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By Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins
In his Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Mater the Servant of God Pope John Paul II shared some truly profound insights into the mystery which we celebrate today. Let us recall that a mystery in the theological sense is a truth of faith so profound that our human minds can never fully exhaust it, yet at the same time a truth which our spirits can continue to apprehend in ever deeper ways—ways which can consequently draw us into ever more profound "praise of the glory of his grace" (Eph. 1:6). Perhaps the single most striking and concise of the late Pope’s insights is this: "In the mystery of Christ she [Mary] is present even ‘before the creation of the world,’ as the one whom the Father ‘has chosen’ as Mother of his Son in the Incarnation" (Redemptoris Mater, no. 8).
"Mary is present in the mystery of Christ even ‘before the creation of the world.’" What does this mean? It means that in the eternal plans of God—even before the world was created—Mary was contemplated along with the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. From all eternity the Father willed that his Son would take on our flesh and become the crown of creation, and he willed that this would come about through Mary.
This is a truth which had been taught for centuries, especially by the sons of St. Francis of Assisi, and which was solemnly stated for the first time in Church teaching by Blessed Pope Pius IX when he proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Pius stated that "by one and the same divine decree God established the origin of Mary and the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom." There is, then, what the Catholic Tradition calls "an indissoluble bond between Jesus and Mary" that existed in the plans of God before time began.
Wholly Exceptional and Unique
In continuing to meditate on this fact, John Paul wrote that, if this choosing or election of Mary to be the Mother of Christ
is fundamental for the accomplishment of God’s salvific designs for humanity, and if the eternal choice in Christ and the vocation to the dignity of adopted children is the destiny of everyone, then the election of Mary is wholly exceptional and unique. Hence also the singularity and uniqueness of her place in the mystery of Christ. (Redemptoris Mater, no. 9)
Here the Pope underscores a fact which St. Paul presents to us in today’s second reading: Since God chose all of us in Christ "before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him" (cf. Eph. 1:4), then He also most certainly chose and prepared she who was to be indissolubly linked to Christ’s becoming man in a way which was "wholly exceptional and unique."
This "wholly exceptional and unique" preparation of Mary is precisely what the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, came to understand as her Immaculate Conception. Precisely in the light of today’s second reading Pope John Paul II explained this truth of faith that we are celebrating today:
According to the belief formulated in solemn documents of the Church, this "glory of grace" is manifested in the Mother of God through the fact that she has been "redeemed in a more sublime manner." By virtue of the richness of the grace of the beloved Son, by reason of the redemptive merits of him who willed to become her Son, Mary was preserved from the inheritance of original sin. In this way, from the first moment of her conception—which is to say of her existence—she belonged to Christ, sharing in the salvific and sanctifying grace and in that love which has its beginning in the "Beloved." (Redemptoris Mater, no. 10)
Beyond the Threshold of Original Sin
In his homily for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1987, the same year in which he published the encyclical Redemptoris Mater, the Pope offered some further reflections on this mystery of our faith
To draw near to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Mary we must go beyond the threshold of the original sin of which we read in the Book of Genesis. Even more, we must go beyond the threshold of human history. We must go back before time began, "before the foundation of the world," and locate ourselves in the inscrutable "dimension" of God himself. In a certain sense, "in the pure dimension" of the eternal election by which we were all embraced in Jesus Christ: In the Eternal-Word Son, who became man in the fullness of time. In Him we are chosen for holiness, that is for grace, "to be holy and blameless before him."
Who is chosen better and more fully than the one whom the Angel calls "full of grace!" Is it not precisely she who is most fully chosen, among all who have descended from Adam, to be "holy and blameless" before God?
The implications of this truth, which existed in the mind of God from all eternity, were only drawn out in the course of centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From the earliest days of the Church’s life there was a kind of intuitive grasp that the one who bore the Son of God in her womb had to be holy and that, indeed, she truly was "full of grace" according to the words of the Angel Gabriel’s greeting (Lk. 1:28). The stumbling block or theological problem that emerged was that, if all men inherit original sin from our first parents, then Mary, too, was subject to original sin and had to be redeemed by her Son.
The great breakthrough came with Blessed John Duns Scotus (+ 1308) who argued that "preservative" redemption was even greater than "liberative" redemption, in other words that Christ, the perfect mediator, exercised the highest act of mediation precisely in Mary, by preserving her from original sin. This is exactly what Pope John Paul II underlined in stating that Mary was "redeemed in a more sublime manner." Foreseeing the merits to be won by Christ on the Cross, God applied them to Mary so that she would be a worthy dwelling place for her Son and so that she could collaborate with Him in the work of our redemption.
This, indeed, is exactly what we are told in today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis, that God would put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between his offspring and hers (Gen. 3:15). And here is a truly awesome dimension of the mystery: By the foreseen merits of Christ Mary was preserved free from original sin so that as the "New Eve" she could triumph over the serpent with Christ, the "New Adam" in helping to bring about our redemption! The Servant of God Pope Pius XII offered a profound insight into this reality in his 1953 Encyclical Fulgens Corona:
If at a given moment the Blessed Virgin Mary had been left without divine grace, because she was defiled at her conception by the hereditary stain of sin, between her and the serpent there would no longer have been—at least during this period of time, however brief—that eternal enmity spoken of in the earliest tradition up to the definition of the Immaculate Conception, but rather a certain enslavement.
True, Mary’s collaboration is always dependent upon that of Christ, just as her Immaculate Conception is dependent upon Him, and yet at the same time, enabled by the grace of her Immaculate Conception, she was an active participant in the great work of our salvation.
Choosing One to Bless All
Of course, there are always those who think or say: "Why should I get excited about this special grace given to Mary? Why didn’t God exempt all of us from inheriting original sin?" I think that here the most fundamental response is that God’s special choice of a person is never exclusive. When God chooses one, He does so in order to bless all. That was the case with the choice of Abraham, with Moses, with David, with the prophets. He gave them special gifts for the sake of all, so that all might be blessed through them.
In today’s second reading St. Paul tells us that "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him" (Eph. 1:3). This choosing of us in Christ came about through Mary. This is so because in speaking of Christ, St. Paul is speaking of the God-Man, not the Eternal Son of the Father before the Incarnation. He is speaking about the Word made Flesh and the Word made Flesh came to us through Mary.
Today, then, we rejoice in Mary’s all-holiness, in her holiness from the first moment of her existence, because it prefigures the holiness that God has willed for each one of us. Her Immaculate Conception was a singular grace given to her that has everything to do with the grace that is freely offered to us in the Sacraments and in every moment of our lives. John Paul II put this very beautifully: "In the soul of this ‘daughter of Sion’ there is manifested, in a sense, all the ‘glory of grace,’ that grace which ‘the Father . . . has given us in his beloved Son’" (Redemptoris Mater, no. 8). Before God and before all of humanity, she remains, said the same Pontiff,
As the unchangeable and inviolable sign of God’s election, spoken of in Paul’s letter: "in Christ . . . he chose us . . . before the foundation of the world . . . he destined us . . . to be his sons" (Eph. 1:4, 5). This election is more powerful than any experience of evil and sin, than all that "enmity" which marks the history of man. In this history Mary remains a sign of sure hope. (Redemptoris Mater, no. 11) |
