So, my "are highly favored" has the tense wrong? The actual words were equivalent to: "was filled with special grace, that no one else has ever had, from before birth"? That does seem like a pretty radical difference.
How is it that we as believers have grace, but yet the remnant of sin remains and we still sin? Grace only abounded in Mary? You are disagreeing then, that the word used here is the same as in Eph. 1:6 which describes all believers as being equivalently "filled with grace"?
Finally, if Mary was so filled with perfect grace that she was sinless her whole life, she had the most surprising reaction to being told that she would be the mother of Jesus. Why would she need to be told? Why would she have been afraid? Also, wouldn't someone filled with grace from before birth know who she was? She even asked questions. For someone who was sinless, she sure didn't seem to understand that she was different from any other human who had ever yet lived.
It is not just the tense that is wrong. King James translates "charis" most everywhere as "grace". But this verse, for no reason that I can understand, the "charis" in "kecharitomene" becomes "favor". The difference is, of course, that grace is not just favor but unmerited favor. King James dilutes the meaning with the choice of "favor" over more precise "grace". "Highly" is another strange qualifier there. How highly? It suggests that a measure or a comparison is implied but it is not in the original. The sense of completeness is not conveyed by this translation.
Jerome's Latin translation, "gratia plena" -- "full of grace" has all the elements of "kecharotomene": reference to divine grace and completeness. The Greek church teaches that meaning as it always has.
The original in Ephesians 1 is different, as is, of course, the meaning. The word there is simply "echaritosen", "graced" or "gave grace". King James has this verse "To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved". Douay Rheims has it "Unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath graced us in his beloved son". The verb is correctly translated in the Douay, however, "son" is an extrapolation. In any event, Ephesians describes us as graced, but not filled with grace. "Kecharitomeme" does not appear anywhere elese in the New Testament. and that is consistent with what the Church teaches, that while we are all given the divine grace, Mary was uniquely filled with it by Christ since her conception as the perfect ark of the Word.
Why would she need to be told? Why would she have been afraid? Also, wouldn't someone filled with grace from before birth know who she was? She even asked questions. For someone who was sinless, she sure didn't seem to understand that she was different from any other human who had ever yet lived.
The real answer is that we don't know. We don't have an everyday experience of fullness of grace. It would be wise not to go beyond what the gospel tells us. Liek everyone else, I am not particularly wise, so I will speculate a bit.
Let us not forget that Mary is human. Her is in fact the proximity to God that humans are designed for (this in fact should be enough to explain the importance of Mary in theology, and importance of her example to us). So, to expect foreknowledge, or absence of human passion from her is misplaced. There is, however, a deep meaning in her querying the Angel: she knows that Eve was deceived by an angel and she does not want to be similarly deceived. There is this difference: Eve observes the fruit and trusts her own perception. Mary, instead, waits till the angel makes it clear that he comes as a messenger from God and trusts God's will. Eve relies on what she experientially observes and disregards the word of God. Mary relies on the word of God despite the experiential knowledge that virgins don't give births. Mary's faith reverses Eve's deception.