OUR LADY
Mediatrix of All Graces
By RAPHAEL V. O’CONNELL, S. J.

METROPOLITAN PRESS

JOHN MURPHY COMPANY
Pablühen to the Holy See

BALTIMORE

MARYLAND

Jmprimi putret:
LAURENTIUS J. KELLY, S. J.,
Praep. Prov. Marylandiae, Neo Ebor.

3mpri3i3tnri
•f. MICHAEL J. CURLEY,
Archiep. Baltimorensia.

Copyright 1926, By

John Mubpht Company

I*IM* of John Murphy Company, Baltimore, M±

187959

TO

fflary
Full

of

Grace

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

Preface.................................................................

7

CHAPTER

I Mary, a New and Better Eve...............

11

II Mary and the First Good Tidings..... ..

16

Mary, Cooperatrix in the Redemption

23

IV Mary’s Cooperation a Direct Concur­
rence in the Work of the Redemp­
tion __________________________

28

V

Mary, Our Mother.__ ___ _________

33

VI

Foundation of Mary’s Spiritual
Motherhood—
1. Merit of the Divine Maternity

41

VII Foundation of Mary’s Spiritual
Motherhood—
2. Consent to the Incarnation.....

46

VIII Foundation of Mary’s Spiritual
Motherhood—
3. Union with Christ on Calvary..

51

IX

Mary, Mother of Divine Grace__ ____

58

X

Mary, Our Mediatrix_____________

61

XI

Mary, Mediatrix of Grace—
1. Acquisition of Grace________

66

III

XII Mary, Mediatrix of Grace—
2. Distribution of Grace..... ......

70

ΧΙΠ The Universal Mediation of Mary.....

75

What is Meant by “All Graces”?......

89

XV To Whom Does Mary’s Mediation Ex­
tend? ........

96

XVI The Church at Mary’s Feet___ _____

101

XIV

XVII In What Mary’s Mediation Consists.... 109
XVIII Degree of Certainty of What Precedes

113

XIX Devotion to Our Lady----- --------------

118

PREFACE

The announcement of some new honor to
be paid to the Blessed Mother of God, of some
new jewel to be added to her already brilliant
crown, sends a thrill of joy through the heart
of every true child of Holy Church. For every
genuine Catholic regards Mary as indeed his
Mother—his spiritual Mother, to be sure, that
is, in the order of grace,—but none the less,
as, in a very true sense, holding towards him
the place of a mother, and fulfilling in his
regard the functions of the tenderest of
mothers.
It is quite natural then for us to experience
a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of see­
ing a new title added to the many, which,
glorious as they are, do not, and cannot ex­
press to the full all that we conceive concern­
ing Mary, and the part that she has had, and
ever will have, in the all-important affair of
our salvation.
For a score of years and more, the devout
clients of our Blessed Lady in France, in Bel­
gium, and elsewhere, have been most active
7

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

in their endeavors to bring home to the mass
of the faithful the realization of all that Mary
is to them. There has been no end to articles
which have appeared in Catholic publications,
setting forth from various points of view her
spiritual motherhood, and numerous and bril­
liant Marian congresses have been held at
Rome, at Fribourg, and notably at Folgoat,
and in other towns of Brittany, in which the
whole question of Mary’s mediation in the
matter of grace has been carefully and loving­
ly studied.
Recently, a very important step was taken
by the Holy Father in the appointment of a
special commission of theologians, with three
branches, one to sit at Rome, another in Bel­
gium, and a third in Spain, whose duty it
should be to examine the question maturely
and from every angle, and to give their verdict
as to whether or not the universal mediation
of Our Lady is capable of being defined as a
dogma of faith.
The concession by the Holy See of the
Mass and Office of Our Lady, Mediatrix of
all Graces, to certain Bishops and communi­
ties who have asked for them, may at least be
taken as a happy presage of what the final
decision of the Church will be. While await­

