All nations will call me blessed

A challenge

Early Church writings, especially certain passages of St. Irenæus, helped relax a heart previously conditioned to believe that all doctrine of the saints, including and especially that of Mary, was due to medieval corruption. Nevertheless, the only Marian devotion that has clicked with me as solidly as the Liturgy of the Hours has been Our Lady of Lourdes, which not only helped orient my search towards the Catholic faith but has, along with the Hours, formed much of my understanding of it.

The main guide, though not the only one, has been the Canticle of Mary, which appears in Luke’s first chapter. This canticle is so profoundly enmeshed in early Christian spirituality, it puzzles me how I blissfully ignorant I was of it, and of its implications, until several years of praying it finally began to illuminate me. I’ll make an attempt to explain that here, though after several drafts at this, I’m afraid this is the best I can do.

Divine favor

We might as well start with the first chapter of Luke, where the angel greets Mary with, χαιρε κεχαριτωμενη. I have read that this is difficult to translate properly, but Bibles typically render it as,

1. Hail, full of grace!
2. Greetings, favored one!

According to one concordance, the Greek adjective κεχαριτωμενη appears only once in the Bible, and that in reference to Mary. The The Perseus Project also implies it is very rare (though I may misread it its paucity of entries), and cites its only other occurrence as Sirach 18⋅17, which the linked translation renders as “gracious” and this translation renders as “kind”: (Interestingly, the sentence in Sirach could be read as a foreshadowing of the incarnation: the Word, which is not merely a good gift but the best gift, is Mary’s gracious gift to us, while a word of assent is her gracious gift to God. Of course, IANASS: I Am Not A Scripture Scholar^TM, and I’ve never read it elsewhere, so don’t quote me as an authority.)

The concordance also lists a similar word, ἐχαρίτωσεν, which also appears only once, and that in reference to salvation: Here Paul is speaking of the spiritual graces that follow from Christ’s redemptive work, making it sound as if the angelic annunciation echoes as if God’s grace has already saved Mary, well before the angel approaches her. The evangelist indicates that Mary is taken aback, but the angel doubles down: ευρες γαρ χαριν παρα τω θεω, “you have found favor (χαριν) with God.” (Perhaps it’s worth reminding the reader that Luke accompanied Paul, and I would thus expect the former to use the latter’s terminology and connotation.)

Extraordinary favor

We come now to the Canticle of Mary. I highlight the beginning (Luke 1⋅46-49): Our Lady makes some extraordinary claims here:

1. All generations will call me blessed. I would never have thought to address Mary as “Blessed” before entering the Catholic faith, where she is called the Blessed Mother or the Blessed Virgin. To this day, I haven’t observed anyone outside the ancient churches refer to her as such, whereas everyone inside the ancient churches so refers to her, and regularly. Yet this doesn’t detract from the intimate language we use to refer to God and to Christ; rather, it feeds into it. Look at how God honors one of us! I will return to this idea below.

2. The Lord has done great things for me. What does this mean? It’s plural — great things, not a great thing — so it can’t refer to one thing alone; namely, the honor of being the mother of the Word made flesh. It has to refer to more, and in this context it sounds as if it refers to divine favors already bestowed, has done, something that sets her apart.
   Nor can one help but see a parallel in how “great things” echoes ”greatness” in verse 46, not merely in the English, for the Greek has μεγαλυνει and μεγαλεια.

Divinization

I’ll try to bring this to a close with two passages from the later epistles: This promise is for all Christians: all of us are to become like God, to share in His very nature. Indeed, our life on earth ought to reflect that, and Christ Himself, by His life and teaching, points the way to that life.

Apply this to those who have gone before us, who did live that life and have received God’s grace more and more fully: what does that mean for them?

In particular, what would it mean for Mary, who appears with Jesus at the most crucial moments of His life — birth, death, resurrection — and is present with His apostles at Pentecost, the birth of His mystical body the Church? What would it mean for her, whom the angel addressed as if she were already filled with God’s grace?

Reflection leads to devotion

Reflection on these passages over the years, especially with the drip-drip-drip of the Liturgy of the Hours, has done more to deepen my love for Our Lady than pretty much every homily or devotional text I’ve read.

The thoughts I have aren’t concrete enough, examined enough, or (to me) certain enough to write here. The point is that I had no such thoughts before entering the Catholic faith, because, if anything, I was directed away from such thoughts, away even from such passages that might inspire such thoughts. If anything, the attitude towards holiness was wholly negative, and in the same way, I encountered attitudes toward Mary that ranged from indifference to contempt. Either way, these attitudes are far from how Luke and Irenæus depict her: filled with an extraordinary divine favor that is rightly summarized as “the new Eve”.

And yet…

This doesn’t mean I have reconciled myself to certain extreme elements of Marian devotion. I don’t wish to dwell on that here, however. Instead, I’ll conclude with the opening sentences of Chapter 1 of St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary: