The MOST Theological Collection: Mary in Our Life
"Chapter IV: Mary on Calvary"
THE PAPAL TEXTS of the preceding chapter make it dear that Mary really did co-operate immediately as the New Eve in the great sacrifice of Calvary. It remains for us to try to penetrate more deeply into the meaning of this great truth.
We must refer once again to the fall of our first parents. Scarcely had the fall taken place when God promised a Redeemer to come. God could have lowered the human race to the merely natural level, forever cutting off all hope of heaven; the truth is, however, that He wished to restore to us the opportunity for a supernatural reward. In general, three ways were open to God to provide this opportunity for us, aside from the possibility that He might have forgiven the sin without exacting any reparation (a thing He did not do).1 He could have demanded strict payment of the debt; He could have accepted an inadequate payment; or He could have arranged that both an adequate and an inadequate payment be made together.
For any adequate payment of the debt, the incarnation of a divine person was strictly necessary; for sin has a sort of infinity about it, from the fact that the person offended is infinite. But only one who is an infinite person-i.e., divine-could pay an infinite debt; and only one who is at the same time human could pay it in such a way that it would profit the human race. Had God wished to accept an inadequate reparation, He could have designated some holy person to offer a sacrifice, or perform some other prescribed action; such a reparation would have been insufficient to pay the debt, but God, nonetheless, could have chosen to accept it.
The truth is that God wished to combine both adequate and inadequate reparation in order to exercise better His infinite mercy. That is, He freely decreed that what He would accept as the price of the Redemption was the joint work of two: the one, a divine person, who alone could really pay the debt, and whose work by itself would be fully adequate; the other, the greatest of all mere creatures, whose work would not add anything to the intrinsic value of the infinite reparation of the God-man, but whose labors, nonetheless, were ordained by the Father to be accepted with, through, and subordinate to those of the great Redeemer. The fall had come about through two: Adam, the head of the race, who alone was able to ruin all his posterity; and Eve, who alone could not bring on original sin, but who could and did co-operate in her own subordinate way in effecting the disaster of original sin.
It was fitting, therefore, that the restoration should follow the pattern of the fall. In the beautiful hymn, the Pange lingua gloriosi, which the Church sings on Good Friday, we kind the parallel of the fall and the restoration extended even to the wood of the cross.2 Despite its poetic form, this ancient hymn most fittingly expresses the truth of this parallel.
De parentis protoplasti
Fraude, Factor condolers
Quando pomi noxialis
In necem morsu ruit:
Ipse lignum tune notavit
Damna ligni ut solveret.
Hoc opus nostrae salutis
Ordo depoposcerat;
Multiformis proditoris
Ars ut artem falleret,
Et medelam ferret inde
Hostis unde laeserat.
Our Maker, grieving
Over the deception of our first parent
When, by the bite of the baneful fruit
He fell to death:
Marked then the wood,
To repair the damage done by the wood.
Order had called for
This work of our salvation,
That wisdom might undo cunning
And find a remedy
In the means
By which the enemy had inflicted harm.
And so it appears that the debt had been contracted by two in co-operation; and that it would be paid by a parallel co-operation. Adam had been, as we have said, the first head of the race; Christ was to be, as St. Paul tells us3 (see chap. I), the New Adam, the new head of the race, for if He were not the head of the race, humanity as a whole would not have a claim on His merits and reparation. It was through Mary that Christ became the head of the human race, for, as St. Thomas observes: " ... at the Annunciation, the Virgin was asked to give her consent in the name of the whole human race."4
Mary, then, in giving flesh to the future Victim of Calvary, acted as the representative of mankind as a whole. Pope Pius XII, in the encyclical on the Mystical Body, made this interpretation his own, quoting from St. Thomas:
Hence it is entirely clear that Christ became the New Adam, the new head of the human race, from the fact that He received human flesh from the womb of the Virgin.
The heavenly Father could have accepted the least action of the life of Christ in reparation, for, since Our Lord is divine, even His least acts have an infinite dignity; but, to show better the love of God for man, it was decreed that the reparation should consist primarily in a sacrifice. Hence our next task is to make sure that we understand the true nature of sacrifice.
St. Augustine points out that there are two components in a sacrifice: "The visible sacrifice is, then, the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice."6 Thus a sacrifice belongs to the general class of things that we call signs. The function of a sign is to show something outwardly. According to St. Augustine's statement, the external sacrifice is the outward sign of what he calls an invisible sacrifice.