ing it, the faithful who ardently desire to see
so precious a jewel added to Mary’s crown,
may dispose themselves for that consoling
event, and may even hasten its coming, by
their earnest efforts to appreciate more and
more fully the exact bearings of a doctrine,
which they have all along undoubtedly be­
lieved, but of which they have not always per­
haps caught the full import.
It will be the writer’s aim in the following
pages to set forth as clearly as may be the
traditional view of the Catholic Church with
regard to Mary’s place in the plan of the Re­
demption, and to point out the implications,
in such a way as to show that we are here
face to face with no mere pious opinion, but
with a truth that belongs to the deposit of
divine revelation.
The chief source upon which he has drawn
for the thoughts embodied in the present
treatise is the excellent little work of Father
J. V. Bainvel, S. J., Professor at the Catholic
Institute of Paris, entitled, “Marie, Mere de
Grace,” to which is prefixed a noteworthy
contribution on the subject by Father R. M.
de la Broise, S. J., together with an Introduc­
tion by the eminent theologian, Cardinal
Louis Billot, S. J.

8

9

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

Another source of which he has freely
availed himself is Part Π of Father J. B. Ter­
rien, S. J.’s “La Mere de Dieu et des Hommes,”
a truly epoch-making work, to which Fr. Bainvel himself frequently refers.
Lastly, the writer has had much assistance
from an able disquisition, entitled “La Madre
di Dio, Universale Mediatrice di Grazia,”
which appeared in the Civiltà Cattolica for the
3rd and 17th May, 1924.
St. Francia Xavier's College,
New York City

Feast of the Annunciation,
1926

CHAPTER I
MARY A NEW AND BETTER EVE

There is perhaps nothing in all tradition
that is more fully attested than Mary’s claim
to be regarded as a second and more blessed
Eve. We have in favor of this consoling doc­
trine the concordant testimony of the Fathers
of the Church, and in particular of those who
approached nearest to the Apostolic times,
and who, while they represent the most wide­
ly distant divisions of Christendom, speak but
one language with regard to Mary’s position
in the economy of the Redemption.
Such are St. Justin Martyr, and St Ire­
naeus, who belong to the close of the second
century of the Christian era, and Tertullian,
who flourished in the first half of the third.
In almost identical language, they contrast
the incredulity and disobedience of Eve, still
a virgin, with the faith and obedience of the
ever Virgin Mary. The former, by hearkening
to the voice of the serpent, brought death to
the human race ; the latter, by receiving with
11

12

Our Lady Mediatrix

of

Alt, Graces

entire docility the word of God, conveyed to
her by the Angel Gabriel, became a source of
salvation to all mankind. Mary, by her obedi­
ence, shattered the chains, which had been
forged by the disobedience of Eve. What Eve
had bound by her incredulity, Mary loosed
by her faith. Thus the human race, which had
been doomed to death by a virgin, was saved
by a Virgin, the obedience of the one serving
as a counterpoise to the disobedience of the
other.
The same antithesis between Eve and
Mary is put forward even more plainly, if pos­
sible, by the most illustrious Fathers of the
Church of subsequent ages, both in the east
and in the west. “As death,” says St. Cyril of
Jerusalem, “had come through Eve, still a
virgin, it was proper that life should come
again through a Virgin, or rather of a Virgin ;
and because the serpent had deceived the
one, it was but right that Gabriel should bear
the good tidings to the other.”
And St. Epiphanius says: “Eve became
for mankind a cause of death, and it is through
her that death came into the world; Mary
was a principle of life, because through her
life has come to us.”
And still more strikingly St. John Chrys­

Our Lady Mediatrix of At.t, Graces

18

ostom: “A virgin, a bit of wood, and death
symbolize our defeat. See now how these
three things have become for us a principle of
life. For Eve there is Mary; for the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil there is the wood
of the Cross; for the death of Adam there is
the death of Christ. Do you see the demon
prostrated by the very weapons which had
rendered him victorious?”
The Fathers just quoted represent the
eastern Church: those of the west are also
quite explicit.
“Death through Eve, life
through Mary,” writes St. Jerome, and St.
Augustine expresses the faith of the Latin
Church in almost the same words, while St
Bernard, in glowing language, draws out the
contrast thus :
“One man and one woman,” he says, “did
us grievous harm, but, thank God, all has been
wonderfully restored, and even with interest,
by one Man and one Woman. For ‘not as the
offence, so also the gift’ : the greatness of the
havoc done does not equal the immensity of
the benefit. Eve was a cruel mediatrix,
through whom the old serpent infected man
himself with his pestilential venom; but how
faithful was Mary, who prepared the antidote
of salvation for one and the other sex! The

