Created in God’s image in the beginning, our faces have been re-imaged into Christ’s by nothing other than his love. For when we survey human history or the day’s headlines, we see how mean and desiccated and envious our species is. Even close to our hearts we find innumerable jealousies, petty fears, and secret plans for revenge. So much of ourselves is scared and self-centered, unwilling to let love get too close.
The Christian account of how this came to be is found back in Genesis, when the first couple turned away from God’s invitation to intimacy with him. In so rebelling, Adam and Eve fated all their progeny to a doomed course. It is as if one of your ancestors had gambled away a magnificent sum of cash, which could have been your inheritance if he had not acted so foolishly so many years ago. But instead of abandoning us to ourselves, God decided to recreate the human race by starting over with a new Adam and a new Eve.
Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned— for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world, though sin is not accounted when there is no law. But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come. But the gift is not like the transgression. For if by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one person Jesus Christ overflow for the many.
—Romans 5:12-15
So each of us belongs to two Adams, the first representing our disobedience and disdain for the good, and reminding us of our lost spiritual inheritance, and the second directing us toward charity and mercy and all that Christ embodies. In him, we have been recapitulated—given a new head (Eph. 1:10)—and can now share in the Son’s perfect love of the Father and his for us.
As there are a first and second Adam, so too with Eve. Our blessed mother Mary, the second Eve, remedies the first Eve’s selfishness by her love and humble obedience.
He became man by the virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and . . . the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God.
—St. Justin Martyr
When I remember the disobedience of Eve, I weep. But when I view the fruit of Mary, I am again renewed. Deathless by descent, invisible through beauty, before the ages light of light; of God the Father was thou begotten; being Word and Son of God, thou didst take on flesh from Mary virgin, in order that thou might renew afresh Adam fashioned by thy holy hand.
—St. Gregory the Wonderworker
Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary.
—St. Jerome
The name Eva (in Latin) is renewed into Ave, the greeting of Gabriel to Mary (Luke 1:28). Where the first Eve was deceived by a fallen angel, the second was enlightened by one of God’s most trusted messengers. And where the first brought about death through disobedience beneath the tree in Eden, the second led to life being given upon the tree of Calvary. That is why the early Church Fathers saw in Genesis 3:15, in the aftermath of the Fall, the Protoevangelium or “first gospel.” There the Lord forewarns Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.”
The second person of the Trinity takes our human nature to himself through the “yes” of Mary, the second Eve. Her fiat—“let it be done”—is the watershed moment in all human history (Luke 1:38). Having been preserved from the dissolution and division that are the result of original sin—for the Father had preserved her from conception for this single moment—she is able to offer the Son of God humanity in its fullness.
Once something has been bound, it cannot be loosed except by undoing the knot in reverse order. . . . And so the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. What Eve bound through her unbelief, Mary loosed by her faith.
—St. Irenaeus
Good prayer comes from good theology. We can never separate spirituality from study, devotion from dogma, just as we can never divide defending the Faith from loving our neighbor. From Irenaeus’s millennia-old Mariology comes a most beautiful novena: to Mary, Undoer of Knots. This devotion arose in Germany around 1700, prompted by a painting depicting Mary untying the knots of a cord and returning the rope back to earth smooth and renewed to her children.
Dearest holy mother, most holy Mary,
you undo the knots that suffocate your children.
Extend your merciful hands to me.I entrust to you today this knot [mention your request here]
and all the negative consequences that it provokes in my life.
I give you this knot that torments me and makes me unhappy
and so impedes me from uniting myself to you and your Son Jesus, my Savior.
I run to you, Mary, Undoer of Knots, because I trust you
and I know that you never despise a sinning child who comes to ask you for help.I believe that you can undo this knot because Jesus grants you everything.
I believe that you want to undo this knot because you are my mother.
I believe that you will do this because you love me with eternal love.
Thank you, dear mother.—Opening Prayer of the Novena to Mary, Undoer of Knots
Just as God began the new era in Christ with a woman, it is a pious practice for each of his children to begin their day with this same woman, our mother Mary. Since she is the one who gave the Son of God his body and all its senses, it is also fitting to consecrate all of ourselves to her.
My queen and my mother, I offer myself entirely to you this day.
Pray that I have the grace to consecrate to you
the use of my eyes, ears, mouth, heart, words and thoughts, and my entire being.
You hold me as your child, form me also into a more faithful friend of your son Jesus.
This alone will make me a fit and fruitful friend
in your loving hands and in his service,
bringing the greatest possible salvation for me and for other souls,
and glory to God our Father.
These truths are not merely academic; they are salvific. Find more lessons, exercises, and prayers in our new book, The Soul of Apologetics, available at Catholic Answers’ online shop.