|
11.
Mediatrix of Grace
THE
PARISIAN mobs who in 1843 shot to death Archbishop Affré and in 1870
indecently murdered Archbishop Darboy had meant no less drastic an end for
their predecessor in office. But Archbishop de Quélen escaped them. They
overtook him, thinking they had him captured. They did not have. He
evaded them again. He survived the revolution of 1830. Why?
It would have to seem, in view of the ferocity
of his pursuers and the normal inadequacy of one man against an organized
mob, that he enjoyed a special unseen protection. Let it be recalled, he
was to be a key figure in the story of the Miraculous Medal. Another in
his office might have served the purpose as well, and then again might not
have. There can exist between one bishop and the next a divergence as
wide as the breach between St. Cyril of Alexandria and Patriarch Nestorius
of the neighboring see. Heaven could rely on Archbishop de Quélen of
Paris.
The Mother of God in all her apparitional
requests, whether for a chapel here, a basilica there, a scapular then, a
medal now, invariably instructed her seers to obtain in advance the
approbation of the proper ecclesiastical authority. Our Lady of Guadalupe
advised Juan Diego to carry her petition for a shrine on Tepeyac Hill
directly to the bishop-elect in nearby Mexico City. Our Lady of Lourdes
was content to have Bernadette, whose village lay nowhere near the
Episcopal residence, to consult with the pastor. But always the emissary
must act under the supervision of the Church. Our Lady in all her
apparitions respected the institutional Church which her Son had founded.
Yet she could not have respected the Church more ardently than heaven
respected her, and if Archbishop de Quélen was to be the man to sanction
and promulgate devotion to her Miraculous Medal, there was no problem in a
heaven of myriads upon myriads of angels to keep him protectively alive
until he did. A mere glance from Michael alone could overpower a regiment
of ruffians, befuddle their captain.
St. Catherine was only obeying her Vision when
she confided in her spiritual director, told him of the request from the
Blessed Virgin and asked him to secure from the chancery the needed
approval for the medal. That is what Father John Aladel did; not at once;
he proceeded cautiously. But after two years, most of which time was
taken up by the delays on the part of the priest, the permission from the
archbishop to have the medal struck and circulated was granted. His
Excellency had never met the visionary herself and when she refused his
invitation through her confessor to visit him at his residence because the
Blessed Virgin wanted her to remain incognito during her life, he
respected the refusal. He respected the wishes of the Blessed Virgin. He
admired her prerogatives, and since the Miraculous Medal would advertise
two of these it won his approbation. He became its advocate.
But if its message features two of her
prerogatives, which it plainly does, why did Archbishop de Quélen
concentrate on the furtherance of one to the neglect of the other?
Neglect is not the right word. His utterances reveal his concern over
both prerogatives. They prove he was not indifferent to Mary's
coredemptional and mediatory role in the economy of salvation when he used
his influence with the Holy See to have her Immaculate Conception defined
a dogma. Doctrines are defined one at a time, when the demand arises.
Nor do those already defined detract from those yet to be. They are all
complementary. The Council of Ephesus did not slight the Virgin Mary in
proclaiming her perpetual virginity, and in establishing her divine
maternity a dogma could with confidence leave the other doctrine to a
future council for the same definitional treatment. It was not a
misplaced confidence. A future council so obliged.
The old saying, "to select one from among many
is to reject the others," does not hold true of the Church whenever she
chooses a doctrine from her body of truths to define. She rejects none of
them. Her Council of Nicaea was not rejecting the divinity of the Holy
Spirit because under stress of an emergency it defined the divinity of the
Second Person of the Trinity. The Church went on baptizing in the Name of
the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Then, as soon as another
uprising of heretics in their errant folly degraded the Third Person to
the status of a creature, they in turn drew the repudiation of Pope St.
Damasus. "If anyone does not say," he decreed, "that the Holy Spirit is
truly and properly from the Father, just as the Son is, and that he is of
divine substance and truly God, let him be anathema." Let him be damned,
let him go to hell, would be an adequate Anglo-Saxon translation. Better
than the softer Greek word, it would convey the uncompromising tenacity
with which the Church upholds the coequality of the Three Divine Persons.
Her Nicene Creed promptly and compliantly added an insertion, which the
Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople ratified, that the Holy Spirit
"with the Father and the Son" is to be adored and glorified.
But nothing more neatly illustrates the
impartiality of the Church toward her truths than the enthusiasm with
which Pope Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception without in the least
playing down the yet undefined position of Mary as reparatrix, mediatrix,
conciliatrix. "Our hope," the defining pontiff let it be known, "do we
repose in the Blessed Virgin, in the all-fair and immaculate one who has
crushed the serpent's poisonous head . . . who with her only begotten Son
is the most powerful mediatrix and conciliatrix in the whole world." He
also called her reparatrix because the Fathers had so named her,
since she had repaired the damage done by Eve. The pope of the Immaculate
Conception well understood that her being the reparatrix implied her
mediatory role. And he had all along been saying as much. Five years
before his famous definition, he published an encyclical which states his
mind quite evidently to his heart's content: "God has committed to Mary
the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that
through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For
this is his will, that we obtain everything through Mary."
