Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you. You have found favor with God. The Gospel passage that we read today recounts the visitation of Mary by the angel Gabriel. Six months after a similar mission that had taken him to the household of Zechariah, the angel Gabriel finds himself in Mary’s house. And just as it had been six months earlier, the angel Gabriel was paying Mary a visit as a bearer of some good news. It was good news that startled even the intended recipient herself. As if being visited by an angel of the Lord was not surprising enough, here was the angel telling her that she was favored by God. How could she have possibly found favor in the eyes of God? What had she done? What had she accomplished in life? She was a mere teenager and almost without any status. She was as ordinary as any other girl of her age and background. She hadn’t pulled any great feat that could be referenced. And how in God’s holy name could the news of her conceiving and bearing a child outside wedlock be considered good news? Had she been the age of her kinswoman Elizabeth who was of age, news of her conceiving and bearing a son would be good news indeed. But for a teenager who was yet to know a man, this was quite confusing (and embarrassing too). It was not until angel Gabriel’s ‘clarification’ that Mary got to understand the meaning of the angel’s greeting: ‘Elizabeth your relative who was called barren has also conceived a son in her old age…’
After learning of the favor which had smiled upon her kinswoman, Mary came to understand that the angel’s greeting was not hers alone. She came to understand that the Lord’s favor that rested upon her was not hers to keep under lock and key, so speak. She was receiving the angel’s greeting on behalf of her kinsfolk. The good news of her conceiving and bearing the son of God was actually not hers but rather the good news for the entire human race. It was the world that had been groaning in pain (cf. Romans 8:22ff) as it awaited the salvation that would be ushered in God assuming a creaturely nature. Despite her being led into rebellion by the human race, the universe was still a graced creation of God, and God was not going to abandon her. This was the meaning behind the name (Jesus) that the child to be born was to be given. God was still with creation and had come to save it from perishing into oblivion. Such was the good news which the archangel Gabriel came bearing and which Mary received on behalf of the created universe.