Prayer of Reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary Co-Redemptrix, indulgenced by Saint Pius X in 1914

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Prayer of Reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary Co-Redemptrix, indulgenced by Saint Pius X in 1914

gloria.tv | November 6, 2025

O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, look down in mercy from heaven, where thou art enthroned as Queen, upon me, a miserable sinner, thine unworthy servant.

Although I know full well my own unworthiness, yet in order to atone for the offenses that are done to thee by impious and blasphemous tongues, from the depths of my heart I praise and extol thee as the purest, the fairest, the holiest creature of all God's handiwork.

I bless thy holy name, I praise thine exalted privilege of being truly Mother of God, ever virgin, conceived without stain of sin, co-redemptrix of the human race.

I bless the Eternal Father who chose thee in an especial way for His daughter; I bless the Word Incarnate who took upon Himself our nature in thy bosom and so made thee His Mother; I bless the Holy Spirit who took thee as His bride.

All honor, praise and thanksgiving to the ever-blessed Trinity, who predestined thee and loved thee so exceedingly from all eternity as to exalt thee above all creatures to the most sublime heights.

O Virgin, holy and merciful, obtain for all who offend thee the grace of repentance, and graciously accept this poor act of homage from me thy servant, obtaining likewise for me from thy divine Son the pardon and remission of all my sins. Amen

3 x Hail Mary....


Source: The Raccolta, 1950

https://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/docum...14-ocr.pdf

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Here’s why we must say Mary is the Mediatrix of all Graces
Pope Pius IX taught that it is Mary 'who, with her only-begotten Son, is the most powerful Mediatrix and Conciliatrix in the whole world.'

Nov 5, 2025
(LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted]) — Yesterday LifeSiteNews reported that a new document from the Vatican has discouraged the use of “Mediatrix of All Graces” as a title for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The document suggests that the title lacks solid grounding in Revelation and carries “limits that do not favor a correct understanding of Mary’s unique place.”

On the contrary, the doctrine that all graces come to us through the mediation of the Blessed Virgin has been taught many times by the Successors of St Peter.


All graces come to us through Mary

In 1849, in an encyclical on the Immaculate Conception, Pope Pius IX taught that:

God has committed to Mary the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will, that we obtain everything through Mary.[1]

And in 1854, in Ineffabilis Deus, the document by which he defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the same pope taught:

All our hope do we repose in the most Blessed Virgin — in the all-fair and immaculate one who has crushed the poisonous head of the most cruel serpent and brought salvation to the world.

It is Mary, “who, with her only-begotten Son, is the most powerful Mediatrix and Conciliatrix in the whole world.”


Mary represents all mankind before God

In his 1891 encyclical Octobri Mensis Pope Leo XIII explained that:

The Eternal Son of God, about to take upon Him our nature for the saving and ennobling of man, and about to consummate thus a mystical union between Himself and all mankind, did not accomplish His design without adding there the free consent of the elect Mother, who represented in some sort all humankind.[2]

He continued:

[A]ccording to the illustrious and just opinion of St. Thomas… the Annunciation was effected with the consent of the Virgin standing in the place of humanity.

Mary represented all mankind and:

With equal truth may it be also affirmed that, by the will of God, Mary is the intermediary through whom is distributed unto us this immense treasure of mercies gathered by God, for mercy and truth were created by Jesus Christ.

Thus:

[A]s no man goeth to the Father but by the Son, so no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother.

God reveals his goodness and mercy in giving us Mary as Mediator

Pope Leo XIII taught that this doctrine of Our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces reveals the “goodness and mercy” in the “design of God”. The Holy Father wrote:

What a correspondence with the frailty of man! We believe in the infinite goodness of the Most High, and we rejoice in it; we believe also in His justice and we fear it. We adore the beloved Saviour, lavish of His blood and of His life; we dread the inexorable Judge. Thus do those whose actions have disturbed their consciences need an intercessor mighty in favour with God, merciful enough not to reject the cause of the desperate, merciful enough to lift up again towards hope in the divine mercy the afflicted and the broken down.

