hail mary full of grace in article may athos rutgers edu seanna bnr ca seanna s m watson writes in article may athos rutgers edu jhpb sarto budd lake nj us joseph h buehler writes referring to mary she was immaculately conceived and so never subject to original sin but also never committed a personal sin in her whole life this was possible because of the special degree of grace granted to her by god i have quite a problem with the idea that mary never committed a sin was mary fully human if it is possible for god to miraculously make a person free of original sin and free of committing sin their whole life then what is the purpose of the incarnation of jesus why can t god just repeat the miracle done for mary to make all the rest of us sinless without the need for repentance and salvation and all that i don t particularly object to the idea of the assumption or the perpetual virginity both of which i regard as catholic dogma about which i will agree to disagree with my catholic brothers and sisters in christ and i even believe in the virgin birth of jesus but this concept of mary s sinlessness seems to me to be at odds with the rest of christian doctrine as i understand it if you don t agree with joseph s accurate statement of the catholic dogma of mary s perpetual sinlessness then how do you interpret luke and when the angel had come to her he said hail full of grace the lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and luke for behold henceforth all generations shall call me blessed i suppose that these verses might be interpreted to mean that mary was possessed of some limited quantity or quality of grace just as some of us are but it seems to me that full of grace means just what it says filled to the brim incapable of containing more the only other people we know of who have an abundance of grace are those souls existing in heaven now another catholic dogma based on the communion of saints as i explained in an earlier post full of grace to me means sinless and anyone who has ever sinned in his life cannot be without sin in the same sense as mary was sinless as a catholic i too find certain of the dogmas tough to embrace but that s where the catholic faith and prayer come into play i pray god to strengthen my will to accept the faith given the bride of christ which in turn usually strengthens my community faith in his church and as you probably know faith in christ s church is tantamount to faith in christ inasmuch as the church is christ s mystical body a catholic by nature must have two aspects to his faith in christ a personal faith in christ as his own personal redeemer and a community faith in the church as the body of christ randal lee nicholas mandock catechist gt b prism gatech edu you might want to check the greek full of grace translates a single word that simply means favored or perhaps more literally graced the full is a vestige of the specific translation you re using clh