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

former was an instrument of seduction, the
latter of reconciliation ; the one induced to sin,
the other brought us our ransom.”
The identity of the language employed by
the Fathers of the Church, of every age and
of every clime, in pointing out the contrast
between the part played by Eve as an instru­
ment of death to the human race, and that of
Mary as a source of Life, is clear proof that
they are but witnesses of the faith of the uni­
versal Church. They are not propounding a
doctrine which they have framed for them­
selves, but are handing on faithfully that
which has come down to them from the
earliest times.
If Eve received her name after having by
her sin brought death into the world, it was
only as prefiguring Mary that she merited to
bear it In reality she was Mother of the dead,
not Mother of the living, as her name would
imply. For they who were to trace their de­
scent to her even to the end of time were all
doomed to enter this world under sentence of
death, the dupes and slaves of Satan. Eve had
robbed them of life, ere imparting it to them.
But Mary, by her fidelity to her Maker,
has deserved to give to mankind a Redeemer,
who by His death has destroyed the reign of

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

15

death, and has thrown open to us the gates of
life everlasting. Mary then is our Mother ; for
it is to her, after Jesus, that we are indebted
for the supernatural life of grace, and the
hope of life eternal. But of this in a later
chapter.

CHAPTER Π
MARY AND THE FIRST GOOD TIDINGS

(Genesis iii : 14,15)

The fall of man was the effect, as we all
know, of the malice and envy of the devil,
who sought in this way to be revenged upon
the Creator for having cast him out of heaven
in punishment of the rebellion, into which his
pride had plunged him along with the other
wicked angels, the partners of his guilt. He
could not directly attain the person of the
Almighty, and hence he sought to seduce from
his allegiance the head of a race, that was
destined to fill the gaps left in the angelic
ranks by the apostasy of the rebel spirits.
But the wisdom of God devised a means
of repairing the damage caused by His astute
and malignant foe, and not content with mere­
ly counteracting the evil done, He would at
the same time utterly humble the demon’s
pride, and show how futile were his efforts
to impede the realization of the divine pur­
16

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

17

pose. For this end, God took the scheme itself
of the Evil One, and turned it back upon its
inventor. The divine plan, as sketched for us
in barest outline in the judgment passed upon
Satan immediately after the fall, is clearly in
the nature of a reprisal. Of this the opening
words, “Because thou hast done this,” leave
not the slightest doubt. To defeat and humili­
ate His crafty foe, God will employ the very
means which the latter made use of to mar
His work. The wiles of Satan have succeeded
in bringing ruin upon mankind, but at once
God intervenes to save us from despair, and
to raise us up to sentiments of invigorating
hope. Not only does He promise our com­
plete restoration, but to fill our hearts with
courage for the unequal struggle, which con­
fronts us, He is pleased to show us the most
cunning contrivances of the demon turned
into instruments of salvation, for those whose
destruction they were meant to compass.
If a man has effected our ruin, a Man shall
save us; if death reigns throughout the race
of Adam, life shall come to us through a scion
of that race; if a tree has been our undoing,
a tree shall heal our wounds; if death is the
punishment of sin, death shall take away our
guilt.

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Our Lady Mediatrix

of

All Graces

But then the woman had played a con­
spicuous part in the victory won by Satan
over the first man. The serpent had cunningly
employed her as a mediatrix in the execution
of his plan to win her husband to his will. A
man and a woman had both taken part in the
degradation of our race ; they must both have
part in its restoration. The two sexes had con­
tributed each its share toward bringing dam­
nation upon mankind ; it was but fitting that
God, who designed to reconcile the world
through a new Adam, should also predestine
a new Eve to be most closely associated with
Him in the work of our common reparation.
And how prominent the Woman is in the
divine plan for the Redemption of mankind !
“Because thou hast done this, I will place en­
mities between thee and the Woman, between
thy seed and her Seed; she shall crush thy
head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel?’
The woman had lent herself as a ready tool
in the seduction of her husband. She had
made herself an ally of the Evil One, and had
formed an unholy friendship with him. Hence
God, to undo the effects of her disloyalty, and
to save the human race which she has doomed,
will raise up another Woman, and will set
undying enmity between her and the serpent,