Pope Pius was saying nothing that had not been
said by the earliest Fathers. St. Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho
and St. Irenaeus in his treatise Against Heresies went to some
pains to establish the comparison that, as Eve had succumbed to the guile
of the serpent to become an agent in our downfall, so Mary in heeding
God's angel and consenting to offer the hospitality of her womb to the
Infant Redeemer because thereby a secondary agent not just in the act of
redemption but also in the distribution of its fruits to the end of time.
Newman, at work on his Development of Christine Doctrine, was taken
by surprise time and again to see how consistently the pope at Rome, in
whatever age, spoke the patristic mind. When Pius IX, his contemporary,
reaffirmed from the Fathers the inseparable alliance between her Divine
Son and the Virgin Mary in their total war on Satan, an alliance that
recommends her immaculate conception and co-mediation, it made perfect
sense to the Oxford convert who already knew "the enmity was to exist, not
only between the serpent and the Seed of the woman, but between the
serpent and the Woman herself." She was to be, accordingly, engaged in
the history of salvation until the final defeat of Satan on doomsday.
Pope Leo XIII, following his predecessor in
more than just the office, explains already in the first of his frequent
Marian encyclicals: "The Virgin who had no part in original sin, having
been chosen to be the Mother of God, because of that very fact was given a
share in the work of saving the human race." Eleven years later, not to
mention his returns to the theme during the interval, he writes that "when
Mary offered herself completely to God together with her Son in the
Temple, she was already sharing with him the painful atonement on behalf
of the human race." On Mount Calvary, "out of her immense love for us . .
. she willingly offered him up to the divine justice, dying with him in
her heart, pierced by the sword of sorrow." Nor does Pope Leo fail to
stress, in still another encyclical, the double aspect of her role.
Having co-operated "in the sacrament of man's Redemption," he infers, she
would likewise co-operate "in the dispensation of graces deriving from
it." In a previous encyclical of 1891 he speaks out proudly of "our
glorious intermediary," insisting that she was so considered "by the holy
Apostles and the earliest believers. It was also the belief and teaching
of the venerable Fathers of the Church."
It certainly was. Epiphanius, Ambrose, Jerome,
Ephrem, Peter Chrysologus, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodotus of Ancyra,
Augustine, together with Justin and Irenaeus, form a solidarity of early
theological testimony. Out of an abundance that discourages any sampling
of it at length, at least let it be mentioned that St. Cyril electrified
the Council of Ephesus with his salute to the Mother of the only-begotten
Son of God through whose dispensation of graces "devils are put to flight,
. . . the fallen are taken up to heaven, . . . nations are brought to
repentance." St. Ephrem uses of Mary the very terms still in use,
"Dispenser of all gifts" and "Mediatrix of the whole world." And St.
Ambrose, dwelling on the coredemptional side of the doctrine does not mind
being repetitious about the fact that "a virgin begot the salvation of the
world" and "conceived the redemption of all men" and "stood before the
cross and with reverent gaze beheld her Son's wounds, for she awaited not
her child's death but the world's salvation." None from that foregoing
litany of sacred writers would have shied away from the prayer at Mass, in
the old Franciscan missal: "Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator before the
Father, you have made the most blessed Virgin, your Mother and ours, a
mediator before you. May everyone who comes to you seeking benefits
rejoice at receiving all through her."
Following the Patristic Age, theology underwent
no decrease of fervor toward the doctrine but rather a sharpening clarity
of statement. "No one obtains salvation except through you" could not
tell the Mother of our Savior more plainly that she is by his choice our
Coredemptrix. But St. Bernard goes further than St. Germaine, to cover
both phases of the prerogative. And he does it no less clearly: "God has
placed in Mary the plenitude of every good, in order to have us understand
that if there is any trace of hope in us, of grace, of salvation,
it flows from her." Peter Damian, Anthony of Padua, Bonaventure, Peter
Canisius, Thomas of Villanova, Robert Bellarmine, Francis de Sales, John
Eudes, Leonard of Port Maurice, Alphonsus Liguori, Louis de Montfort are
only the canonized from among the medieval and later theologians who have
vied with St. Bernard and sometimes even surpassed him in propounding the
doctrine. St. Bernardine, not to omit this other Doctor of Mary's
Mediation, explains the process by which the graces are bestowed: "From
God they flow to Christ, from Christ to his Mother, and from her to the
Church." Coming from their Divine Source, "they are administered through
her hands to whom she pleases, when she pleases, as she pleases, and as
much as she pleases."
