The Lord Is With Thee

 co-Redemptrix

“I AM WITH YOU and will watch over you wherever you go,
and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you
until I have done what I have promised you.”
Genesis 28:15

And the angel being come in, said unto her:
Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee:
blessed art thou among women.
Luke 1, 28 (DRB)

In Catholic theology, merit is the property of a good work that entitles the doer to receive a reward from God for having done His will in cooperation with His grace. This is something God has ordained in His mercy; and since God is just, He won’t withhold a reward that may include an increase in faith and charity needed for our sanctification and justification. “The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God’s gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2026). “Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life” (CCC, 2027).

Justification includes not only the remission of sins and removal of guilt but also the sanctification and renewal of the person. By the fact that our good works in faith and charity originate from Divine grace, we can merit actual graces either for ourselves (condign merit) or others (congruous merit) by our prayers and acts of self-denial for the salvation of souls. When Mary gave her consent to be the mother of the divine Messiah, she didn’t simply seek the gift of divine maternity for herself, which would have been selfish of her, but rather sought the fruit that should increase humanity’s credit by the personal sacrifices she might have to make for the sake of mankind’s redemption (Phil 4:17).

Theologically, condign merit designates the kind of goodness that is bestowed on a person because of their actions done in grace. It assumes equity between service and returns (commutative justice). It is a reward for having accomplished good works in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and a reward that the doer deserves for having freely consented to act in faith. If the reward due to condign merit is withheld, then there is injustice, for God has willed to obligate Himself to those who love Him (Deut 5:33; Prov 3:3-4; Amos 5:14; Mt.25:21; Lk.6:33,38; Rom 2:6 13:11; 1 Cor 2:9; 15:58; Col 3:23:34; Gal 6:9; Phil 3:14; Heb 11:6; Jas 1:12; 1 Pet 5:6). Condign merit contrasts with strict merit, which must do with some good that is owed by legal agreement or the equity of justice.

It is in the strict sense of justice Christ has merited for us the initial grace of justification and forgiveness which we initially receive when baptized (Eph 2:8-9). Only he could infinitely and eternally restore the equity of justice between God and humankind because of his divine nature and being one with the Father in substance and essence (Jn 10:30). The most Mary could merit for herself (condign merit) and humanity (congruous merit), by freely cooperating with divine grace and doing good works under its influence, was a promised reward, viz., God’s gift of salvation. Now in heaven, where our Blessed Mother prayerfully intercedes for us, our rewards may include subsequent actual graces (i.e., faith, hope, charity, etc.) needed for our growth in sanctification and justification (2 Cor 3:18; 4:16; 10:15; Col 3:10; Phil 2:13).

It’s important for us to distinguish between the nature and extent of Jesus’ and Mary’s merits, which in the context of grace is properly called supernatural merit. First, there is a third kind of merit that belongs exclusively to our Lord and Saviour. This highest kind which is perfect and most worthy of a reward is called perfect condign merit: the act of charity of the Divine Person made man. Jesus’ act of love is at least equal in value to the reward since it is the act of a Divine person. And even though Jesus did not merit the reward for himself, but for humankind, he could still condignly merit it in strict justice, since in his humanity he acted charitably as the new Head (Adam) of humanity in the fullness of grace which he possessed by divine nature (Jn 1:14), that we all might receive his grace through his merits as he was given it in his humanity.

On the other hand, the human merit which applies to Mary with respect to her acts of charity and grace is congruous merit. She could perform her acts of love in a manner worthy of a supernatural reward for others. But this is not in the sense that it was proportionate to the reward since her meritorious acts proceeded from the fullness of habitual grace with which she was completely and perfectly endowed by Divine favor and not from any natural merit of hers outside the order of grace (Lk 1:28;1 Pet 2:5, etc.).

This lower kind of merit assigned to human creatures is founded on charity and friendship with God rather than on strict justice. What this implies is that Jesus chose to come into the world more for his righteous mother’s sake than for sinful humankind’s (the principle of predilection) when she meritoriously offered up her body as a living sacrifice by consenting to be the mother of our Divine Lord (Rom 12:1). Mary merited for us, by right of friendship with God, all that Jesus merited for us in strict justice. Though Mary could not merit anything for us de condigno since she was not constituted head of humanity, she nonetheless could cooperate in our salvation by her congruous merits in God’s grace. None of us can merit condignly except for our own rewards.

