Full of Grace?

The Holy Theotokos

Was Mary full of grace? Luke 1:28 is the key to solving that mystery. In fact, this verse gives us some evidence for the Immaculate Conception for the Blessed Virgin Mary. I should point out that more evidence than this would be needed to prove the doctrine in its entirety but this portion of scripture certainly helps. The verse reads:

“And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

The verse is very clear. The Blessed Virgin is full of grace. Regardless of this evidence, innovators deny that this verse says precisely what is does. They point out that the Douay Rheims translation is heavily based off of St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which erred in translating this passage from the original Greek.

Regardless of which, St. Jerome was a great Biblical scholar so his translation from Greek into Latin is good evidence for the Blessed Virgin being full of grace. The Douay Rheims is only transmitting the wisdom of the translation of this great saint.

However, several popular modern translations render this verse differently.

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” – ESV

The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” – NIV

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. – KJV

Out of these three, the KJV is by far the oldest and seems to be the first popular translation to render the verse this way. Though it isn’t the first translation to do this, it made the error popular.

All of these three translations are Greek based so it seems to give some credence to this error. Regardless, this translation is ideologically driven and not driven by the facts.

In the 14^th century, the English Bible translator Wycliffe rendered the verse as the following:

And the angel entered to her, and said, Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed be thou among women.

Regardless, this translation was Latin based so one could argue that this translation is understandable. Another innovator in the early 16^th century, William Tyndale, translated the verse as follows:

And ye angell went in vnto her and sayde: Hayle full of grace ye Lorde is with ye: blessed arte thou amonge wemen.

Tyndale’s translation is based off Greek and not Latin, therefore we have a non-Catholic witness to the proper translation of this verse from the original Greek.

As time went on and doctrinal innovators continued to invent new doctrine, newfound theology began to guide how scripture was translated. Mary continued to disappear from the theology of the innovators and they rendered the scripture as to give her a back seat.  As we can see from the three translations provided at the top, the Blessed Virgin has been demoted based on a theological agenda which is not in line with apostolic tradition.  Mary is full of grace.