- I’ve been reading the Glories of Mary by Liguori. How can Mary be the mediatrix of all graces? How is it possible that all graces must pass through her hands and that the prayers of Mary are necessary for our salvation? This all seems to be based on pure speculation and go beyond what is found in the Bible and the early church fathers.
I disagree with
Church Militant’s advice to simply “blow it off”. It is official doctrine of the Catholic Church to which all Catholics owe their religious assent of intellect and will, even if not definitively promulgated. I suggest instead that you attempt to understand what the Church herself authentically teaches about this doctrine.
It seems to me you have totally misunderstood the doctrine. There have been many threads which discuss this doctrine in more detail, but here I will just touch upon some source information…
According to Dr. Ludwig Ott’s *Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma,
*
Mary is designated meditarix of all graces in a double sense:
1. Mary gave the Redeemer, the Source of all graces, to the world, and in this way she is the channel of all graces. (sent. certa)
**2. Since Mary’s Assumption into Heaven no grace is conferred on man without her actual intercessory co-operation. (Sent. pia et probabilis).
**
No. 1 above should be easy to assent to, as “mediatrix of all graces” merely connotes Mary gave birth to the source of all grace–Jesus Christ, and co-operated with the work of Christ’s redemption.
All of the just are “
co-workers with God” (1 Cor 3:9). Mary’s role was unique, however, as it was her
fiat, not any other’s, that untied the knot of Eve’s disobedience.
** St. Justin Martyr**, in his *Dialogue with Trypho, *said that Christ “was made man of the Virgin, so that the disobedience brought on by the Serpent might be cancelled out in the same manner in which it had begun.”
St. Irenaeus in AD 189, concerning Mary’s role as mediatrix: “Mary … by her obedience became a cause of her own salvation and the salvation of the whole human race” (Adv. haer. III 22,4).
St. Thomas Aquinas: “At the Annunciation the concurrence of the maiden was awaited as a representative of all human nature” (S. th. III 30, 1)
** Pope Leo XIII:** “To a certain extent she (Mary) represented the whole human race” (Denzinger 1940 a)
Pope St. Pius X in the Encyclical
Ad diem(1904) states: “Since she excels all in sanctity, and by her union with Christ and by her adoption by Christ for the work of man’s salvation, she merited for us *de conguo, *as they say, what Christ merited *de condigno, *and is the first minister of the graces to be bestowed.”
**Pope Benedict XV,
Litterae Apostolicae, Inter Sodalicia, March 22, 1918, AAS 10, 1918, 182: **
“… the fact that she was with Him crucified and dying, was in accord with the divine plan. For with her suffering and dying Son, Mary endured suffering and almost death. She gave up her Mother’s rights over her Son to procure the salvation of mankind, and to appease the divine justice, she, as much as she could, immolated her Son, so that one can truly affirm that together with Christ she has redeemed the human race. … for this reason, every kind of grace we receive from the treasury of the redemption is ministered as it were through the hands of the same Sorrowful Virgin”
** Pope Pius XII:** “[Mary] offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father together with the holocaust of her maternal rights and her motherly love like a new Eve for all children of Adam” (Denzinger 2291)
cont…