Mary’s meritorious act of faith in charity and grace conferred a right to a supernatural reward for humankind, even though she didn’t herself produce it. Christ’s perfect merits, by his substantial grace of union with the Father, have produced our temporal rewards of grace and our eternal reward of salvation. Still, by Mary’s Fiat, what her Divine Son has gained for humanity is now something we can all hope for and receive provided we persevere in faith just as our Blessed Lady did. Mary heard the word of God and kept it (Lk 11:28). And so, she had cause to proclaim: “My spirit rejoices in God my savior!” (Lk 1:47). She rejoiced in conceiving God who is salvation (Yeshua) not only for Israel but also for the entire world because of her obedient act of faith in charity (agape) and grace.

Jesus teaches us in The Parable of the Talents that the amount of grace we have received, no matter how bountiful, is worthless like dead money unless we invest ourselves by ministering this grace to others through spiritual works of mercy and self-sacrifice. Our eternal rewards are commensurate with the amount of labor we put in for the conversion of sinners by our acts of charity and grace. Christians who bury their talents or gifts of the Holy Spirit in safekeeping out of servile fear of infringing upon the prerogatives of their Master are like the presumptuous servant who buried the one talent he received and was admonished for his retention (Mt 25:14-30). Paul rued that none of the other “fellow workers with God” in the field could match Timothy’s zeal for saving souls. “For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil 2:21).

​The passive servant in our Lord’s parable, therefore, presumed that he was looking after his master’s interest by keeping his money safely tucked away, and all the while feared he had no right to use what originally didn’t belong to him. But, on the contrary, he would have better served his master’s interest if he had invested his single talent instead so that it should increase his merit. Certainly, it isn’t enough for Christians only to conform their minds to Christ’s way of thinking and to no longer live for the flesh and for the sinful passions, but for the will of God. What is also required of Christ’s disciples is that they use the graces they have received to serve others as “good stewards” of God’s grace (1 Pet 4:1-7).

Jesus had no intention of sacrificing himself all alone for sinners by the grace of redemption only he alone could produce for humanity. We invest the graces we have received by being “fellow workers with God” (1 Cor 3:9). Mary wouldn’t have increased in charity and sanctification or received further plenitudes of grace if she were content only with having given birth to our Lord and Saviour. She was also called to suffer and die in union with him for the temporal remission of humankind’s debt of sin. A sword should pierce her soul so that the grace of conversion would be produced and granted by her divine Son in the redemption (Lk 2:35). It wasn’t enough for Mary to be the natural mother of our Lord in his humanity to have cause to rejoice in God’s gift of salvation.

The initial grace of justification and forgiveness, which Christ alone has merited for us as the God-man, or by his theandric sacrificial act, marks the beginning of our journey in faith towards life ever-lasting (Eph 2:8-9). This has all been prepared for us by God from the beginning (Gen 3:15). Mary is the sign of humanity’s restoration to the life of grace because of her charitable act of faith (Isa 7:14). By her Fiat, our salvation is nearer than it was. Following our Blessed Lady’s example, she who precedes us in the order of grace, we mustn’t slumber, now that we do believe (Rom 13:11). Saving faith is an active faith. Our salvation is something that we must “work out in fear and trembling” because of our deficiencies of love for God and our neighbor. Mary opened her heart to God, and for that, she had found grace with Him (Lk 1:30) and helped gain the grace her Son had produced for all human souls by his life and death on the cross as his “fellow worker.” The Incarnation wouldn’t have happened by default if Mary had been deficient in the love of God and humanity. Nor could she have endured the road to Calvary together with her Son without the fire of the Holy Spirit’s love kindled in her heart which rendered her justified before God and fit to collaborate with her Son on behalf of sinful humanity.

So, divine grace is a supernatural asset that we are expected to invest in by collaborating with the Holy Spirit in the life of charity and grace for our increase in sanctification or justification. Grace is added to grace, as St. Paul puts it, by our bearing fruit (merit) through faith in God’s grace. The holding of our spiritual gifts of grace in faith working through love is a cooperative enterprise between God and us. We must invest our share in what our Lord has contributed to our salvation in his humanity by his just merits if we hope to reap the eternal benefits which he alone has produced for us. It isn’t enough for us to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior while passively doing nothing and leaving all the labor up to him as we sit idly by if we hope to be saved.