He continued:

Mary is this glorious intermediary; she is the mighty Mother of the Almighty; but-what is still sweeter – she is gentle, extreme in tenderness, of a limitless loving-kindness. As such God gave her to us. Having chosen her for the Mother of His only begotten Son, He taught her all a mother’s feeling that breathes nothing but pardon and love. Such Christ desired she should be, for He consented to be subject to Mary and to obey her as a son a mother. Such He proclaimed her from the cross when he entrusted to her care and love the whole of the race of man in the person of His disciple John. Such, finally, she proves herself by her courage in gathering in the heritage of the enormous labours of her Son, and in accepting the charge of her maternal duties towards us all.

No salvation except through Mary

Three years later, in his encyclical Iucunda Semper Expectatione (1894), the pope reaffirmed the doctrine of Our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces:

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven.

“God,” the pope teaches, “in His most merciful Providence gave us this Mediatrix” and “decreed that all good should come to us by the hands of Mary.”

The same doctrine can be found in Adiutricem (1895), another of Leo XIII’s encyclicals on the Holy Rosary.

In this text the pope teaches that the power God has “put into her hands is all but unlimited” and that “among her many other titles we find her hailed as ‘our Lady, our Mediatrix’, ‘the Reparatrix of the whole world,’ ‘the Dispenser of all heavenly gifts.’”

And addressing himself to Our Lady, he repeats an ancient prayer: “None, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee.”


The Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces

In 1921, Pope Benedict XV authorised a Mass and Office of Our Lady under the title Mediatrix of All Graces and permitted a Feast to be celebrated in her honor. In his encyclical Fausto Appetente Die this pope taught:

Mary’s authority with her Son to be such that whatever graces he confers on men she has their distribution and apportionment.

And in Inter Sodalicia (1918), he taught that:

[E]very kind of grace we receive from the treasury of the redemption is ministered as it were through the hands of the same Sorrowful Virgin.

His successor Pope Pius XI taught that “everything comes to us from Almighty God through the hands of Our Lady”.[3]

And in at least three different documents he referred to Mary as “the treasurer of all graces with God.”[4]

To conclude, we may consider the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites on the Canonization of Louis Marie de Montfort (1945) under Pope Pius XII. This confirmed that the the “pious and salutary doctrine” that “God wants us to have everything through Mary” is a doctrine “all theologians at the present time hold in common accord.”

St Louis Marie de Montfort is the saint who, perhaps above all others, is associated with the doctrine of Our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces. He wrote:

God the Holy Spirit entrusted his wondrous gifts to Mary, his faithful spouse, and chose her as the dispenser of all he possesses, so that she distributes all his gifts and graces to whom she wills, as much as she wills, how she wills and when she wills. No heavenly gift is given to men which does not pass through her virginal hands. Such indeed is the will of God, who has decreed that we should have all things through Mary, so that, making herself poor and lowly, and hiding herself in the depths of nothingness during her whole life, she might be enriched, exalted and honoured by almighty God. Such are the views of the Church and the early Fathers.[5]

Such indeed are the views of the Catholic Church, of her Saints, her Fathers, her Doctors, and her Popes.


[1] Pope Pius IX, Ubi Primum

[2] Pope Leo XIII, Octobri Mensis

[3] Pope Pius XI, Ingravescentibus Malis, 1937.

[4] Pope Pius XI, Galliam, Ecclesiae filiam, 1922; Exstat in civitate, 1924; Cognitum sane, 1926.

[5] St Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, No. 25.

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On Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

OnePeterFive | November 6, 2025

The Influence of Mary, Mediatrix

TAKEN FROM THE THREE AGES OF THE INTERIOR LIFE, VOL. 1, chapter 6
Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat, 1948
Original French edition © The Dominican Province, France.
English translation © Baronius Press Ltd

WHEN the bases of the interior life are considered, we cannot discuss the action of Christ, the universal Mediator, on His Mystical Body without also speaking of the influence of Mary Mediatrix. As we remarked, many persons delude themselves, maintaining that they reach union with God without having continual recourse to our Lord, Who is the way, the truth, and the life. Another error would consist in wishing to go to our Lord without going first to Mary, whom the Church calls in a special feast the Mediatrix of all graces.

