I have a book published in 1962 written by Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, entitled Mary Shall Reign. Here is a passage, which I think beautifully describes Mary’s role as the new Eve:
God modeled Redemption on the lines of the Fall. As the Fathers of the Church, and every teacher in the Church, have put it, He made Redemption exactly reverse the Fall. Everything that was in the fall He took and turned it backwards. Though Eve sinned first, still it was not in Eve that mankind fell but in Adam. Adam was the single source and the head of the human race. Eve herself was taken physically out of him (Genesis 2:23). It was his behavior that was going to ruin mankind. If Eve alone had fallen, and Adam had not, mankind would not have been involved in the Fall. Yet it was because Eve enticed Adam into sin that Adam sinned and mankind fell. The part of Eve was crucial. The serpent approached her and won her over. Eve then caused Adam to fall. It was in Adam that men fell. But the Scriptural insistence on the agency of Eve in the transaction can convey no other meaning than that Adam would not have fallen but for her. Eve is exhibited as the mediatrix of the fall and of the fatal consequences that followed it. The parallel between those circumstances and the Redemption is so complete that it is evident that the one was patterned on the other; that God intended Redemption to be a detailed reversal of the Fall; that the Redemption was to be what it has been styled: The Divine Revenge.
In the restoration the New Adam and the New Eve reverse the part that Adam and Eve played in the original tragedy. Mary was drawn spiritually out of Jesus through the Immaculate Conception, that is by the application of her future merits. The Angel comes to her as the serpent came to Eve- on the same day of the week, it is said- and he proposes the remedial plan. She believes the good message as Eve believed the evil one. She accepts what is proposed to her. She draws Christ down upon the earth and commits Him to His mission which is terribly consummated on Calvary. And there she stands, herself almost dead, but unfainting, unfaltering, offering her Seed in the sacrifice which crushed the head of the serpent, as was promised ages before in the Garden of Even.
Mankind arose in Christ and not in Mary. It was Our Lord who redeemed us by His life and death. But it would not have happened except for Mary. We must minutely analyze this tremendous parallel. Its importance cannot be overestimated. For in the operation of Eve in the Fall we have a Biblical blueprint for detailed diagram of the part played by Mary in salvation. The Fall was the first Type on the Old Testament. These types were in the Old Testament what the parables were in the New Testament. It would be incorrect to regard them as being no more than picturesque images. They were sketches of the future Jesus and Mary, each containing some fragment of doctrine, so that when all of them are put together, the result is startling as a picture of what was to come.