This being the case, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in the month of Nisan (Lk 1:27). Indeed, she had found favor or grace with God because she was His handiwork of grace, created in her divine Son to do good works, which God had prepared for her to do (Eph 2:10). Faith through grace is the foundation of our justification before God. Yet, St. Peter tells us that we “as living stones are built up a spiritual house” on this foundation “to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5). We are not justified by faith alone; the foundation is practically useless unless the house is erected on it.

Mary had faith in the words of the angel Gabriel. She believed in what he spoke of the incarnation and was the first human being to know about the Holy Trinity. Her Fiat marked the foundation of her new pilgrimage of faith, but she had to be constructed as a spiritual house upon this foundation if the grace of redemption were to be gained for all humanity by her Son. And this should require much spiritual sacrifice in union with her Son on behalf of all living souls. In the order of grace, Mary stands pre-eminent among the common priesthood of believers in Christ’s Mystical Body. Because of her moral participation in the redemption, we too have been offered and received this grace of divine adoption.

Thus, Mary helped gain countless souls for her Lord by the singular gift that he had graced her with, viz., the Divine Maternity. By pronouncing her Fiat in charity and grace, she brought the living Font of all grace into the world for the salvation of souls as her Son’s chief steward of grace. And this entailed that she should sacrifice herself for the sake of God’s goodness and love and for poor sinners so that they might be reconciled to God. In the order of grace, Mary led the way for all Christ’s disciples to gain souls for him. And she did so by taking up her cross after her Son and carrying it with him in spirit along the Via Dolorosa.

Our Lord’s handmaid didn’t presume to look after only her own interest, the blessed and joyous state of being the mother of the Lord, and the moral responsibility of raising her divine Son. Rather, our Blessed Lady understood very well that, by her decision, she was called to collaborate with God in His redemptive work; she would have to make many great personal sacrifices in union with her Son for the welfare of human souls.

Mary knew that her faith wasn’t something that she was expected to put into safekeeping for the benefit of her soul alone, but that God required her to spread the faith she had to others even at the cost of having to endure many trials in the spirit of the Christian martyrs who followed her (Rev 7:14). The Divine Maternity wasn’t the eternal reward that Mary sought, but rather eternal life with God. She believed that this reward could be obtained only by suffering and dying to herself for the sake of spreading God’s word and helping to make His truth known to everyone, including the Gentiles.

In the depths of her soul, Mary perceived what her divine Son would bring to light with the establishment of his heavenly kingdom: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mt 25:29). Mary couldn’t condignly merit her maternal blessing or eternal life if she buried the talent she received in and through the merits of her divine Son by refusing to make sacrifices to God her spiritual worship and suffer for the sins of the world and the conversion of sinners. Her divine motherhood served as a means of making temporal reparation for the sins of the world.

When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you,” she was perplexed by the meaning of the angel’s greeting, for she intuited that God must have sent His messenger to ask something very demanding of her for a divine purpose of tremendous proportion. After all, Mary must have been familiar with the Jewish traditions of God appearing to the patriarchs, judges, and prophets and calling them to engage in daunting tasks that could even last a lifetime.

When God appeared to Jacob and ratified the covenant He had initially made with Abraham and now entrusted to his grandson, he said: “I AM WITH YOU and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen 28:15). Likewise, when God called Moses from the burning bush to lead His people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, He said: “I WILL BE WITH YOU. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Ex 3:12). Taking Moses’ place, Joshua was called by God to lead the Israelites into battle to possess the land God promised them with these words: “No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I WILL BE WITH YOU; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Josh 1:5).

Further, when God placed David, a humble shepherd boy, on the throne as head of His everlasting kingdom in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, reminding David of His faithfulness to him, He said: “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel; and I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth…When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom” (2 Sam 7:9,12). And, finally, when God called Jeremiah to be a prophet for the nations, He said: “Do not be afraid of them, for I AM WITH YOU and will rescue you” (Jer 1:8).

The words “the Lord is with you” must have signaled to Mary that God was calling her to embark on a great mission that could be as difficult and demanding as it was for the Hebrew heroes who went before her. Sensing her uneasiness, the angel Gabriel assured her not to fear, for she “had found grace with God” (Lk 1:30). The good news Mary received from the angel dispelled all her uneasiness (vv.31-33), but what she feared in her humility was whether she might not be up to the task. It wasn’t that she dreaded what she might have to suffer, or she didn’t trust God. So, when she pronounced her Fiat joyfully, she did affirm that God would be her “refuge” and “fortress” in whom she could “trust” (Ps 9:12), for God alone was her “help” and her “salvation,” in whom she had nothing to fear (Lk 1:46-49; Ps 27:1). In God alone was her soul at rest.