Protestants have fallen into this last error. Without going as far as this deviation, there are Catholics who do not see clearly enough the necessity of having recourse to Mary that they may attain to intimacy with the Savior. Blessed Grignion de Montfort speaks even of “doctors who know the Mother of God only in a speculative, dry, sterile, and indifferent manner; who fear that devotion to the Blessed Virgin is abused, and that injury is done to our Lord by honoring too greatly His holy Mother. If they speak of devotion to Mary, it is less to recommend it than to destroy the abuses that have grown up around it.”[1] They seem to believe that Mary is a hindrance to reaching Divine union. According to Blessed Grignion, we lack humility if we neglect the mediators whom God has given us because of our frailty. Intimacy with our Lord in prayer will be greatly facilitated by a true and profound devotion to Mary.

To get a clear idea of this devotion, we shall consider what must be understood by universal mediation, and also how Mary is the mediatrix of all graces, as is affirmed by tradition and by the Office and Mass of Mary Mediatrix which are celebrated on May 31. Much has been written on the subject in recent years. We shall here consider this doctrine in its relation to the interior life.[2]


THE MEANING OF UNIVERSAL MEDIATION

St. Thomas says: “Properly speaking, the office of a mediator is to join together those between whom he mediates: for extremes are united by an intermediary. Now to unite men to God perfectly belongs to Christ, through Whom men are reconciled to God, according to 2 Cor. 5:19: ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’ And, consequently, Christ alone is the perfect Mediator of God and men, inasmuch as, by His death, He reconciled the human race to God. Hence the Apostle, after saying, ‘Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus,’ added: ‘Who gave Himself a redemption for all.’ However, nothing hinders certain others from being called mediators, in some respect, between God and man, forasmuch as they cooperate in uniting men to God, dispositively, or ministerially.”[3] In this sense, adds St. Thomas,[4] the prophets and priests of the Old Testament may be called mediators, and also the priests of the New Testament, as ministers of the true Mediator.

St. Thomas explains further how Christ as man is the Mediator: “Because, as man, He is distant both from God by nature, and from man by dignity of both grace and glory. Again, it belongs to Him, as man, to unite men to God, by communicating to men both precepts and gifts, and by offering satisfaction and prayers to God for men.”[5] Christ satisfied and merited as man by a satisfaction and a merit which drew an infinite value from His Divine personality. This mediation is twofold, both descending and ascending. It consists in giving to men the light and grace of God, and in offering to God, on behalf of men, the worship and reparation due to Him.

As has been said, there is nothing to prevent there being mediators below Christ, subordinated to Him as secondary mediators, such as were the prophets and priests of the Old Law for the chosen people. It may thus be asked whether Mary is the universal mediatrix for all men and for the distribution of all graces in general and in particular. St. Albert the Great speaks of the mediation of Mary as superior to that of the prophets when he says: “Mary was chosen by the Lord, not as a minister but to be associated in a very special and quite intimate manner in the work of the redemption of the human race: ‘Faciamus ei adjutorium simile sibi.'”[6]

Is not Mary in her quality as Mother of God completely designated to be the universal mediatrix? Is she not truly the intermediary between God and men? She is, indeed, much below God and Christ because she is a creature, but much above all men by the grace of her Divine maternity, “which makes her attain the very frontiers of the Divinity,”[7] and by the plenitude of grace received at the moment of her Immaculate Conception, a plentitude which did not cease to grow until her death. Not only was Mary thus designated by her Divine maternity for this function of mediatrix, but she received it in truth and exercised it. This is shown by Tradition,[8] which has given her the title of universal mediatrix in the proper sense of the word,[9] although in a manner subordinated to Christ. This title is consecrated by the special feast which is celebrated in the universal Church.

To have a clear understanding of the meaning and import of this title, we shall consider how it is becoming to Mary for two principal reasons: because she cooperated by satisfaction and merit in the sacrifice of the Cross; and because she does not cease to intercede for us, to obtain for us, and to distribute to us all the graces that we receive. Such is the double mediation, ascending and descending, which we ought to ponder in order daily to draw greater profit from it.