Oue Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

19

between her Offspring and his; she, through
her Son, shall crush the serpent’s head, and
the latter shall seek to fasten his fangs upon
her heel.
Even though we should read, “He shall
crush thy head,” not “she,” which is the read­
ing of the Latin Vulgate, it is as the Offspring
of the Woman, that the Redeemer of mankind
is mentioned in the consoling prophecy.
Nor can it be doubted that the Woman,
who here appears as the mortal enemy of the
serpent, is the Blessed Virgin Mary. For who
but her Divine Son was destined to crush the
serpent’s head, that is to say, to release man­
kind from the thraldom of Satan, to break his
power, and to put an end to the empire of sin?
The doom pronounced against the Evil One
is, at the same time, a clear announcement of
God’s merciful design to save us from the con­
sequences of our first parents’ guilt, the earli­
est promise of a Redeemer to come.
Such is the constant teaching of the Fathers
of the Church, and it is on the strength of
their uniform interpretation of the passage of
the book of Genesis, of which there is here
question, that the doctrinal bull of Pope Pius
IX, in setting forth the grounds for our faith
in the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed

20

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

Lady, declares that “in this divine oracle the
merciful Redeemer of the human race, that is
to say, Christ Jesus, the Only-begotten Son of
God, was plainly and openly referred to, as
was also His most Blessed Mother, the Virgin
Mary, and that, at the same time, the enmity
of both towards Satan was strikingly ex­
pressed.”
How is it possible, then, for Catholic com­
mentators, in the face of such a clear declara­
tion on the part of the Church, to hold that,
although Mary is indeed designated in the
prophecy of Genesis, she is so only in the spir­
itual or mystical sense ; the woman, according
to the literal meaning, being Eve, the type or
figure of Mary? For if Mary is alluded to only
in the mystical sense, then she is not desig­
nated clearly and openly, as the Pope de­
clares, but only obscurely and under the veil
of mystery.
True, it may not have been given to our
first parents to salute in prophetic vision,
and in her own very features their glorious
daughter who in the distant ages was to bring
forth the Saviour of the world, but the Woman
of the prophecy was Mary, and no one else ;
Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer, Mary in

Our Lady Mediatrix

of

All Graces

21

the literal, historical and immediate sense of
the words.
And her spiritual motherhood is also
clearly apparent from this same passage of
Holy Writ. For as the seed of the serpent is
a collective term, including all those descend­
ants of the first man and woman, who by their
sinful lives bear within them the traits of the
Evil One, so too the seed of the Woman, al­
though it primarily refers to the Redeemer of
mankind, to whom elsewhere in Holy Scrip­
ture the destruction of the empire of the
demon is attributed, nevertheless, as a collec­
tive term, and contrasted with the seed of the
serpent, seems necessarily to be understood,
in a secondary sense, of all who in the course
of ages will take their stand with Christ in
His ceaseless conflict with the enemy of God.
They too are the spiritual offspring of the
Woman, as forming with her Divine Son one
mystical body, of which He is the head. They
too will experience the rage of Satan until the
end of time, but they too by their supernatural
union with Christ, and by the efficacy of His
grace communicated to them, will be forever
associated with Him in His victory over the
demon and all the assaults of hell. They are
one with Him as the objects of the same re-

—

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

lentless hatred on the part of the serpent, and
they are one with Him in inflicting upon the
latter an overwhelming defeat. It follows
then, that the Woman who is the Mother of
the Saviour in the physical order, is also their
Mother in the supernatural and spiritual order,
in which they are identified with Him.

