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Mary’s Mediation Originates with Christ

This Rock Volume 18, Number 10   December 2007     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Mary, Mother of Salvation: How to Explain the "Co-Redemptrix" to Evangelicals By Fr. Dwight Longenecker   Further Reading   Mary’s Mediation Originates with Christ   Neither Taking Away nor Adding Anything   Seventeen Questions about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials By Pete Vere   For Good and Ill: They Slip Past Watchful Dragons By Sophia Sproule   Fantastic Alternatives   Why Believe? An Apologetic of Faith By Carl E. Olson   If You Understood Him, It Would Not Be God   Eight Books about Faith   Damascus Road St. Monica, Pray for Us! By Peter Michael Refakis   By the Book It’s Not Over 'til It’s Over By Tim Staples   Eyes to See Tipping Point By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told Pope of the Worker By Matthew E. Bunson   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

The Church knows and teaches that all the saving influences of the Blessed Virgin on mankind originate . . . from the divine pleasure. They flow forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rest on his mediation, depend entirely on it, and draw all their power from it. In no way do they impede the immediate union of the faithful with Christ. Rather, they foster this union. This saving influence is sustained by the Holy Spirit, who, just as he overshadowed the Virgin Mary when he began in her the divine motherhood, in a similar way constantly sustains her solicitude for the brothers and sisters of her Son. In effect, Mary’s mediation is intimately linked with her motherhood. It possesses a specifically maternal character, which distinguishes it from the mediation of the other creatures who in various and always subordinate ways share in the one mediation of Christ, although her own mediation is also a shared mediation. In fact, while it is true that no creature could ever be classed with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer, at the same time the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise among creatures to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this unique source. And thus the one goodness of God is in reality communicated diversely to his creatures. . . With the redeeming death of her Son, the maternal mediation of the handmaid of the Lord took on a universal dimension, for the work of redemption embraces the whole of humanity. Thus there is manifested in a singular way the efficacy of the one and universal mediation of Christ between God and men. Mary’s cooperation shares, in its subordinate character, in the universality of the mediation of the Redeemer, the one Mediator.

—Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer), 40