"Most favored" vs. "Full of grace"

[Lepanto]

Can anybody please give me the Catholic position on the Mary “Most favored” vs. “Full of grace” issue? I’m dialoging with someone who does not see the difference?

Any articles etc. would be great. My admitedly poor search skills have turned up nothing.

thanks!

 

[Rolltide]

Catholics support the rendering as “Full of grace”. The issue depends on how you render the Greek word Kecharitome (sp.). Here’s the basic issue. “Most favored”, while technically a correct translation, does not carry the complete meaning of the original Greek word. The Bible also uses another Greek word to render the term “most favored” or “highly favored”, but it is only this one time, with Mary, that Kecharitome is used. The subtle meaning of this word implies that this is a state that has always existed up to this point. So, in other words, if she is “Full of grace”, she is free from sin. In a nutshell, this rendering greatly helps support the Catholic notion of the Immaculate Conception Biblically.

 

[NotWorthy]

Catholics support the rendering as “Full of grace”. The issue depends on how you render the Greek word Kecharitome (sp.). Here’s the basic issue. “Most favored”, while technically a correct translation, does not carry the complete meaning of the original Greek word. The Bible also uses another Greek word to render the term “most favored” or “highly favored”, but it is only this one time, with Mary, that Kecharitome is used. The subtle meaning of this word implies that this is a state that has always existed up to this point. So, in other words, if she is “Full of grace”, she is free from sin. In a nutshell, this rendering greatly helps support the Catholic notion of the Immaculate Conception Biblically.

Let’s follow the “highly favored” track just for the sake of argument. Doesn’t the past perfect sense apply here, as well. Wouldn’t Mary have been favored since her birth?

Would one be favored by God while sinning?

On another note, finding favor with God put Mary in quite an All-Star cast, I would say. Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David all found favor with God and brought about new covenents between God and man.

Mary finds favor with God and brings a New Covenant to the world in the form of Jesus Christ.

 

[Eileen_T]

FULL OF GRACE

                       By Fr. William Most

To defend the translation Full of grace, we note that the Church
always uses that- but that goes back to the Vulgate of St.
Jerome. Can we defend that? Yes.

St. Luke wrote .

This is a perfect passsive participle, and as such, is very
strong. It is of the verb . The verbs in normally
mean to put a person or thing into the state indicated by the
root. That root here is , which means favor or grace.

But if we translate favor, we must keep firmly in mind that it does not mean God just sits there and smiles, giving nothing, so the person does something by his own power. That would be Pelagian. So it is best to use grace.

Very importantly, the word is used in place of a personal name.

That is comparable to our English pattern of saying e.g., he is
Mr. Tennis - meaning the ultimate in the category of tennis.

So she is Miss Grace - the ultimate in the category of grace.

 

[john_doran]

i posted this a while back on another thread:

the greek word used in the passage - is kecaritomene, or kecharitomene.

the root word is charitoo caritow], which means “to grace” (used in the NT only of the root noun charis, which means “grace”, and then only of divine charis).

the prefix ke ke] and the suffix mene mene] together make the word used by gabriel a perfect passive participle.

what ***that ***means is:

1. kecharitomene is used as a name, in the sense that using a common word as a name indicates superlative possession by the one so named of the property used as the name - like calling mary “miss grace” to indicate her special possession of grace in the way that we would call someone like wayne gretzky “mr. hockey”; and
2. it indicates an action that has been done to mary, and which has been completed or perfected with a permanent result.

it is a greek verb only found one other time in the new testament - at Ephesians 1:6, and there it uses a different stem and is in the aorist active indicative echaritosen], which denotes merely ***momentary ***action rather than enduring action.

here’s a couple of quotes for you :

“It is permissible, on Greek grammatical and linguistic grounds, to paraphrase kecharitomene as completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace.” (Blass and DeBrunner, Greek Grammar of the New Testament).

“Luke 1:28…kecharitomene is a quite rare Hellenistic verb (only found elsewhere in the NT at Eph. 1:6 in the active) Etymologically it should mean 'To be furnished with Grace” (Word Biblical Commentary, volume 35A, Pg 50, Nelson, 1989 ) - Protestant Greek scholar, John Nolland

 

[francisca]

One thing that we want to remember that the translation of “highly/most favored” and “full of grace” are of ENGLISH translation from a written greek script of a hebrew conversation.

To build an argument that “full of grace” is better than “highly favored” one is trapped in the scenario of “english translation of greek script”. One should remember that the angel spoke to mary not in greek. Kecharitomene was greek.

Now the question of what kecharitomene in the exact hebrew word is a long long way of studying both the OT and NT. There isn’t straight forward translation for that. Everytime our english bible wrote “grace” for the OT, we want to know what is this exact word of grace in hebrew. Actually straightforward “grace” is not many found in the old testament. But NT use many of this “grace” (english and greek has this straightforward word for “grace”). But
after you learn and think of all that, you will finally understand that to receive grace from God is to receive favor from Him, as explained in many stories in the OT. Thus, in the OT, the teaching of grace is more like a revelation than literal explanation/ translation.

 

[Eileen_T]

I would imagine Gabriel spoke to Mary in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Since there are still people using this language today (aren’t there?), could we get an answer to this from them?

I think it’s the Chaldean Christians who speak Aramaic.

 

[Nita]

I would imagine Gabriel spoke to Mary in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Since there are still people using this language today (aren’t there?), could we get an answer to this from them?

I think it’s the Chaldean Christians who speak Aramaic.

Only an English speaker responding here:
Regardless of what language the angel used, Luke is the one who recorded the event and of the four evangelists he’s the one that most likely to have written in Greek. Mary (or possibly Jesus, …) would have told him of the event, and he would have used the Greek words that best conveyed his understanding of what Mary told him.

Nita

 

[auhsoj88]

Can anybody please give me the Catholic position on the Mary “Most favored” vs. “Full of grace” issue? I’m dialoging with someone who does not see the difference?

Any articles etc. would be great. My admitedly poor search skills have turned up nothing.

thanks!

Can God highly favor someone without giving that person parrelel grace?? Is there such an example in scripture? Why would a high ranking Angel such as Gabriel exalt her by greeting her as “Hail Maryl”. A greeting usually giving to Kings an Queens or people of very high honor??

 

[porthos11]

Can God highly favor someone without giving that person parrelel grace?? Is there such an example in scripture? Why would a high ranking Angel such as Gabriel exalt her by greeting her as “Hail Maryl”. A greeting usually giving to Kings an Queens or people of very high honor??

Actually, the angel did not greet her “Hail, Mary.” She was greeted “Hail, kecharitomene!” In other words, the Greek word was used in place of her name (Greek substantive), givine her graced status even more force because it more powerfully points to her graced state being inherent to her person, more so than the average Joe.