You would think after an angel told you “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you” that you would feel pretty good. That was not what Mary experienced. St. Luke reports, “she was greatly troubled at what was said.” Why would you be “greatly troubled” after hearing such positive words? Perhaps because most of the words that we hear tend to diminish us, to put us down. For example, don’t you suspect that when Mary was growing up the other kids would make fun of her as a “goody two-shoes?” To hear an affirming word disturbs the accustomed ways that we deal with one another. The message for us: be an angel and tell the people you meet that they are “full of grace.”