CHAPTER ΠΙ

MARY COOPERATRIX IN THE
REDEMPTION
It is not an exclusive privilege of Mary to
cooperate with God in the salvation of souls.
The priests of Holy Church, in the exercise of
the ministry to which they have been called,
are constantly laboring for that end, uniting
and subordinating their activity to that of
Christ, whose instillments they are, and dis­
charging in His name a sacred embassy.
Nor does it detract in any way from the
glory which belongs to the Only-begotten Son
of God, if, in the most divine of all works,
which is that of saving souls, others without
number are admitted to some part and share.
For it remains always true that their part is
a dependent one, and that whatever results
they accomplish are achieved only by the ap­
plication of the merits of Christ through the
channels appointed by Christ Himself. So,
on a wider scale, God imparts to all creatures
a share in His activity without in the least
derogating from His own glory, because what­
23

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

ever the causality which He concedes to
created agents, He himself remains the first
and universal Cause, on whom all secondary
causes are absolutely dependent for the power
to act, as well as for the exercise of their
activity.
But Mary surely has played, and still con­
tinues to play, a much more important and
essential part in the reconciliation of mankind
than any other, save only her Divine Son. Had
she done no more for us than to give us our
Redeemer, that of itself is a contribution to
the salvation of the world, which places her
in a class apart all by herself, but, in addition
to this, she has never ceased to use her inter­
cessory power in our behalf, and by the graces
which she thus obtains for us, is ever bringing
about the application to our souls of the fruits
of the Redemption wrought for us by her Son.
We have seen that both by tradition and
in Holy Writ, Mary is presented to us as a
second Eve, as one, that is, who fulfils in the
restoration of mankind a role closely corre­
sponding to that of Eve in the ruin of our race.
If then we define exactly the part which the
latter had in bringing about the fall of man,
we shall be prepared to understand what was
Mary's part in effecting our redemption.

Our Lady Mediatrix

of

All Graces

25

Now we know that it was not to Eve that
God committed the destiny of the human
race. Not she, but Adam was its head. Had
Adam but remained loyal to his Maker, Eve’s
sin would have hurt herself alone; it would
not have involved the whole race of men. It
was Adam who held in his hand the lot of all
his offspring, for weal or for woe. At their
entrance into life, they were to inherit from
him a human nature either richly endowed, as
his own had been, or else vitiated at its source.
In his obedience to his Creator all his pos­
terity would be blessed, but if he revolted
against the commandment laid upon him, his
rebellion would entail the fall from grace and
from the divine friendship of every one of his
descendants even to the remotest ages.
As a fact, Adam sinned, and by his sin
dragged all men into the abyss. But he was
not alone in his guilt. Eve, who had herself
been seduced by the Evil One, now lent her­
self to his wily scheme for the conquest of her
husband. Turning tempter, she won him over
to the demon’s side ; she persuaded him to eat
of the forbidden fruit, she made him faithless
to his Creator, and thus brought death into the
world, and utter havoc on mankind.
True, it was Adam’s sin which made us all

26

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

rebels against God, hopelessly shattering the
ties of friendship which had bound us to Him,
and rendering us the dupes and slaves of His
wicked and cunning enemy. His revolt was
sufficient of itself alone to implicate us all in
his apostasy. As our head, he represented
each and every one of us ; we formed with him
one moral person; he acted in our name, as
well as in his own.
And yet, while nothing can palliate his
guilt, must not she at whose solicitation he
sinned, bear a heavy share of responsibility
for the ruin of mankind? Did not she induce
Adam to transgress his Maker’s law, and to
do that whereby we all have been undone? Is
not our fall her work? If she had not formed
with Satan an unholy alliance, and used her
art of persuasion to drag her husband down
into sin, would he have been vanquished by
the demon’s strategy? He was not deceived ;
His one motive was complacency towards his
wife, and hence we may rightfully throw on
her the responsibility for our degradation and
most dismal nrin. We truly owe it all to her,
even while in another and a stricter sense, we
owe it all to Adam.
If then Adam and Eve cooperated in the
fall of man, there is no a priori improbability

Our Lady Mediatrix

of

All Graces

27

of a new Adam and a new Eve cooperating in
the affair of man’s redemption. In two dis­
tinct orders of causality, and on two different
planes, the whole work of man’s salvation may
be attributed to one as a necessary factor,
sufficient by Himself alone for the production
of the result; to the other as actually, though
not necessarily, concurring with Him in the
reconciliation of mankind.
And the doom pronounced against the
serpent, immediately after the fall, being, as
has already been pointed out, in the nature
of a complete turning of the tables upon the
Evil One, it would seem that the prominence
given to the Woman in the passage in which
it is recorded, must be understood to imply a
very effective and important part to be played
by her in the utter discomfiture of Satan.