Lavish diction is that. Yet Pope Leo XIII did
it the honor of quoting it and St. Louis de Montfort paraphrased it in his
classic True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They respected a
distinction, to be sure: the distinction that, if grace flows to us
through Mary, it comes to her from God. It would have been blasphemy if
they had not, and drawn a censure. "Far be it from us," writes Pope Pius
X of the important distinction, "to attribute to the Mother of God the
power of producing supernatural grace when this power belongs to God
alone." No, he quotes St. Bernard as saying, Christ is the source, Mary
but the channel. As if the saintly pontiff did not himself know! He was
only bringing in the ancient authority to indicate the timeless continuity
of the belief. Twenty-nine years later, in an allocution on August 15,
1933, another Pope Pius was saying it all over again: "Although grace
comes from God, it is given through Mary, our advocate and mediatrix."
But St. Paul distinctly says "there is one
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a
ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:5-6). The Church agrees. Her liturgy for Holy
Week, aside from the decrees of her Magisterium, eloquently proves her
agreement. However, St. Paul does not outlaw a subsidiary mediation.
Does he not in the very same letter to Timothy, which has just been
quoted, urge of the faithful to pray, intercede, offer up thanksgiving for
all men? He indisputably does, not only in the same letter but in the
first verse of the same chapter. The whole tenor of his writings is in
harmony with what Pope Benedict XV said of the paragon of all the
subservient mediators under Christ: "To such extent did she suffer and
almost die with her suffering and dying Son for man's salvation, and
(insofar as she could) immolated him to appease the justice of God, that
we might rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ."
Pope Pius XI has the word for her. It occurs in his radio address of
April 28, 1935, the nineteenth centennial of the Crucifixion of our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. It lights up the sentence: "She stood beside
him, suffering with him as a Coredemptrix." For that matter, Pope Leo
XIII had used the word of Mary in his encyclical Jucunda Semper.
The word does not mean Redeemer; that
would be blasphemy to say; it means a mere but genuine co-operator with
Christ. His sacrifice on the cross was sufficient of itself to redeem the
world, but in accord with his Father's will Jesus accepted from his Mother
the union of her own sufferings with him as a fitting gesture from our
creaturehood. There is more here than at first meets the mind.
Let us give it closer thought. If and since
the divine Person of Christ atoned for the sins of the race, dying in his
human nature, then the accompanying sacrifice of the one perfect human
person would appropriately embellish the atonement. Her sufferings would
adequately represent our sheer humanity. And why should not our sheer
humanity contribute, if only subserviently, to its redemption? The
argument looks to St. Paul for support. He obliges. "Now I rejoice in my
sufferings for your sake," he confides to the Colossians, "and in my flesh
I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his
body, that is, the Church" (Col. 1:24).
Complete what is lacking? St. Paul knew
full well that the Passion lacked nothing essential to atonement, but that
in the Church her members by suffering in the name of Jesus could help
obtain for other members the fruits of his redemption. For while Christ
opened heaven to all mankind, the individual must meet the requirements.
And those who do, including the dying child who has been made worthy by
baptism, owe the grace in part to the action of others on their behalf.
Intercessory suffering, such as St. Paul's for the Colossians, and
intercessory prayer, such as St. Stephen's for St. Paul himself, all
through Scripture are shown to have gained God's grace for many a soul.
What are such intercessors but mediaries?
But on a lower scale than the Virgin Mary. She
is, to use the patristic term, "the Mediatrix of all mediators" under
Christ. "In vain would a person ask other saints for a favor," says St.
Bernard, "if Mary did not interpose to obtain it." No favor that any of
the blessed in heaven obtains for a client but what the Mother of God has
a hand in it. Not even an angel as great as Michael, or Raphael, who are
both scripturally described as mediators, can outdo her intercessory
power. They subserve it. They complement it. She takes the lead.
"Whenever the most sacred Virgin goes to God to intercede for us," puts in
St. Bonaventure, "she, as Queen, commands all the angels and saints to
accompany her and unite their prayers with hers."
The devil's advocate, whose duty it was to find
reasons why Joan of Arc should not be canonized, protested one of the two
required miracles that had been certified as hers. He argued that, since
Theresa Belin had been suddenly cured of her naturally incurable
malignancy at Lourdes, even though the patient had prayed for the favor to
Joan, the miracle ought to be credited to Our Lady of Lourdes. Not
exclusively, decided Pope Benedict XV: it must be credited to both.
Every grace, every gift, every miracle even, which is received through the
mediation of saint or angel, he declared, must come through Mary as well.