MARY MEDIATRIX BY HER COOPERATION IN THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS

During the entire course of her earthly life, the Blessed Virgin cooperated in the sacrifice of her Son. First of all, the free consent that she gave on Annunciation day was necessary for the accomplishment of the mystery of the Incarnation, as if, says St. Thomas,[10] God had waited for the consent of humanity through the voice of Mary. By this free fiat, she cooperated in the sacrifice of the Cross, since she gave us its Priest and Victim. She cooperated in it also by offering her Son in the Temple, as a most pure host, at the moment when the aged Simeon saw by prophetic light that this Child was the “salvation … prepared before the face of all peoples: a light to the revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”[11] More enlightened than Simeon, Mary offered her Son, and began to suffer deeply with Him when she heard the holy old man tell her that He would be a sign which would be contradicted and that a sword would pierce her soul.

Mary cooperated in the sacrifice of Christ, especially at the foot of the Cross, uniting herself to Him, more closely than can be expressed, by satisfaction or reparation, and by merit. Some Saints, in particular the stigmatics, have been exceptionally united to the sufferings and merits of our Savior: for example, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena, and yet their share in His suffering cannot be compared with Mary’s. How did Mary offer her Son? As He offered Himself. By a miracle, Jesus could easily have prevented the blows of His executioners from causing His death; He offered Himself voluntarily. “No man,” He says, “taketh it (My life) away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself. And I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again.”[12] Jesus renounced His right to life; He offered Himself wholly for our salvation. Of Mary, St. John says: “There stood by the Cross of Jesus, His mother,”[13] surely very closely united to Him in His suffering and oblation. As Pope Benedict XV says: “She renounced her rights as a mother over her Son for the salvation of all men.”[14] She accepted the Martyrdom of Christ and offered it for us. In the measure of her love, she felt all the torments that He suffered in body and soul. More than anyone else, Mary endured the very suffering of the Savior; she suffered for sin in the degree of her love for God, whom sin offends; for her Son, whom sin crucified; for souls, which sin ravishes and kills. The Blessed Virgin’s charity incomparably surpassed that of the greatest Saints. She thus cooperated in the sacrifice of the cross by way of satisfaction or reparation, by offering to God for us, with great sorrow and most ardent love, the life of her most dear Son, whom she rightly adored and who was dearer to her than her very life.

In that instant, the Savior satisfied for us in strict justice by His human acts which drew from His divine personality an infinite value capable of making reparation for the offense of all mortal sins that ever had been or would be committed. His love pleased God more than all sins displease Him.[15] Herein lies the essence of the mystery of the redemption. In union with her Son on Calvary, Mary satisfied for us by a satisfaction based, not on strict justice, but on the rights of the infinite friendship or charity which united her to God.[16]

At the moment when her Son was about to die on the Cross, apparently defeated and abandoned, she did not cease for a moment to believe that He was the Word made flesh, the Savior of the world, Who would rise in three days as He had predicted. This was the greatest act of faith and hope ever made; after Christ’s act of love, it was also the greatest act of love. It made Mary the Queen of Martyrs, for she was a Martyr, not only for Christ but with Christ; so much so, that a single Cross sufficed for her Son and for her. She was, in a sense, nailed to it by her love for Him. She was thus the Co-redemptrix, as Pope Benedict XV says, in this sense, that with Christ, through Him, and in Him, she bought back the human race.[17]

For the same reason, all that Christ merited for us on the Cross in strict justice, Mary merited for us by congruous merit, based on the charity that united her to God. Christ alone, as head of the human race, could strictly merit to transmit Divine life to us. But Pius X sanctioned the teaching of theologians when he wrote: “Mary, united to Christ in the work of salvation, merited de congruo for us what Christ merited for us de condigno.”[18]

This common teaching of theologians, thus sanctioned by the sovereign pontiffs, has for its principal traditional basis the fact that Mary is called in all Greek and Latin tradition the new Eve, Mother of all men in regard to the life of the soul, as Eve was in regard to the life of the body. It stands to reason that the spiritual mother of all men ought to give them spiritual life, not as the principal physical cause (for God alone can be the principal physical cause of Divine grace), but as the moral cause by merit de congruo, merit de condigno being reserved to Christ.