The invisible sacrifice is the more essential of the two. It is the internal disposition of the heart which loves and adores God, expresses its sorrow and desire for reparation, its thanks, its petition for help. The victim offered in a sacrifice serves as a sign of the internal dispositions. In the sacrifices of the Old Law, the animal sacrificed was, by virtue of its immolation, removed from the use of men, and that very fact signified that it was being given to God. But the idea was not merely to give an animal to God: otherwise He might speak as He is poetically represented as speaking in Psalm 49:
A real gift should represent the giver: the animal given to God is worthless unless it represents the gifts of the heart and the whole being of the giver, who acknowledges the absolute rights of God over him. The external offering in a sacrifice must be a sign of the internal sacrifice, of the inner dispositions of love, adoration, contrition, thanks, petition, on the part of the one who offers.7
Now we turn to the scene on Calvary. There we see a ewe sacrifice being accomplished. The New Adam, Christ Himself, is both priest and victim. The outward sign is His painful death. The inward dispositions of His Heart toward His Father-dispositions of love, adoration, reparation, thanksgiving, petition- are wonderfully expressed by this outward sign. With Him8 is the New Eve, in what Saint Pius X called a "common sharing of will and suffering" with Him. In what precisely does this "common sharing" of hers consist? In many things. First of all, it was through her, as we have seen, that Christ became the New Adam, the new head of mankind. It was through her that He had flesh in which to suffer and die: she had literally provided the Victim, for Christ as God could not suffer and die. She herself is obviously suffering profoundly at this sight. Such is her co-operation in the outward sign.
Her union with the inner dispositions of Christ is most perfect: she joined inwardly in offering Him. As Pope Benedict XV expressed it:
Or, as Saint Pius X stated it:
And, let us remember, she does this not as a private person, but as the New Eve, as the one officially marked by the Father to co-operate in this way with the Son, so that the Father regards the sufferings of both as forming but one offering, for her suffering is offered only through and with His. We recall the words of Pope Pius XII:
We note in the last two passages that both Pope Benedict XV and Pope Pius XII spoke of Mary's surrender of her "maternal rights" over her Son.
At this point someone may object that once a son reaches legal age, his mother has a right to be heard respectfully, but that no real consent on her part is required for his actions. Mary's position, however, was not just that of an ordinary mother, and the redeeming sacrifice was not in the line of the ordinary relations of son and mother. Just as, in accordance with the positive decree of God the Father, the Incarnation was not to take place without the consent of Mary, the representative of all mankind, so also the culmination of the Redemption, to which the Incarnation was directed, was not to take place without the consent of Mary. This consent of hers to the sacrifice of Calvary was both a continuation of the [at of Nazareth and a silent but loving renewal of that original consent. In this spirit she united most intimately with the dispositions of the heart of her dying Son, so as to join with Him in a "common sharing of will and suffering."12 She offered Him as something of herself: she would have greatly preferred to die in His stead.13
The prophet Jeremias spoke these words of lament over the desolation of Jerusalem:
In the Office of the Feast of the Seven Sorrows, the Church applies these words to Mary. As St. Alphonsus points out,15 it is very fitting to compare her grief to the sea, for the sea is vast in extent and all bitter to the taste: there is not a drop of sweet water in it. The words "who shall heal thee?" are yet more expressive: when the martyrs suffered, they were often given relief by God, so that some of them seemed not to feel any pain. But God did not mitigate the pain of Mary. The thought of the passion of Christ consoled the martyrs; but for Mary the very passion was the cause of her suffering. Their love for God was a solace to the martyrs; but for Mary her very love for her Son, more boundless than the sea, was the measure of her bitter compassion.
Many were scandalized at the passion of Christ St. Paul says it was foolishness to the Gentiles, and a scandal to the Jews.16 Similarly, some, when they are first brought face to face with the fact of the co-redemptive role of Mary, are shocked at the thought that a mere creature, however pure, could share in redeeming us. But the same love of God that spared not His Only Son is also the reason for the co-redemption: of herself, Mary could do nothing to save us.17 It is only the incomprehensible love and generosity of God that contrived such a method as this, in which:
Order had called for
This work of our salvation
That wisdom might undo cunning
And find a remedy In the means
By which the enemy hat inflicted harm.
Hoc opus nostrae salutis
Ordo depoposcerat;
Multiformis proditoris
Ars ut artem falleret,
Et medelam ferret inde
Hostis unde laeserat.18