Hence, Mary’s soul was at peace when the angel called her to engage with God in His work of salvation. God sent His messenger to Mary because He had an impact on her stillness. In her spiritual state, she saw that God was the only one she could trust: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, holy, sovereign, faithful, infinite, and good. God would certainly exalt Himself over His enemies who were hers as well. All Mary could do, in the meantime, was surrender herself to God and trust in His plan, whatever trials and hardships she might have to endure together with her divine Son. Her greatest enemy must never be herself by losing her trust in God and relying solely on her own strength and personal resources. If she faithfully cooperated with God like her ancestors did, all should work for the greater good. We can be sure that our valiant Lady implicitly expressed these thoughts of hers in her Magnificat (Lk 1:50-55).

A faithful saying:
for if we be dead with him,
we shall live also with him.
If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.
2 Timothy 2, 11-12

Since Pentecost, the Catholic Church has infallibly taught that Christ alone redeemed the world by suffering and dying for its sins. It was he who liberated us “from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). In other words, to satisfy His justice, God willed that Jesus should be made an object of His wrath by laying “the iniquity of us all” on him (Isa 53:6). Unless Jesus was “smitten by God and inflicted” for its transgressions, humankind couldn’t be reconciled to Him and delivered from the stain of original sin, the deprivation of the original justice and sanctity that Adam had forfeited for all his descendants. Nor could our own personal sins be forgiven and our common guilt removed unless Christ was “bruised for our offenses” (Isa 53:5). ​

Still, Jesus wasn’t punished for our sins, or else our personal sins would now be non-sequiturs. But our Lord and Saviour did take the punishment we all deserve upon himself to propitiate the Father for our offenses against Him. This required that he suffer and die unjustly so that he could restore the equity of justice between God and humanity. And by doing so, he merited all the graces we need for our regeneration, as to be sanctified and reckoned as personally just before God in his likeness (2 Cor 5:21).

About two millennia later, we still see that our Lord desired to work together with his blessed mother so that “everyone might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:1-4). The apostle Paul writes, We then, as workers together with (sunergountos) him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain’ (2 Cor 6:1). And the apostle adds: ‘God “works for good with” (sunergei eis agathon) those who love Him (Rom 8:28). God desired to work for the good of all mankind with (sunergei/ συνεργέω) a young lady by the name of Mary when he sent the angel Gabriel to her with His kind proposal. And God prepared the mother of our Lord with a complete and perfect endowment of His grace so that she would be completely faithful and up to the task (Lk 1:28).

Mary would have received God’s grace in vain if she decided to bury her talent or the gift of divine motherhood by being content only with giving birth to Jesus and nurturing him in his childhood. But she was called to be also a disciple of his and take up her cross after him. By having done this, she was further or truly (menoun/μενοῦνγε) blessed (Lk 11:28). Mary understood that her faith was an ongoing process that required good works done in charity (agape) and grace for the sanctification or justification of her soul to be saved by serving God. In the order of grace, our Blessed Handmaid has exemplified what we must do to inherit eternal life: acts of sacrificial love (Mt 19:16-22).

Thus, God’s messenger greeted “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for [her] to do” (Eph 2:10). This was all made possible in anticipation of her Son who, through his suffering and death, merited the grace of justification and forgiveness for her by no preceding natural merit of her own outside the system of grace (Eph 2:8-9). And since no soul can ever hope to enter Heaven without having to suffer and die to self, Mary’s Fiat carried with it all the suffering and personal sorrow she would have to endure by her moral participation in the Incarnation to make temporal satisfaction to God for the sins of the world.

Our Blessed Lady didn’t receive the grace that was bestowed upon her in vain but invested it in the salvation of souls which required that she suffer in union with her Son’s suffering and anguish for the ungratefulness of sinners. Mary’s first trial of faith came soon after Jesus was born when she and her infant Son were forced to flee into Egypt because of King Herod’s decree (Mt 2:13-23). The shadow of the Cross descended on Mary in Bethlehem on a cold, inimical night where her pilgrimage of faith enshrouded in obscurity began. The manger was the door she stepped through after it had been opened at the Annunciation. Her joy in giving birth to the Messiah had to be qualified by her sorrow in giving new birth to humanity beneath the weight of the Cross (Rev 12:1-2).

