G
Good_Fella
Guest
“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.”
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her** feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell dead.
Judges 5, 24-27 (cf. Judith 13: 18-20)
The doctrine of Mary as the new Eve, the spiritual mother of all the living, was universally accepted among the faithful in the 2nd century as part of the Apostolic Tradition of the Church. It was not just a private theological opinion held by a few. The idea must have germinated from what Paul taught about Jesus being the second Adam and the author of life in the spiritual sense opposed to the author of the fall from grace (Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15: 20-23; 45). The ECFs placed the apostle’s words into the context of the story of Adam and Eve’s fall in Genesis – the promise of redemption and the victory over Satan and his humiliating defeat - as well as Luke’s account of the annunciation. The early Church Fathers saw a connection between the forbidden fruit which Eve presented to Adam and the fruit of Mary’s womb (cf. Lk 1:42). Eve was Adam’s helpmate (cf. Gen 2:18), but she failed him tragically which resulted in the fall of the human race. Mary collaborated with God by receiving his word; as our mother, she presents to the human race the fruit which alone can regenerate the human race to new life in the spirit through the dispensation of divine grace, obtained for us by the obedience of the new Adam.
Mary was associated with the redemptive work of her Son inasmuch as Eve was associated with the fall of Adam. In this sense, she has been designated as our co-Redemptrix. Through Eve Adam forfeited the original state of holiness and justice; through the new Eve the new Adam has gained for us our restoration to this state by the sanctifying grace he has merited for us. Both Adam and Eve were unfaithful in their covenant with God. Jesus and Mary were faithful born under the law of the Sinai covenant. Hence, neither the fall nor the recapitulation could have occurred without both pairs being closely involved. If Adam hadn’t listened to Eve, Jesus wouldn’t have had to redeem us by his death on the cross.
Mary’s role in the Divine order of redemption was not merely a physical one. The eternal Word could have become man in the same way Adam was formed – out of clay (cf. Gen 2:7). Her association with her Son was moral and required her salutary and meritorious act of faith. Eve contributed morally to the fall by succumbing to the devil’s temptation to exalt herself above God which ultimately led to Adam’s sin and its universal consequences. Mary, on the contrary, cooperated morally in mankind’s redemption by her faith in the angel’s words despite her understanding of Isaiah that God’s just servant would have to suffer and she too interiorly as his mother. Hence, Mary is our spiritual mother, and more significantly the Mother of the Church, through adoption because by her faith and union with her divine Son she has channeled to us the supernatural life of grace. She has begotten us in Christ Jesus by the gospel message which she accepted in her heart (cf. 1 Cor 4:15).
While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”
Luke 11, 27-28
The woman in the crowd thought that Mary was blessed merely for having borne Jesus physically. However, she assumed that Jesus was a prophet and a teacher, nothing more. She had no idea that he was God incarnate. And because of her ignorance about this divine truth, Jesus implicitly corrected the woman. If only she knew what was really meant to declare: that being the mother of our Lord, Mary was truly blessed on account of her obedient act of faith informed by charity. The Greek word for “rather” is menounge which means “more” or “further”. So what Jesus told the woman was that his mother was more blessed for having conceived and borne him through her faithful act of obedience than for simply being his natural mother. On this occasion the woman was referring to Mary, so Jesus was alluding to the Annunciation with regard to his mother. He wasn’t referring to true believers in general. Elizabeth had Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel in mind when she exclaimed, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45). Hence, the woman in the crowd could not have imagined that Mary’s divine motherhood involved a supernatural and meritorious consent to the divine mystery of the Incarnation and the formal redemption of the human race. She merely proclaimed Mary blessed for being the natural mother of so great a prophet. Indeed, Mary was blessed above all women for having been chosen to bear the divine Word in the flesh, but her true blessedness consisted of her act of faith working through love. She heard the word of God and kept it as she pronounced her fiat. In this way Mary smote the head of the serpent.
To be continued.