CHAPTER IV
MARY’S COOPERATION
A Direct Concurrence

in the

Work of the

Redemption

It is Mary who has given to us our Saviour.
That of itself makes us debtors to her for our
salvation, and our debt is enhanced by the
further fact that her consent to the Incarna­
tion was asked, and that it was given with
full knowledge of what she was consenting to.
We may conceive the case in which the
Mother of the Redeemer might have been as
little aware beforehand of the mission or des­
tiny of her Son, as the mother of any merely
human hero, and in which she might have had
quite as little to do with the work subsequent­
ly accomplished by Him. Even so we should
accord to her a certain degree of reverence
and esteem, as we do to the mother of a great
soldier or statesman or public benefactor,
while perhaps we realize that her part in his
achievements has been only remote and in28

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

29

direct. But is there ground for thinking that
with Mary the case is different, and that her
share in the redemption of mankind has been
direct, and by no means limited to the gift to
us of Jesus? Rather, must it not have been
still more restricted than the part of the aver­
age mother, owing to the supernatural char­
acter of the work, for which no human train­
ing could have fitted the one destined to effect
it? Where it is question of mere men and
women, a mother’s influence counts for much,
and they are often little more or less than
what a mother’s lessons have disposed them
to become. But salvation is a divine work.
Our Saviour Himself is divine, and He comes
divinely equipped from the outset for the task
proposed to Him.
It might appear then that Mary’s coopera­
tion in the Redemption of mankind was pure­
ly remote or indirect. She was the Mother of
ttie Redeemer, but, further than that, she had
nothing to do with the work of the Redemp­
tion itself. Such would seem to be a correct
statement of the Protestant view.
But it is far from being the traditional
view of the Catholic Church, as enshrined in
her liturgy, in the teaching of the Fathers, and
in the hearts of her children everywhere. The

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

language of her great Doctors would seem in­
deed to be gross exaggeration, unless it be in­
terpreted as embodying the idea which they
had of the cooperation of our Lady in the
work of Redemption as a whole : that is to
say, of Mary's part not merely in the mystery
of the Incarnation considered by itself alone,
but in that mystery regarded as the first neces­
sary step in the affair of the salvation of man­
kind.
When the Angel Gabriel came as ambas­
sador from God to Mary, it was not to nego­
tiate with her some private business. It was
not merely to ask her consent to become the
Mother of a Son, whose greatness he described
to her in glowing words. He came to treat
with her of the momentous affair of the sal­
vation of the human race ; of the birth of the
Saviour of the world, the long promised Messias, whose Mother she was asked to be; of
the regeneration of mankind, and the setting
up of an everlasting kingdom. All this is ap­
parent from the Gospel narrative, and it is in
this sense that the Fathers of the Church have
uniformly interpreted it.
What the Angel asks of Mary is her con­
sent to become the Mother of the Messias, and
thus to cooperate in the establishment of the

Our Lady Mediatrix

of

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31

Messianic kingdom. The Son whom she shall
bear is, as the Angel sets forth, the promised
Redeemer, and in consenting to become His
Mother, Mary will consent to do her part in
bringing about the Redemption of mankind.
You cannot divide Jesus, as though He
possessed a twofold personality. You cannot
distinguish between Jesus, the private indi­
vidual, and Jesus, the Saviour of the world.
The Incarnation of the Son of God, through
the maternal cooperation of the Virgin Mary,
has no other purpose but the salvation of the
human race. In consenting then to the Incar­
nation, Mary cooperates directly in the Re­
demption of the world, just as though the In­
carnation had alone sufficed to save us. It is,
in fact, the first step in the work of our sal­
vation, and it is as such that Mary gives her
consent to it.
Jesus, from the moment of His entering
the world, is the price of our salvation. He
takes to Himself our human flesh, and be­
comes incarnate in order that He may give
Himself up for us to the death of the Cross.
From the very first, He offers Himself as our
ransom and the victim for our sins. And Mary,
knowing from the angel’s words the purpose
of His coming, and consenting to become His

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

■VW

Mother, consents to the plan of the Redemp­
tion as proposed to her, in all its fulness, and
thus, by the union of her will with the divine
will, cooperates directly in the work of the
salvation of mankind.