The Office and Mass proper to Mary Mediatrix assemble the principal testimonies of Tradition on this point with their scriptural foundations, in particular the clear-cut statements of St. Ephrem, the glory of the Syriac Church, of St. Germanus of Constantinople, of St. Bernard, and of St. Bernardine of Siena. Even as early as the second and third centuries, St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, and Tertullian insisted on the parallel between Eve and Mary, and showed that if the first concurred in our fall, the second collaborated in our redemption.[19]

This teaching of Tradition itself rests in part on the words of Christ, related in the Gospel of the Mass for the Feast of Mary Mediatrix. The Savior was about to die and, seeing “His mother and the disciple standing whom He loved, He saith to His mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, He saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own.”[20] The literal meaning of these words, “Behold thy son,” points to St. John, but for God, events and persons signify others;[21] here St. John represents spiritually all men purchased by the sacrifice of the Cross. God and His Christ speak not only by the words They use, but by the events and persons whose masters They are, and by whom They signify what They wish according to the plan of Providence. The dying Christ, addressing Mary and John, saw in John the personification of all men, for whom He was shedding His Blood. As this word, so to speak, created in Mary a most profound maternal affection, which did not cease to envelop the soul of the beloved disciple, this supernatural affection extended to all of us and made Mary truly the spiritual mother of all men. In the eighth century we find Abbot Rupert expressing this same idea, and after him St. Bernardine of Siena, Bossuet, Blessed Grignion de Montfort, and many others. It is the logical result of what tradition tells us about the new Eve, the spiritual mother of all men.

Finally, if we studied theologically all that is required for merit de congruo, based not on justice, but on charity or supernatural friendship which unites us to God, we could not find it better realized than in Mary. Since, in fact, a good Christian mother by her virtue thus merits graces for her children,[22] with how much greater reason can Mary, who is incomparably more closely united to God by the plenitude of her charity, merit de congruo for all men. Such is the ascending mediation of Mary in so far as she offered the sacrifice of the cross with Christ for us, making reparation and meriting for us. We shall now consider the descending mediation, by which she distributes the gifts of God to us.


MARY OBTAINS AND DISTRIBUTES ALL GRACES

That Mary obtains for us and distributes to us all graces is a certain doctrine, according to what we have just said about the mother of all men. As mother, she is interested in their salvation, prays for them, and obtains for them the graces they receive. In the Ave Maris Stella we read:

Salve vincla reis,
Profer lumen caecis,
Mala nostra pelle,
Bona cuncta posce.[23]

Break the sinner’s fetters,
To the blind give day,
Ward all evils from us,
For all blessings pray.

In an encyclical on the Rosary, Leo XIII says: According to the will of God, nothing is granted to us except through Mary; and, as no one can go to the Father except through the Son, so generally no one can draw near to Christ except through Mary.”[24]

The Church, in fact, turns to Mary to obtain graces of all kinds, both temporal and spiritual; among these last, from the grace of conversion up to that of final perseverance, to say nothing of those needed by virgins to preserve virginity, by apostles to exercise their apostolate, by Martyrs to remain firm in the faith. In the Litany of Loreto, which has been universally recited in the Church for many centuries, Mary is for this reason called: “Health of the sick, refuge of sinners, comforter of the afflicted, help of Christians, Queen of Apostles, of Martyrs, of Confessors, of Virgins.” Thus all kinds of graces are distributed by her, even, in a sense, those of the Sacraments; for she merited them for us in union with Christ on Calvary. In addition, she disposes us, by her prayer, to approach the Sacraments and to receive them well. At times she even sends us a priest, without whom this sacramental help would not be given to us.

