MARY'S TITLES

Co-Redemptrix

by John O'Connell

No title of Our Lady's is more controversial both within and outside of the Church than that of Co-Redemptrix. In fact, many have shied away from using this title because it can be easily misconstrued. However, in this article we are not as concerned with the actual title itself as with the theological idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary's cooperation in the redemption of mankind.

Writings of the Fathers, the saints, and numerous popes attest that Our Lady did cooperate in an extraordinary way with her Son in the redemption of mankind. Pope John Paul II in his General Audience of Wednesday December 18, 1996 said: "Beginning with Simeon's prophecy, Mary intensely and mysteriously unites her life with Christ's sorrowful mission: she was to become her Son's faithful co-worker for the salvation of the human race" (L'Osservatore Romano, January 1, 1997).

To understand how Mary Immaculate acted as her Son's co-worker for our salvation, let us first look briefly at Christ's act of redemption.

Our Lord began His work of redemption at the moment of His conception in the womb of the Holy Virgin. But He accomplished the redemption of mankind through His expiatory and propitious death upon the Cross. Christ by His sacrificial death ransomed mankind from the objective guilt and debt of sin, reconciling a sinful humanity to the Father. He won for mankind an infinite store of merit and grace. This is the objective redemption.

Yet according to the Divine economy of salvation, man is to cooperate in securing his salvation and the salvation of others. Christians have both the obligation and privilege of assisting Christ in obtaining their salvation and that of the entire world. This is known as the subjective redemption.

A Christian participates in the subjective redemption through prayer, sorrow for sin, penance, sacrifices, and submission to the will of God. St. Paul speaking of himself employs a mysterious phrase when he says that he must make up what lacks in the sufferings of Christ. What could be lacking in the perfect sacrifice of Christ? Nothing. Nothing is lacking objectively in the sufferings of Christ, nothing, that is, but his (and our) subjective cooperation. In doing so we become co-redeemers with Christ. And the degree of our holiness determines more or less the efficacy of our work of co-redemption.

Mary, it stands to reason, is the co-redeemer par excellence because of her outstanding holiness. On the bloody path to Calvary and at the foot of the Cross, the Blessed Mother united her sorrows to the agonies of her Son. St. Thomas Aquinas said so eloquently of Our Lady: "So full of grace was the Blessed Virgin that it overflows to all mankind. It is, indeed, a great thing that any one saint has so much grace that it is conducive to the salvation of many; but it is most wondrous to have so much grace as to suffice for the salvation of all mankind" (The Three Greatest Prayers).

The Fathers of the Church saw in Mary's fiat to the Incarnation a participation in the redemption. Mary Immaculate's submission to the will of God that she become the Mother of the Redeemer constituted a remote cooperation in Christ's objective redemption of mankind. St. Irenaeus wrote in a famous passage: "So Mary ... was obedient and became to herself and to the whole human race a cause of salvation" (Adversus Haereses). There is a hint in St. Irenaeus' words of what later theologians would bring out more explicitly.

Theologians have proposed that Mary participated in an immediate way in the objective redemption of mankind. Some popes and saints have suggested as much. Pope Benedict XV wrote: "She renounced her mother's rights for the salvation of mankind and, as far as it depended on her, offered her Son to placate divine justice; so we may say that with Christ she redeemed mankind." In saying this, we are in no way diminishing the unique, singular salvific act of Jesus Christ. The Virgin Mary cooperated in our redemption under and subordinate to Christ. She merited de congruo what Christ merited de condigno in the theological formulation of the great Jesuit theologian Suarez and repeated by Pope St. Pius X. God freely willed to associate the Blessed Mother in a intimate and direct way with her Son in the redemption of mankind.

© 1997 Inter Mirifica