CHAPTER V
MARY, OUR MOTHER

For the sincere Catholic it is little short of
a truism to say that the Mother of God is also
our Mother. Who would ever think of calling
it in question? Not, assuredly, any one who
adheres with simple faith to the lessons im­
bibed at his mother’s knee, or in whom the
keen edge of early religious conviction has not
been dulled by intercourse with scoffers, or
association with heretics or the worldlyminded.
In popular Catholic hymns, to which we
instinctively turn for a reliable expression of
the faith of the masses, as well as in the liturgy
itself, which presents to us a more authorita­
tive declaration of Catholic truth, the Mother
of God is at the same time the Mother of man­
kind. In the canticles addressed to her to-day,
no less than in those of the Middle Ages, we
find the sweet title of Mother bestowed upon
her as a matter of course, and as obviously
befitting her, along with earnest appeals to her
to exercise towards those who invoke her the
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watchful care, the tender sympathy, and all
the other attributes of motherhood.
True, we may not trace back to apostolic
times, or even to the first ages of the Church,
the practice of invoking her under the endear­
ing name of Mother, but the lack of evidence
in that respect is capable of being explained,
especially when so little has come down to
us from those remote times even on other
heads of Christian doctrine, and the truth in
question rests upon too solid foundations to
be in any way impaired by such a negative
argument
Mary’s motherhood in our regard is surely
comprised within the range of explicit Catho­
lic teaching, as is clear from the frequency
and emphasis with which it has been pro­
claimed in recent years in official utterances
of the Holy See. In particular, the learned
Pontiff, Leo XIII, who was so insistent in in­
culcating a deep, filial affection towards the
Blessed Mother of God, on the part of pastors
and faithful alike, asserts in the plainest
words her spiritual motherhood, calling her
Mother of mankind, Mother of the Church,
and our Mother.
The firm persuasion in which all Catholics
are, that Mary is truly their Mother, and that

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35

she continues to discharge towards them, from
her exalted throne in Heaven, the functions of
the sweetest, most loving, and most powerful
of mothers, is accountable in a large measure
for that spirit of joyous expansiveness, which
is so characteristic of the children of the true
Church, when contrasted with those who are
unhappily outside her pale. Mary is to the
former as a loving Mother, radiating a per­
petual sunshine in the midst of her children,
while those religious denominations which
know not Mary, are like the hearth, which a
mother’s death has left desolate, because the
light of her smile has gone out, and the music
of her voice has been hushed.
When we speak of Mary as our Mother,
we refer, as is evident, not to a natural, phys­
ical motherhood, in which sense she has but
one child, her Divine Son, Jesus Christ; but to
a spiritual motherhood in the order of grace.
At the same time, we apply the name to our
Blessed Lady, not in a loose sense, and only
as a tribute of respect and veneration for one
so highly honored by Almighty God, and so
full of motherly love for us, but in the strict
meaning of the word. Mary is our Mother,
because she has begotten us to the life of
grace. In other words ; it is to her, after God,

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that we are indebted for our supernatural,
spiritual life, the life of the children of God,
and for whatever has to do with the produc­
tion in us of that life, its preservation, and
development. Such has ever been the faith of
the Church, both in the east and in the west,
as it would be easy to show at length, if we
had space here for the numerous testimonies
that might be adduced in support of this truth.
We shall confine our quotations to a few pas­
sages wherein the Fathers of the Church bear
witness to that faith.
“Hail to thee, Mother of God,” exclaims
St Cyril of Alexandria, “through whom light
has arisen upon the unfortunates who sat in
darkness and in the shadow of death! Hail
to thee, Mother of God, through whom every
faithful soul is saved !”
Another writer of the Greek Church, once
thought to have been St Epiphanius, says,
addressing Mary: “Through thee men have
become angels; through thee death has been
destroyed, and hell rifled; through thee the
idols are fallen, and the doctrine that is from
heaven has conquered the world.”
And St Epiphanius himself, in a remark­
able passage, has the following: “When Eve,
under the veil of figure, received the name of