Finally, not only every kind of grace is distributed to us by Mary, but every grace in particular. Is this not what the faith of the Church says in the words of the Hail Mary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen”? This “now” is said every moment in the Church by thousands of Christians who thus ask for the grace of the present moment. This grace is the most individual of graces; it varies with each of us, and for each one of us at every moment. If we are distracted while saying this word, Mary, who is not distracted, knows our spiritual needs of every instant, and prays for us, and obtains for us all the graces that we receive. This teaching, contained in the faith of the Church and expressed by the common prayers (lex orandi lex credendi), is based on Scripture and Tradition. Even during her earthly life, Mary truly appears in Scripture as the distributor of graces. Through Mary, Jesus sanctified the Precursor when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and sang the Magnificat. Through His mother, Jesus confirmed the faith of the disciples at Cana, by granting the miracle that she asked. Through her, He strengthened the faith of John on Calvary, saying to him: “Behold thy mother.” Lastly, by her the Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles, for she was praying with them in the cenacle on Pentecost day when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of tongues of fire.[25]

With even greater reason after the Assumption and her entrance into glory, Mary is the distributor of all graces. As a beatified mother knows in Heaven the spiritual needs of her children whom she left on earth, Mary knows the spiritual needs of all men. Since she is an excellent mother, she prays for them and, since she is all powerful over the heart of her Son, she obtains for them all the graces that they receive, all which those receive who do not persist in evil. She is, it has been said, like an aqueduct of graces and, in the mystical body, like the virginal neck uniting the head to its members.

When we treat of what the prayer of proficients ought to be, we shall speak of true devotion to Mary as it was understood by Blessed Grignion de Montfort. Even now we can see how expedient it is frequently to use the prayer of mediators, that is, to begin our prayer by a trusting, filial conversation with Mary, that she may lead us to the intimacy of her Son, and that the holy soul of the Savior may then lift us to union with God, since Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.[26]


[1] Blessed Grignion de Montfort, Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, chap. 1, a. I, § I. See also The Secret of Mary, by the same author. It is a summary of the preceding treatise.

[2] Cf. St. Bernard, Serm. in Dominic. infra. Oct. Assumpt., no. I (PL, CLXXXIII, 429). Serm. in Nativ. B. V. Mariae De aquaeductu, nos. 6-7 (PL, CLXXXIII, 440)’ Epist. ad Canonicos Lugdunenses de Conceptione S. Mariae, no. 2 (PL, CLXXXII, 333). St. Albert the Great, Mariale sive Quaestiones super E’Vangelium: Missus est (ed. A. Borgnet; Paris, 1890-99, XXXVII, q. 29). St. Bonaventure, Sermones de B. V. Maria, De Annuntiatione, serm. V (Quarrachi, 1901, IX, 679). St. Thomas, In Salut. angel. expositio. Bossuet, Sermon sur la Sainte Vierge. Terrien, S.J., La Mère de Dieu et la Mère des hommes, III. Hugon, O.P., Marie pleine de grâce. J. Bittremieux, De mediatione universali B. Mariae V. quoad gratias, 1926, Beyaert, Bruges. Leon Leloir, La mediation mariale dans la théologie contemporaine, 1933, ibid. P. R. Bernard. O.P., Le mysètre de Marie, Desclee de Brouwer, Paris, 1933. This excellent book ought to be meditated upon. See also P. G. Friethoff, O.P., De alma Socia Christi mediatoris, Rome, 1936.}. V. Bainvel, S.J., Le saint coeur de Marie, 1919. P. Joret, O.P., Le Rosaire de Marie, an annotated translation of the Encyclicals of Leo XIII on the Rosary, 1933.

[3] See IIIa, q. 26, a. 1.

[4] Ibid., ad 1um.

[5] Ibid.,a. 2.

[6] Mariale, 42.

[7] Cajetan.

[8] Cf. J. Bittremieux, op. cit.

[9] Cf. G. Friethoff, O.P., Angelicum (October, 1933), pp. 469-77.

[10] See IIIa, q. 30, a. 1.

[11] Luke 2:30-32.

[12] John 10:18.

[13] Ibid., 19:25.

[14] Litt. Apost., Inter sodalicia, March 21, 1918. (Act. Ap. Sed., 1918, p. 182; quoted in Denzinger, 16th ed., no. 3034, n. 4.)

[15] See IIIa, q. 48, a. 2: “He properly atones for an offense who offers some thing which the offended one loves not less, or even more, than he detested the offense. But by suffering out of love and obedience, Christ gave more to God than was required to compensate for the offense of the whole human race. …First of all, because of the exceeding charity from which He suffered; secondly, on account of the dignity of His life which He laid down in atonement, for it was the life of One Who was God and man; thirdly, on account of the extent of the Passion, and the greatness of the grief endured.”