Mary’s association with her Son required that she too suffer and die to her maternal self. For the redemption to be completed, Mary had to willingly endure all the sorrow that only a loving mother could for her offspring. And to make temporal satisfaction to God for the sins of the world, her motherly love was perhaps the only means by which God’s justice could be fully appeased. Our sorrowful Lady was called through the angel to make up for what was lacking in her Son’s afflictions in her own afflictions for the salvation of souls (Col 1:24). Jesus would make both temporal and eternal satisfaction to the Father for humankind’s sins, but not without the temporal satisfaction his mother must make to repair man’s broken relationship with God. Mary satisfied God, for she suffered in filial love of God who was offended by sin, with a motherly love for her Son who suffered and died because of sin, and with the love our heavenly Father had had for all humanity which was ravaged by sin ever since the fall of Adam and Eve.​

The truth is, by gladly accepting our suffering in the steadfast love of God in acknowledgment of our sins, our pain or loss becomes a fragrant offering to God and thereby a means of temporal satisfaction to Him for them. In fact, through suffering and dying to self, we may repair our broken relationship with God by restoring a measure of balance that was upset by the selfish pursuit of sinful gratification. God wills us to endure temporal punishments for our sins because His absolute justice and holiness demand it. “God rules the world in justice, and he judges the people with equity” (Ps 9:8). Human suffering is a temporal consequence of original sin, but Jesus has conferred redemptive value on this penalty for sin by his passion and death as the new Head or second Adam of humanity. We, the members of his Body, must follow our Lord and Saviour on the path that leads to Calvary if we hope to enter heaven by being cleansed of all remnants of sin and remitting our entire temporal debt of sin.

In and through Christ’s merits, our suffering has redemptive value provided we offer it to God in union with our Lord and Saviour for our sins with humble and contrite hearts over and against our natural desires which often result in the commission of sins. Mary helped make temporal reparation for the sins of the world possible by leading the way in the order of grace. The Lord was with his blessed mother when the angel greeted her because she was already willing to endure any cross God might present her with as a sin offering for others.

It was by means of suffering “that man should not perish but have eternal life.” By Christ’s death on the cross, spiritual death has been conquered and the second death is no longer an irrevocable prospect facing humankind. Suffering and death are in themselves evil in character, but our Lord and Saviour has made them a basis of something good. Suffering involves pain and loss because of sin, but when offered to God in union with Christ’s suffering and death, it can serve to reconcile us to God. Whenever we suffer or face death, we can give back to God that which we denied Him, viz., our love for the sake of His love and goodness. Those who have truly acknowledged their guilt before God and are contrite in spirit, accept their suffering and death to this world that temporally appease the Divine justice and renders the eternal satisfaction Christ has made for them personally applicable (Dan 12:10; Sirach 2:5; Zach 13:8-9; 1 Cor 3:15-17; Jude 1:23, etc.).

The Virgin Mary was sinless from the time God created her and endowed her with a fullness of sanctifying grace, but she could congruously merit for us temporal satisfaction to God for our sins because she accepted her pain and loss and offered her sorrow to God for them on our behalf. In our stead, she was sorry for the sins that had offended God and willing to make reparation for them because of her love of God who was grieved by our sins. God was pleased with her spiritual sacrifice and accepted it as a sweet oblation that was sufficient to temporally restore the equity of justice between Him and humankind in union with Christ’s temporal satisfaction in his humanity. Being the new Eve and ‘helpmate’ of the new Adam, Mary is our co-Redemptrix: “Mother with (cum) the Redeemer,” having merited the grace of redemption, not in co-ordination with her Son’s just merits but in cooperation with them.

Sin and death no longer have absolute power over us because of Christ’s work on the cross, and so we must now take up our own cross together with him if we hope to be saved (Matt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23). The faith that we must have to be saved is a repentant faith that involves doing penance by willingly making personal sacrifices and suffering for God because of our sins and those of others. We owe God so much for our offenses against His love and goodness. Jesus did not suffer and die for us so that we should no longer owe God what He rightly deserves from us and receives by our acts of self-denial – our “spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1-2).