Queen of angels and of saints, she has the right from her divine Son to be
called by her patristic name, which Pope Benedict used of her, "the
Mediatrix of all mediators." Needless to add, the lesser mediaries are
not thereby nullified. Joan had a genuine share in the joint mediation
with Mary, so that she did not have the miracle taken away from her. Pope
Benedict canonized her.
Another pope who canonized another saint
responded no differently under a similar circumstance. The saint had
obtained for him a recovery of health, which his physician could not do,
and he expressed his gratitude. But he knew she had had help. Using the
customary pontifical plural, Pius XI wrote in his 1937 encyclical on the
rosary that "this grace we attribute to the special intercession of the
virgin of Lisieux, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, but we know nonetheless
that all things are given to us by the great and good God through the
hands of His Mother."
This principle of having lesser agents to
transact God's business in the world runs throughout the divine economy.
His truths stand revealed on the pages of Holy Writ, but a human hand put
them all down. He absolves the penitent through his priest. He
administers every sacrament through an intermediary. If the Creator of
the oak lets the acorn work for him, the same Creator of every baby leaves
it to the parents to procreate its body. And just so, does "the one
Mediator between God and men" channel his graces through His mother.
Others of the blessed may have a share of their own in her mediation, but
always it is hers whether they have a share in it or not. With a
pardonable redundancy does Pope Leo XIII repeat the same old axiom:
"Nothing at all from the immense treasury of all grace, which the Lord has
accumulated, comes to us except through Mary."
The Gospels, from which the encyclicals derive
the idea, in striking episodes show Mary the medium of grace. She
conceived of the Holy Spirit to bear and bring forth the Source of all
grace, the Savior of the world. She carried the Child within her to her
cousin's house and at her approach "Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit" and "the babe leaped in her womb," purified of original sin (Lk.
1:41). At Cana, it was surely his mother who was instrumental in
obtaining from Jesus the miracle which "manifested his glory" so that "his
disciples believed in him" (Jn: 2:11). In the cenacle at Jerusalem while
the apostles prayed for the descent of the Holy Spirit, the inspired
writer takes care to add, Mary the Mother of Jesus was there among them
(Acts 1:14).
She will remain to the end of time our
Mediatrix of graces because of her inseparable association with our
Savior. He, the Son of God, and none other, redeemed the human race: that
is the unalterable truth. But so is this: he was no less the Son of Mary,
and his Precious Blood which saved the world came all from her. Heaven
had not coerced her motherhood. Remaining a virgin, would she accept the
divine Child? Would she bear for mankind its Redeemer? Would she consent
to the heavy responsibility, the pangs of grief, that would go with such a
role in a sinful world? No matter the cost, she would. Accepting the
dignity, she accepted the burden.
Within months her will to suffer in accord with
God's designs was put to a test. She may not have known of Joseph's
secret plan to break their betrothal, yet must have suspected his
anxiety. She left it to heaven to reveal to him the holy truth. Riding a
beast of burden from Nazareth over a distance of some ninety miles could
not have been easy for one in her condition; not a word of complaint has
been reported of her, she was dutifully obliging the prophet Micah by
going to Bethlehem to have the sacred birth. Having borne her Baby in a
cave for cattle, she could not but have felt the further outrage to her
maternal love that a wicked king meant so soon to have the life of so
adorable a Child. Without a whimper she obeyed the angel's behest to
Joseph and with the Child accompanied Joseph into Egypt. Twelve years
later she experienced the anguish of having lost the Boy and, when she
found him in the Temple, his words that their relationship must not keep
him from his Father's primary interests did not annoy her. She accepted
them with the pang they sent into her mother's heart. She did not
contradict the Son of God. Nor did she try to talk him out of leaving
home after thirty years of an abiding intimacy with her, although her
maternity clamored silently for him to stay. Throughout his life with her
she was being prepared to suffer with him the Sacrifice on Mount Calvary.
Forewarned by the prophet, her every aspiration attuned to the divine
Will, she welcomed into her soul the ultimate grief. Suffering as no
mother ever had suffered, she did not swoon or carry on hysterically at
the cross. She stood erect. She did not shrink from the living
martyrdom. She willed it. "Free from sin, original and personal, always
most intimately united with her Son, as another Eve she offered him on
Golgotha to the Eternal Father for all the children of Adam (sin-stained
by his fall), and her mother's rights and mother's love were included in
the holocaust."
There, from one of her knowing clients, we have
the truth. The statement sets well in the context from which it has been
quoted. For in his epilogue to the Mystical Body Pope Pius XII
explains Mary's indispensable role in the Church and in the world. He
would have us understand that our Coredemptrix did not exhaust her
solicitude for us on Mount Calvary. She still waits to be addressed in
the words of her litany, eager to heed the appeal: "Mother of divine
grace, pray for us." |