(Sharing at the Novena to Our Mother of
Perpetual Help on 19 Nov 2011)
Dear brothers
and sisters in Christ,
Continuing with
our theme Mary and the Church, today we shall delve into Mary’s role in man’s redemption.
Does Mary play a part in our redemption? While the Church teaches that she
does, non-Catholics maintain that man’s salvation is solely the work of Jesus
Christ. As Marian devotees, it is good for us to understand better the Church’s
teachings on this.
First of all,
God’s plan for our salvation is eternal. Quoting St. Paul and Vatican II,
Blessed John Paul II highlighted in the encyclical, Redemptoris Mater (RM), that since the fall of Adam and Eve, Mary
was “already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent…” (LG, #55, cf. Gen.3:15) He
wrote:
In
the mystery of Christ she 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.’ (RM, #8)
‘…from the first moment of her conception … she belonged to Christ,
sharing in the salvific and sanctifying grace and in that love which… (originates)
in the "Beloved," the Son of the Eternal Father, who through the
Incarnation became her own Son. (RM, #10)
The Incarnation
thus marks the “fullness of time” when God’s promise to man after original sin
was fulfilled (RM, #11). The Son of God came “born of woman, born under the law…
so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (RM, #1 cf. Gal. 4:4-5)
Vatican II says: "The
Father of mercies willed that the consent of the predestined Mother should
precede the Incarnation." (LG, #56) Thus,
it was God’s pleasure to give Mary the freedom to choose whether to cooperate
in His plan for man’s salvation. This was realised at the Annunciation, when
she freely consented to God’s request of her announced by the angel Gabriel.
Accordingly, Fr. Neuner (2004) calls this a topic of Mary’s cooperation, where
God’s sovereignty meets human freedom. It is the heart of all theology. (p.
114) He directed us to Vatican II, which describes Mary as “freely cooperating in the work of human
salvation through faith and obedience.” (LG, #56) Because
our salvation is God’s free gift of His love, it must include human dignity and
freedom. This inclusion in achieving God’s plans does not diminish His absolute
sovereignty, but rather makes it fully effective. We see in the biblical
accounts of the covenant how God realises His designs with Israel and all
creation not through force, but through free interplay of His creature’s
freedom. (Neuner, 2004)
How involved is
Mary in our redemption? Is it only by her free consent and giving Jesus the
human body? Fr. Neuner (2004) wrote that by God’s design, Mary is drawn into
Jesus’ life not only through physical motherhood, but also by sharing His life
and saving mission (p. 45). By her fiat,
she accepts her own place in His life and mission and consecrates herself “to
the person and work of her Son” so that she “serves him in the mystery of
redemption.” (Neuner, 2004, pp. 45, 115; cf. LG, #56) Her fiat-"let it be to me"-enabled her Son’s desire to do
God’s will (cf. Heb. 10: 5-7) to be granted only on the human level, but the
crowning moment of Mary’s motherhood in the salvific economy of grace is
Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross (RM, #23), Blessed John Paul II wrote.
To understand
Mary’s place in our salvation, Fr. Neuner proposes to re-look into Jesus’
redemptive mission in the light of His whole person and work, His mission and
message, death and resurrection. Obeying His Father, Jesus accepts solidarity
with us broken humans, sharing our condition, struggle, failure and death. (I
quote Fr. Neuner) “Jesus is Saviour by being both with His Father and with us
in His life, death and resurrection.” (Neuner, 2004 , p.117) In short, (from
Fr. Keyes, citing St. Irenaeus), Jesus is Saviour by being fully divine and
fully human (Irenaeus as cited in Keyes). Based on St. Paul, Fr. Keyes wrote: “It
was because of the fact that the Redeemer had associated himself so closely
with Adam, that he was able, in himself, to re-establish or re-create all
things.”
St. Irenaeus
explained how the death of mankind is transformed into salvation by emphasising
on the Adam-Christ analogy with the paralegal of Eve and Mary (Keyes). He
placed great importance on the parallels between Adam and Christ and between Eve
and Mary, stressing that this is God’s analogy; God accomplished every detail
of His work to preserve the analogy. (Keyes)
References:
John Paul II. (25 March 1987). Redemptoris
Mater.
Keyes, J. (n.d.) Mariology in the Fathers of
the Second Century. Retrieved from http://www.rc.net/oakland/cpps/mariology.pdf
on 19 October 2011
Neuner, J. (2004). Mary – Mother
of the Saviour. Bangalore: Theological Publications in India.
Vatican Council II. (21 November 1964).
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium.
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