The word “kecharitomene” (κεχαριτωμένη) is used only once in the Greek New Testament.  It does not appear anywhere else in Greek literature.  The Gospel writer, Luke, appears to have created it out of thin air. This Greek word is, in some respects, very much reminiscent of another Greek word seemingly created out of thin air in the Gospels, “epiousios” (ἐπιούσιον), which also only appears in Jesus’ Our Father prayer.  Epiousios is translated as our “daily” bread but its literal meaning is our “super-substantial” bread, as translated in the Douay-Rheims bible, based off of St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation.  It was a special, singular word to express a special, singular phenomenon – the Bread of Life.  Epiousios is translated in most modern translations as “daily,” however, the literal meaning that St. Jerome conveyed, hints at the Eucharist, the bread above material substance.  

In a similar manner, Mary is a special, singular creature in Salvation History.  She became the Tabernacle where Christ would dwell. Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant where God would dwell in her womb.  Christ, the Son of God, was clearly without sin and second Person of the Trinity.  How could Jesus a Person of the Godhead dwell anywhere but somewhere immaculately pure and clean?  He could not co-dwell somewhere with sin.  That is impossible.  The archangel Gabriel came to the Virgin Mary at the moment of the Annunciation and declared to her, “Hail, full of grace.” (Lk. 1:28)  He seems to address her more with a title than descriptive language.  He addresses her more for who she is rather than what she is.  Who is she?  She is “full of grace.”  Eighteen hundred years later, Mary came to St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France referring to herself as, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”  Mary was reiterating the words of Gabriel in Luke 1:28.  The Immaculate Conception is the one full of grace.

How could one have been “full of grace” before the life, death, and resurrection of Christ? According to Ineffabilis Deus, Mary was given the sanctifying grace of Jesus Christ, her Son, by way of anticipation of His Redemption.  This is the underlying teaching of the Immaculate Conception.  Mary was preserved from Original Sin to make her a suitable dwelling place for the Second Person of the Trinity.  The Immaculate Conception made possible the Incarnation.  The Annunciation led directly to the Incarnation, as Mary gave her fiat to do the will of the Lord. Kecharitomene is the Greek word St. Luke used for the angel Gabriel’s address to Mary as “full of grace.”  In the Rosary, we pray over and over, these special and singular words of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation and the Incarnation, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”  We are invoking the name of Mary, Kecharitomene, over and over again.  She is “Full of Grace” and “the Immaculate Conception.”  Mary is the Theotokos, the Mother of God, “the woman,” who crushes the head of the serpent, through her seed, the Messiah.  Kecharitomene was that blip in the matrix, where the devil was undone.  Sin was undone in one creature, preserved in grace, in order to bear the Savior of the world.  

Just another reason to pray your five decades of the Rosary every day!