[16] “Satisfactio B. M. Virginis fundatur, non in stricta justitia, sed in jure amicabili.” This is the common teaching of theologians.

[17] Benedict XV, Litt. Apost., citat.: “Ita cum Filio patiente et moriente
passa est et paene commortua, sic materna in Filium jura pro hominum salute abdicavit placandaeque Dei justitiae, quantum ad se pertinebat, Filium immolavit, ut dici merito queat, ipsam cum Christo humanum genus redemisse.” Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 3034, n.4.

[18] Cf. Piux X, Encyclical, Ad diem illum, Feb. 2, 1904 (Denzinger, Enchiridion, 3034): “Quoniam universis sanctitate praestat conjunctioneque cum Christo atque a Christo ascita in humanae salutis opus, de congruo, ut aiunt, promeruit nobis, quae Christus de condigno promeruit, estque princeps largiendarum gratiarum ministra.” It should be remarked that merit de congruo, which is based in jure amicabili seu in caritate is a merit properly so called, although inferior to merit de condigno. The word “merit” is used for both according to an analogy of proper and not only metaphorical proportionality.

[19] St. Irenaeus, who represents the Churches of Asia where he was trained, the Church of Rome where he lived, and the Churches of Gaul where he taught, wrote (Adv. haeres., V, 19, I): “As Eve, seduced by the discourse of the (rebellious) Angel, turned away from God and betrayed His word, so Mary heard from the Angel the good tidings of the truth. She bore God in her bosom because she obeyed His word. … The human race, enchained by a virgin, was delivered by a virgin …; the prudence of the serpent yielded to the simplicity of the dove; the bonds which chained us in death were broken.”

In a prayer used in the second nocturn of the Office of Mary Mediatrix, St. Ephrem concludes from this parallel between Eve and the Mother of God, that “Mary is, after Jesus, the mediator par excellence, the mediatrix of the entire world, and that it is through her that we obtain all spiritual goods (tu creaturam replesti omni genere beneficii caelestibus laetitiam attulisti, terrestria salvasti).

St. Germanus of Constantinople (Oratio 9, PG, XCVIII, 377 ff., quoted in the same nocturn of the Office) even says: “No one is saved except by thee, O most holy; no one is delivered except through thee, O most immaculate; no one receives the gifts of God except through thee, O purest.”

St. Bernard says: “O our mediatrix, O our advocate, reconcile us with thy Son; recommend us to thy Son; present us to thy Son” (Second sermon In adventu, 5). “It is the will of God that we should have everything through Mary” (On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, no. 7). “She is full of grace; the overflow is poured out on us” (Sermon II on the Assumption, no. 2).

[20] John 19:26f.

[21] See Ia q. 1, a. 10: “The author of Holy Scripture is God, in Whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as men also can do), but also by things themselves.”

[22] See Ia IIae, q. 114, a. 6: “It is clear that no one can merit condignly for another his first grace, save Christ alone … inasmuch as He is the head of the Church and the author of human salvation. … But one may merit the first grace for another congruously; because a man in grace fulfills God’s will, and it is congruous and in harmony with friendship that God should fulfill man’s desire for the salvation of another, although sometimes there may be an impediment on the part of him whose salvation the just man desires.”

[23] The Jansenists altered this verse in order not to affirm this universal mediation of Mary.

[24] Encyclical on the Rosary, Octobri mense, September 22, 1891 (Denzinger, no. 3033).

[25] Acts 1:14.

[26] Several Thomistic theologians admit that, as the humanity of Christ is the physical instrumental cause of all the graces that we receive (cf. St. Thomas, IIIa, q. 43, a. 2; Q. 48, a. 6; q. 62, a. 5), everything leads us to think that, in a manner subordinated to Christ, Mary is not only the moral but also the physical instrumental cause of the transmission of these graces. We do not think that this can be established with true certitude, but the principles formulated by St. Thomas on this subject in regard to the humanity of Christ incline us to think so.