For further reading
Caire, kecaritomene!
An Amateur's Musings on Gabriel's Address
and Its Translation Into English
Disclaimer: The author is not a Greek scholar, a professional grammarian, an etymologist or philologist, or anything of the sort. She is not in any way an authority. She is an amateur in the true sense: she loves and takes aesthetic delight in language, grammar, and words. She thinks it is fun to understand them and how they work, and gets her kicks from books like The Transitive Vampire and Anguished English. But most of the Greek she knows was learned from reading icons. So why should you take her word for anything? You shouldn't necessarily take it for anything. Anyone who habitually uses sentences like "Me and James went down to the pub for a pint" is questionable!
This page regularly uses "Symbol" font for Greek words, including the title. Assuming the font is displayed properly, the Greek words should appear as they do in Greek, minus any accent marks.
When Origen wrote about the annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), he remarked:
The angel greeted Mary with a new address, which I could not find anywhere else in Scripture.... The angel says, "Hail, full of grace." The Greek word is kecharitomene [kecaritomene]. I do not remember having read this word elsewhere in Scripture. An expression of this kind, "Hail, full of grace," is not addressed to a male. This greeting was reserved for Mary alone.The Greek word kecharitomene has fascinated people since ancient times, and for a number of reasons. What does it mean? How do we best translate it into other languages? What might it imply, beyond simple meaning, about Mary? This article will focus primarily on the first two questions: considering the meaning of the Greek word and its translation into English. The third question could not be fully answered without considering the larger scriptural context of the words of Gabriel, traditional Christian understanding and mariology, etc.
So what does kecharitomene mean?
direct address
When Gabriel appears to Mary, the first words he says to her are "Chaire, kecharitomene!" [Caire, kecaritomene!]. Chaire (which means both "rejoice" and "hail") is the salutation, like the word "hello" in "hello, Cathy!" The word that follows, kecharitomene, is the direct address. In the previous example, the name "Cathy" is the direct address. A direct address is usually a name or title (or pronoun taking the place of a name or title) which represents the identity of the person being spoken to. Gabriel identifies Mary with a single term: not the name "Mary," but the word kecharitomene.
Here, a common translation problem occurs. Gabriel only uses one word to refer to Mary, but most English translations do not. One particularly bad translation renders kecharitomene as "highly favored daughter." Kecharitomene is extended from one word to three. The direct address in the translation is "daughter," a word which does not appear in the Greek at all (as will be shown below). "Daughter" is then modified with a relevant word. This doesn't really do kecharitomene justice. The same is true of translations which make the direct address "you" or "one" and modify it with adjectives or appositive phrases.
caritow
The root word is charitoo [caritow], which means "to grace, favor." On this much, it seems, all agree. All the common English translations of the word therefore, regardless of whether the translators are Catholic or Protestant, use some form of "grace" or "favor" in them.
ke
The prefix on charitoo is ke, signifying that the word is in the perfect tense. This indicates a present state which is the result of a completed past action. The action which brought about the state in which Mary is, in other words, was completed before Gabriel's greeting. Gabriel is viewing the finished results.
This tense seems difficult to render in English, especially with one word, as Gabriel uses. The translator does not only want to indicate that the past action is complete, but also that there is a continuing state as a result. Allowing for more than one word, an example of the tense in English might be "you are certified to teach." "Are" indicates a present state, "certified" shows that the state is the result of a completed past action.
mene
The suffix on charitoo, mene, makes this a passive participle. "Passive" means that the action is performed on the subject, in this case Mary, by another agent. The verb is "grace" and the implied subject is Mary. The passive usage means that "someone graced Mary," rather than "Mary graced." Most theologians would probably accept the assumption that the implied "someone" is God. "Participle," in this case, means that the word has properties of both a verb and a noun. This makes sense in light of what has already been said about direct address. A direct address is a noun or pronoun, but "to grace" is a verb. Kecharitomene has verb and noun properties.
Again, there can be weaknesses in translation here. For example, St. Jerome and the King James translators tried to render kecharitomene as "full of grace." This translation is very good compared to many others, but because "grace" is no longer verb-like, it is also not passive as it is in Greek. Popular Catholic usage of this translation prompted this Protestant complaint:
The gratia plena [full of grace] of the Vulgate is too indefinite. It is right if it means "full of grace, which thou hast received"; wrong if it means "full of grace, which thou hast to bestow" [i.e. on Jesus]. (quoted in John McHugh's The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament)[The complaint is legitimate when it says the translation is not clear about passivity. It is not legitimate if it is intended as an accusation that Catholics don't acknowledge the passive aspect of the word, for Pope John Paul II has clearly stressed the passive aspect of kecharitomene.]
an amateur's translation proposal
It seems that the best possible translation of kecharitomene into English might be "Are-graced." Please bear with the explanation. Kecharitomene is a single word direct address. If at all possible, this should be retained in the translation. To signify their unity, a hyphen is added between the two English words. The implied "you" ("[you] are graced") is omitted, because including it would shift the direct address to "you" and away from the root "grace." Because the term takes the place of Mary's name and signifies her identity, it may be capitalized (not strictly necessary). "Are-graced" does indicate a present state ("are") which is the result of a past action ("graced"), and it retains the passive quality of the original ("[you] are graced [by God]"). It is admittedly not natural for these verbs to be used in a noun-like way, but this is an attempt at a more literal than dynamic translation.
Rejoice, Are-graced!
Sadly, no English translation retains all of the aesthetically pleasing alliterative qualities and possible word-play of the Greek's "Chaire, kecharitomene!"
For further reading
The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament by John McHugh (out of print)
Mary: the Second Eve by John Henry Cardinal Newman (TAN Books)
Mary and the Fathers of the Church by Fr. Luigi Gambero (Ignatius)
The Truth About Mary (volumes 1-4) by Robert Payesko (Queenship)
Related links
Kecharitomene - Pope John Paul II's meditation
Immaculate Conception - in Eastern Tradition
The Truth About Mary - based on the Payesko books
Akathist to Mary - an ancient Eastern hymn about Mary