Sect. 216Mary’s Participation in the Work of RedemptionMary’s Participation in the Work of Redemption

I. Work necessarily bears the stamp of the worker: its worth or worthlessness, its meritoriousness or demeritoriousness, are commensurate with the qualities of the agent who produces it. Hence, correctly to estimate Mary’s co-operation in the work of Redemption, we must keep before our eyes her personal character, especially its analogy with the personal character of Christ The peculiar dignity and power of her work are derived from the Holy Ghost, Who acts in and through her in a union by grace, as the Logos acts in and through the humanity of Christ in personal union.

II. As Mother of Christ, Mary co-operated “physically” in the Incarnation. This privilege she shares with no other creature. Ministers of the sacraments act as mere vehicles of God’s power; Mary gives to Him of her own substance. Without having the sacramental power of the priest, she in the conception, formation, and birth of the Saviour, presents the most perfect type of the priest’s functions. Moreover, her organic participation in the beginning of Christ’s life, organically connects her with the whole course of that life.

III. Mary’s actions had a singular moral value in themselves as being personal services rendered to God, and tending to further the great object of the Incarnation. But they acquire a special excellence from the personal excellence of their authoress: they flow from the “Bride of the Logos, and Bearer of the Holy Ghost,” and have the stamp of their origin. If the soul of the just is a temple in which the spirit “asketh with unspeakable groanings in order to help our infirmity” (Rom. 8:26), we are justified in assuming that in the sanctuary of Mary’s soul His sanctifying influence attains the highest degree. He inspires acts, moves the will to carry them out, and assists in the work, so as to make it almost wholly His own. From this point of view the actions of the Blessed Virgin are seen to possess, like those of Christ and of the Church, a supernatural, moral, and legal efficacy, benefiting not herself only, but all mankind. There is, however, between the merits of Christ and those of Mary, an essential difference in their manner of benefiting others. The merits of Christ, infinitely perfect in themselves, are applied authoritatively to whom and in what measure He wills. What Mary does for us is neither infinitely perfect nor applied on her own authority; her work, however excellent and pleasing to God, is but “impetratory,” viz. of its kind it is a prayer.

IV. The titles given by the Church to Mary, “the new Eve, the Bride of the new Adam, the Sanctuary and Organ of the Holy Ghost,” clearly contain the idea that her work is associated with the work of Christ by a special ordinance of God; that it enters into the plan of Redemption, and forms a subordinate but integral part of Redemption. Hence the attributes of the Saviour are often bestowed upon His Mother. She is called Salvatrix, Reparatrix, even Redemptrix; the destruction of sin and the victory over the devil are ascribed to her. The meaning of these titles and attributes when applied to Mary is not the same as when applied to Christ; to the former they only apply as to the “Handmaid of the Redeemer in the work of Redemption.” The Fathers find a proof for, and an illustration of, the Divine preordination of Mary’s co-operation with her Son, in the fact that the Redemption was the exact counterpart of the Fall: the subordinate part acted by Eve for evil is counteracted by the subordinate part acted by the new Eve for good (Newman, Angl. Diff., II. p. 31 sqq.).

1. The first act of Mary’s co-operation in the work of Redemption is her consent to become the Mother of the Redeemer. As Eve, through disobedience and disbelief, became the handmaid of the devil in the work of destruction, even so Mary, through obedience and faith, becomes the handmaid of God in the work of restoration. And as Eve’s consent to the temptation became fully co-operative in the fall when Adam added to it his own consent, so Mary’s consent became a full co-operation when Christ united to it His first act of obedience.

2. This initial consent, the fervent prayers which preceded and followed it, the continued maternal services, the offering of Jesus in the Temple and on the Cross, the complete union of her will with His in the work of Redemption, place Mary by the side of her Son as a deaconess by the side of the sacrificing priest. The deacon is both the representative of the people and the consecrated assistant of the priest: in the first capacity he hands to the priest the elements of the sacrifice; in the second he supports him in the oblation of the chalice, and, when the sacrifice is complete, assists him in the distribution of the Sacred Food. In the same manner Mary takes an active and integral part in the sacrifice of Christ, without in the least interfering with His self-sufficiency and supremacy.

3. The association of the Mother of Jesus with her Son in acquiring the redeeming merits, is maintained in their distribution, and is of the same nature, viz. what Christ effects by His own authority and power, Mary obtains by intercession and prayer. She, of all human persons the most excellent and the nearest to God, the organ of the Holy Ghost and the Mother of the Church, received at the foot of the Cross the fulness of salvation in the name of mankind. In the Apostle St. John she beholds the spiritual sons committed to her motherly care; in the upper chamber she sat and prayed with the Princes of the infant Church; in heaven she reigns as a Queen all-powerful because her prayer knows no refusal. May we not say, with some theologians, that God grants no grace except on the intercession of Mary? It would certainly be an anomaly in the Divine dispensation if a work begun and carried on with the co-operation of the Virgin-Mother was concluded without her: “the gifts of God are without repentance.” We must, however, be careful to fix accurately the sense of our statement. It does not imply that we can obtain no grace except by expressly and explicitly praying for it to Mary, or that her intercession is always required in order to dispose her Son in our favour. The true and only defensible meaning is that “in the Dispensation established by God and by Christ, the merits and the intercession of the Saviour Himself are applied to nobody without the concurring intercession of Mary, and consequently, that every grace given is co-impetrated by Mary.”

Scholion. The doctrine of the Invocation of Saints is thus described by the Council of Trent (sess. xxv.): “The Saints, who reign together with Christ, offer up their own prayers to God for men. It is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God, through His Son Jesus Christ, Who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour. Those persons think impiously who deny that the Saints, who enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, are to be invocated; or who assert either that they do not pray for men; or that the invocation of them to pray for each of us even in particular, is idolatry; or that it is repugnant to the word of God, and is opposed to the honour of the one Mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus.”

“Prayer,” says St. Thomas, “is offered to a person in two ways—one as though to be granted by himself, another as to be obtained through him. In the first way we pray to God alone, because all our prayers ought to be directed to obtaining grace and glory which God alone gives, according to those words of Psalm 83:12: The Lord will give grace and glory. But in the second way we pray to holy angels and men, not that God may learn our petition through them, but that by their prayers and merits our prayers may be efficacious. Wherefore it is said in the Apocalypse (8:4): The smoke of the incense of the prayers of the Saints ascended up before God from the hand of the Angel” (Summ. Theol. 2 2, q. 83, a. 4).