Whoever is in Christ is a new creation:

   the old things have passed away;

   behold, new things have come.

And all this is from God,

   who has reconciled us to himself through Christ

   and given us the ministry of reconciliation,

   namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,

   not counting their trespasses against them

   and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So we are ambassadors for Christ,

   as if God were appealing through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ,

   be reconciled to God.

For our sake God made Christ to be sin who did not know sin,

   so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.

 

 

The acts by which Mary enters so deeply into Christ’s work of salvation are, in their full extent, the work of Christ’s grace. Mary therefore is not on a level with Christ, nor on our own level, but at a point between the two. Christ alone is redeemer of all, and thus foremost of Mary, the first of the redeemed; he alone is God, he alone died, he alone consummated the sacrifice by his resurrection and return to the father, his entry into the sanctuary of heaven, according to the theology of the Letter to the Hebrews. Mary participates in the redemption by a limited title, through her compassion and the value God attached to it: what Pius X called a merit of fittingness (de congruo). In other words, by a title of singular friendship with God she merited what Christ merited in strict justice on a footing of personal equality with God. Other Christians did not participate in this fundamental accomplishment, though they cooperate, by a limited merit, in the spreading of the Redemption. When we merit our salvation, we owe our en- tire merit to Christ’s grace. When the Virgin Mary, in Christ, merits the salvation of all, she owes this entire merit to the same grace of Christ. These merits of the redeemed do not at all subtract from the universal power of the Redemption; on the contrary, they attest, in the supreme degree, to the transforming power of that Redemption which raises men to the level of becoming “fellow workers with God” (1 Cor. 3:9). What Mary had said in the Magnificat is true on Cal- vary more than ever before: the “Almighty” has “wrought great things” in her (Lk. 1:49).°

 

Here again, therefore, Mary is seen entirely in relation to Christ. Less recognition has been given to the complementary truth that she is also entirely relative to the Holy Spirit. She acts in dependence on him. The title of “coredemptrix” which was coined for her and widely attributed to her by Mariologists, though not retained by the papal magisterium or by Vatican II, would fit the Holy Spirit in the primary and strictest sense of the term; for he is the Spirit of Christ, and by his anointing and breath the whole saving work of the Redeemer is animated. The title ““co- Redeemer" would aptly describe him, according to a divine equality that would give full force to the prefix ‘“‘co-”. Mary owes the fact that she was able to communicate in this sacrifice to the Holy Spirit, who not only cooperated in the essential work by his anointing, but also divinely stirred up the cooperation of the first of the redeemed. With him who is “co-Redeemer”’ she contracts this new bond at the time of the essential sacrifice. The Spirit had urged her on to Calvary so that she might stand there as the first fruits of the cooperating Church, at the very hour when the sign of the Church was to appear from the pierced side of the Savior (Jn. 19:34)

 

As type of the Church on Calvary, then, Mary acquires a new claim to be mother of  men. While Christ effectively becomes their head in meriting the Redemption, she effectively becomes their mother in being associated in this universal merit. It is the hour when Jesus declared her motherhood: ‘Mother, this is your son” (Cf. Jn. 19:26).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lord our God, through the Precious Blood of your Son

you reconciled the world to yourself 

and at the foot of his Cross

you chose the Blessed Virgin Mary

to be the Mother of reconciliation for sinners;

grant through her intercession

that we may obtain pardon for our sins.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Mother of Reconciliation)