The great Pius XII in his “Ci riesce” remarked: “Can it be that in
definite circumstances, He [God] does not give to any man the mandate,
does not impose the obligation, does not, finally, give any right to
impede or to repress that which is erroneous or false? A look at reality
give an affirmative answer.” The Pope went on to appeal to the parable of
the wheat and the cockle. In it the servants wanted to pull up the weeds
at once. The master told them to wait for the harvest, lest in pulling up
the weeds, they might pull up the good crop too.
Pius XI, in his great Encyclical on the Kingship of Christ, told us: “When
He was on earth, He completely abstained from exercising this power, and,
just as He once disdained the possession and management of human affairs,
so both then and today He leaves these to those who hold it [the power].
Hence there is that fine saying, ‘He does not take away mortal rules, who
gives heavenly rules.’ (DS 3679)”
His true power, as we said, is exercised by His love, of which Pius XII
wrote so splendidly in His Encyclical on the Sacred Heart. For Christ has,
as the Pope explained, a triple love - that love which He has as a Divine
Person - and also the love for us found in the attitude of His human will
which wills good to us - and even in the love of feeling which He had and
has in His humanity.
When we turn to the Queenship of Our Lady, the teaching of the Church is
very clear, especially in the “Bendito seia,” of Pius XII, Radiomessage to
Fatima, May 13, 1946, AAS 38. 266: “Jesus is king of the Eternal Ages by
nature and by right of conquest; through Him, with Him, and subordinate to
Him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest
and by singular choice [of the Father].”
Can we find the same teaching in Scripture? Definitely yes. We begin by
noting that out of the four titles for Queenship given by Pius XII, two
are the most essential, namely, divine relationship, and by right of
conquest.
The first is obvious: she is Queen because she is the Mother of the
Creator, for her Son, as divine, is the Creator. So that is divine
relationship.
The second title is, “by right of conquest.” This means cooperation in the
redemption and, further, since the Pope gave a triple expression to her
subordination to and dependence on Him, we should not expect that any
other limitation is left understood. So it means that, under Him, she
shared in redeeming us.
Already Genesis 3:15, as we saw, was messianic, and so she was contained
in it as the Mother of the Messiah - who was thought of as King. But that
text of Genesis in the light of the Targums, also speaks of a victory over
the serpent. This really implied cooperation in the redemption. Since the
Church understands that she was contained in the text, and since Pius XII
in “Fulgens corona,” of Sept. 8, 1953 explicitly says that this text is
the foundation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception - if the
Church can see this, she, full of grace, saw it too, and hence since the
Church sees Immaculate Conception in it, she must have seen it too. So she
must have known that she was the woman who would share in the victory.
We could examine other messianic prophecies, and see her at least implied
in many, but we wish to go ahead to clarify her cooperation in the
redemption, even on Calvary.
Now Jeremiah 31.31 ff foretold a New Covenant. In the old covenant, there
were two features: it brought into being a people of God, and they were to
get favor on condition of obedience. Probably Jeremiah did not fully see
the implication, but now with hindsight we can see: the obedience was to
be that of Christ, the King-Messiah, in the New Covenant.
Further, Vatican II in LG paragraph 61 told us that her cooperation in the
redemption, and hence in the New Covenant, was found essentially in her
obedience: “In suffering with Him as He died on the cross, she cooperated
in the work of the Savior, in an altogether singular way, by obedience,
faith, hope and burning love, to restore supernatural life to souls.” So
obedience was the essential feature of her cooperation. Vatican II
expressed that fact twice earlier in LG paragraph 56, where we read that,
"by being obedient, she became a cause of salvation for herself and for
the whole human race, " and right after that, in the context of the words
of St. Irenaeus comparing all sin to a complex knot, LG paragraph 56
added, “thus then, the knot of the disobedience of Eve was untied through
the obedience of Mary.” In LG paragraph 3 we learn that, “by His
obedience, He brought about redemption.”