Mary’s painful walk along the Via Dolorosa to the top of Calvary was her greatest act of worship to God. By having to sorrowfully watch her beloved Son suffer and die a cruel and shameful death, she offered up the greatest sacrifice to God any mother could have. Her Son’s suffering and death proved to be the heaviest cross she would ever have to carry so that everyone might be saved. She was chosen to be the mother of our Lord so that a sword should pierce her soul to temporally appease the Divine justice and open the gates for the formal application of her Son’s work of salvation. What Mary’s Son victoriously achieved by his passion and death was instrumentally applied to his most Blessed Mother because of her “faith working through love” which required suffering and dying to self. With her interior anguish and the death of her natural self joined to her Son’s paschal sacrifice, Jesus formally saved the world from sin and death. But only if we suffer together with Our Blessed Mother in the name of the Lord will our own salvation be instrumentally applied.

We must emulate Mary if we hope to have Christ’s merits instrumentally applied to us since she emulated her Son and shared in his paschal sacrifice of himself for the expiation of sin. Our Lady of Sorrows suffered and died with Jesus on Calvary so that we, too, might be saved through the many trials we may face in our lives. Our Lady of Fatima told the three shepherd children as a reminder to us all that no soul can enter heaven without having first suffered for God (Mk 8:35; Phil 3:8, etc.).

The women and the beloved Disciple who together were with Mary also suffered much anguish because of their love for Jesus, but with a love that paled in comparison with the perfect and unconditional love of a mother for her offspring. Our Blessed Mother had offered a sweet oblation that completely satisfied God and appeased Him for the sins that grieved Him: the blessed fruit of her womb. Thus, the temporal satisfaction she made for the remission of humankind’s temporal debt of sin was unsurpassed. In the order of grace, the Blessed Virgin Mary is our Mother of Mercy. And because of her impeccable perseverance in faith and moral courage in collaboration with God in His saving work, she is rightly the Queen of Apostles and of Martyrs.

St. Paul teaches us that we all have an active share in the work of redemption through suffering (subjective redemption). His teachings, together with those of St. Peter, provided hope and fortitude for the early Christians who were barbarously persecuted and martyred by the Romans. Paul assured his listeners that what they might suffer because of Christ’s name was all for the greater good. “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor 1:5). The “comfort” he is referring to is the share in Christ’s glory which can only be attained through suffering as our Lord suffered for the sake of God’s goodness and love in a humble spirit of self-sacrifice (objective redemption) – that is for the remission of the temporal debt of sin in union with our Lord’s temporal and eternal expiation. ​

Just as the apostle bore his tribulations in and through Christ together with all the faithful who had to suffer from persecutions for their “praise, honor, and glory,” so too was Mary called to endure the sorrow she had to face at the foot of the Cross to complete what only her Son could have gained for the world all alone if he had chosen. Her participation in her Son’s suffering was a spiritual service to mankind no less than the persecutions the apostles had to suffer in Christ’s name and for the sake of his gospel. Yet our Blessed Mother’s collaboration with her Son was of immeasurably greater value, for it belonged to the hypostatic order of Christ’s incarnation. Her spiritual work of mercy extended beyond ecclesial communities and embraced all humanity in the entire course of time.

And so it was that God ordained the world’s redemption should require Mary to stand before the Cross and to take it up herself by having to suffer interior anguish because of her love of God and hatred of sin. Temporally, she restored the equity of justice between God and mankind by collaborating with God in her sorrow in union with her Son’s afflictions. Mary’s sacrifice for sin in praise and thanksgiving was made on humanity’s behalf by restoring moral equilibrium between God and man since her sacrifice was made in humbleness of heart and in a broken spirit of humanity.

Our sorrowful Lady completed an act of contrition on behalf of us all while valiantly standing erect against the powers of darkness on Golgotha. Mary is the Queen of Virgins whose lamp never dimmed and became extinguished (Mt 25:1-13). The sanctifying light of faith that radiated from her soul strengthened her to overcome and defeat the dark spiritual forces that be. And so, Mary’s final perseverance in grace helped deliver humanity from the snares of death and restore it to new life with God.

The temporal remission of our debt to God, because of sin, which Mary gained for us beneath the Cross completed the eternal debt paid for us by her divine Son on the Cross. If the temporal atonement for sin Jesus made for humankind was all that was required, albeit its all-sufficiency, Mary’s suffering couldn’t have had any redemptive value. Her role as a mother and how she felt at the cross would have been strictly natural and moral in character with no supernatural and saving merit. In that case, our Lord wouldn’t have needed a mother at all to become a man. The dust of the earth could have served sufficiently for the creation of the new Adam without a helpmate (Gen 2:7).

