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Tota Pulchra es Maria

of the card. Ennio Antonelli

Nn the Gospel of the Annunciation the angel greets her: "Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you". “Full of grace” means “filled with the gratuitous love” of God, with his benevolence, with his mercy and therefore also filled with beauty, splendor and charm. With the language of modern theological reflection we could say: filled with uncreated grace, that is, with the Holy Spirit, and with created sanctifying grace.

Progressively through the centuries, the faith of the Church, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, has come to interpret "full of grace" as redeemed in a more sublime way, preserved by virtue of Christ the redeemer from original sin and from every personal sin, indeed, as taught the Second Vatican Council, «adorned from the first moment with the splendors of a most singular sanctity» (Lumen Gentium 56), who then grew continuously throughout her earthly existence through her faith, her ready obedience to the will of God, her perfect union with Christ especially "at the foot of the cross" (Lumen Gentium 58). In Mary we contemplate both the absolute primacy of grace and the unconditional acceptance and perfect cooperation of human freedom. Mary is all holy, all beautiful in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the Church. «You are completely beautiful, oh Mary; the original stain is not in you. You are the glory of Jerusalem; you are the joy of Israel; you are the honor of our people. You are the advocate of sinners." 

All holy and at the same time protector of sinners, like Jesus who during his public life appeared as the Saint of God and at the same time as the friend of sinners, because the holier one is, the more merciful he is.

Mary is the mystical rose, that is, the queen of flowers, the queen of saints. The holiness of the Church, the beauty of redeemed humanity, is concentrated in her, as the great poet Dante Alighieri exclaims full of amazement and emotion:

«In you magnificence, in you mercy, 

in you mercy, in you it gathers 

although the creature is good" (Paradiso, XXXIV)

Let us therefore contemplate the holiness of Mary and give thanks to God her creator and savior. Furthermore, we cannot fail to remember that, like Mary, we too are called to be saints. We have not been preserved from original sin, that is, from the original state of alienation from God, but albeit in a different way we have been freed from the power of the devil, sin and death and we have been given the strength to overcome it.