such a situation just change the words of the Gospel to help people understand better is an insult to our intelligence.   If you change the words you so easily  change the meaning, and that is before we boldly proclaim what the Holy Spirit has told us in our own interpretations. 

So let us return to Luke 1:28.   Did Luke write that the angel said  "Hail, full of grace....' or did he right "Hail highly favoured one... " or "Rejoice, hight favoured one...."    Does it matter?  Yes, it does for the whole theology of Mary as taught by the Church may depend on it.   Luke I know wrote Hail, full of grace....." because it is not just the Catholic Douai-Rheims version of the Bible, nor in the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, it is also in the Latin Vulgate of St Jerome presented at the Council of Carthage, AD 419.  Jerome wrote "Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum......"   So when the Bishops of the Catholic Church presented to the world the agreed books and letters as the Word of  God, they were also presenting the translation of St Jerome as the Word of God, the reference for all other translations.

But let us go back to St Luke.   The Catholic Church does not accept the Bible as the sole rule of Faith, try hard as some have over the past forty years to make it so.   The Catholic Church accepts the Bible as part of the Church tradition.   It cannot contradict the teaching of the Church passed down from age to age by a succession of bishops.  And this Apostolic tradition began from the time of Peter and the Apostles.  So by putting St Luke into the tradition of the time of the Apostles, when he wrote "Hail, full of grace......" was he misleading himself in believing that Mary was full of grace.   She had never been baptised, the one who was to bring grace into the world had not yet appeared when she herself was born, yet she was full of grace and fit for heaven, but even more, fit to be the Mother of God.     The Early Fathers described her as the New Eve, she who was born free from sin but unlike the first Eve she had remained faithful to God despite the enmity between her and the serpent and you can read more of this in Revelations 12.   So Christ was the New Adam, as St Paul teaches us, but Mary was the New Eve.   Christians who follow Christ have new parentage, see the last sentence in Revelations 12.

Perhaps however the real reason why St Luke was able to tell us what the Angel said is that he had talked to Mary, who was very much a part of the Early Church, and he in his Gospel is able to tell us the stories of Jesus as a baby and a boy, which no other evangelist repeated.    Thank you St Luke. 

Mary was "Full of Grace"   Let us express that clearly in the Gospel.  It was translated that way for coming up to 2,000 years.   What arrogance to change it.   














 

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