Yet God willed that the Son should have a helpmate like the first Adam did, only she would be at enmity with the serpent and undo Eve’s transgression by crushing the head of the serpent with her immaculate foot (Gen 2:18; 3:15). Mary was chosen to repair all the minor incidents that led to Adam’s catastrophic fall from grace. The superabundance of God’s plan to redeem mankind wouldn’t have been perfect and complete without her moral participation. The serpent’s head couldn’t have been entirely crushed if his victory over the Woman and Adam’s helpmate had remained unresolved and he could forever gloat over it in his pride against God. The woman herself, too, would then have remained interminably at enmity with the serpent with no final resolution ever having been reached in Eve’s transgression. She did, after all, greatly contribute to the fall of her husband Adam as his unfaithful bride. ​

So, it had to take God’s faithful virgin bride to untie the sinful knot that Eve had made (Lk 1:35). The new Adam chose to justify humankind with the new Eve’s vindication of the woman. Eve stood before the tree which bore the forbidden fruit, and then something terrible happened to our spiritual detriment; the new Eve stood before the tree which bore the fruit of her womb so that where sin abounded, grace would abound even more to our spiritual benefit (Rom 5:20).

Mary is the prototype of the Church, for she was a woman of faith who was tried and proved to be as genuine as gold through suffering. When she stood beneath the Cross in sorrow by having to gaze upon her Son, who was “wounded for our transgressions,” she looked to him and tried to be like him: meek and humble of heart. Only then could our Blessed Mother have the fortitude and moral courage to take up her cross together with Jesus so that the Church should be born and comprised of redeemed humanity.

By being made of a woman, Jesus offered himself to the Father for the eternal expiation of sin, but his mother was called to suffer with him to cover its temporal debt on behalf of mankind. God forgave David for his mortal sins of murder and adultery, but He still took David’s child from him because of his sins (2 Sam 2:14). This was done to restore the equity of justice between them. David still owed God something in return for having taken something from Him, viz., His sovereign dignity, although his sins were forgiven. Our Blessed mother restored what sinful humanity had taken from God through pride and selfishness by suffering for our sake. 

Even though Jesus atoned for our sins more than sufficiently, suffering and death remained. This was because temporally mankind was still indebted to God for all its sins (past-present-future) which required that reparation be made for the remittance of its temporal debts. The purpose of satisfaction is to repair the offense given to God and make Him favorable to us again. An act of reparation can be satisfactory to God only if there is something painful about it.

Hence, in all righteousness and wisdom, God chose a morally courageous woman who would serenely and happily accept all the sorrows that should come her way so that He would be appeased in His justice. The Son should not have to redeem the world all alone with no moral responsibility on humanity’s part for its personal sins (sola Christo). And so that this woman should satisfactorily make temporal reparation for the world’s sins together with her Son’s temporal and thereby eternal expiation, she had to be a spotless ewe, a woman worthiest to be associated with the holy Lamb of God as his helpmate and the anti-type of Eve, our co-Peccatrix: “woman with (cum) the sinner. ” ​

The Blessed Virgin Mary was completely dead to this world and wasn’t the least bit anxious over anything we might naturally be obsessed with, such as honors, personal profits, and vain pleasures. Since the time Mary was of moral age and centered her life on the Torah, she was ever mindful of the things of God and not the things of this world. Living her life in a manner pleasing to God was always first and foremost on her mind. The glory of God was always the primary objective of whatever she did (1 Cor 10:31). Thus, since the earliest time, Christians have hailed Mary as the new Eve or spiritual “mother of all the living,” those who comprise redeemed humanity restored to the life of grace and the preternatural gifts of the Holy Spirit (Jn 19:26-27). It was from the Cross that our Lord gave her as a mother to us since she gave birth to us by the Cross after having conceived and borne her Son and our brother in its shadow.

“Adam had to be recapitulated in Christ, so that death might be swallowed up
in immortality, and Eve in Mary, so that the Virgin, having become another
virgin’s advocate, might destroy and abolish one virgin’s disobedience by
the obedience of another virgin.”
St. Irenaeus,
Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 33
(AD 190)

Sing, barren woman,
you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy,
you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate
woman than of her who has a husband,
says the Lord.

Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.

For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
your descendants will dispossess nations
and settle in their desolate cities.
Isaiah 54, 1-3

Salve Regina Caeli