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

37

Mother of the living, she represented Mary,
full of grace. In fact, Eve was called mother
of the living, after having heard the sentence,
‘Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt re­
turn/ that is to say, after her sin. To consider
merely the exterior, sensible order, it is from
Eve that the whole human race has sprung all
over the world; but, in reality, it is through
Mary that Life itself was ushered into the
world. By having borne in her bosom the one
to whom the name Living chiefly apples, she
has become the Mother of the Living”
Again, St. John Damascene, in his homily
on the Annunciation, which is little else but
one long series of greetings to Mary, thus bears
emphatic testimony to the debt we owe to her!
“Hail to thee/’ he says, “through whom we
are enrolled in the one, holy, Catholic, and
apostolic Church ! Hail to thee, through whom
we possess the faith that enlightens and saves
souls! Hail to thee, through whom we par­
take of the pure and redoubtable flesh of God
made man, and taste the true bread of immor­
tality! Hail to thee, through whom we are
withdrawn from the gates of hell, and lifted
up to heaven!”
The language of St. Germanus of Constan­
tinople is even more striking! “0 Virgin

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Mother of God,” he cries out, “man was ren­
dered spiritual, when the Holy Ghost came
down upon thee, as upon His temple. No one,
0 most holy, is filled with the knowledge of
God, unless through thee; no one, O Virgin
Mother, escapes from death unless through
thee ; no one is ransomed, unless through thee ;
no one receives the benefit of mercy, unless
through thee; through thee, who hast deserved
to enfold God within thee !”
“In the beginning,” says St. Ephrem, dea­
con of the Syrian Church, “death passed to
all men through the transgression of our first
parent; to-day, through Mary, we have been
transferred from death to life. In the begin­
ning, the devil, taking hold of the ear of Eve,
infused the poison, which made its way thence
into the whole body; to-day, Mary, by lend­
ing the ear of faith to the word of God, has
introduced into our human nature the Author
of everlasting bliss.”
The Latin Fathers too, in marking the con­
trast between the first woman, and the Mother
of the Redeemer, declare that death has come
through Eve, life through Mary; that, in
Christ, the woman, after having been for so
long the mother of the dead, has been made by
God the mother of the living; “so true is it,”

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

39

as St. Peter Chrysologus observes, “that with­
out Mary it was impossible either that death
should be expelled, or that life should be re­
stored.”
St. Anselm feels quite unequal to the task
of duly acknowledging our debt to Mary.
“What shall I say,” he asks, “that shall be
worthy of my Creator and Saviour, of her who
by her holiness cleanses me from my faults,
by her integrity bestows upon me incorrupti­
bility, by her virginity causes me to be loved
by her Lord, and makes my soul the betrothed
of my God? By thy fecundity, 0 Blessed
Lady, a sinful world is justified ; a world that
was lost is saved ; a banished world is restored
to its true home !”
Lastly, from whom, if not from Holy
Church, have we learned that beautiful invo­
cation which we address to Mary, and which
is daily on our lips : “Our life, our sweetness,
and our hope?” The language may jar upon
heretics, but it expresses the truth. Mary is
our life, because she is the Mother of Him,
who is the Life itself. Through her we have
received Him, who has reconciled us to God,
and who is for us the source of all grace, the
cause of our supernatural life. She is our
Mother according to the spirit, and in the

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

order of grace, because she is the Mother of
our Divine Saviour according to the flesh,
and in the order of nature.
It is to this great fact that the Fathers of
the Church constantly refer us as to the basis
on which rests the spiritual motherhood of
Mary. Her divine maternity is the source of
that universal influence which Mary has ex­
erted in the work of the redemption and sanc­
tification of souls. But of this at greater
length in the ensuing chapter.

CHAPTER VI

FOUNDATION OF MARY’S SPIRITUAL
MOTHERHOOD
I—Merit of the Divine Maternity

When we say that Mary is our Mother be­
cause she is the Mother of God, the meaning
is not that the bare fact of the Divine Ma­
ternity is enough to make God’s Mother our
Mother also. If Mary had given birth to the
Son of God, the Saviour of the world, with­
out lending her free concurrence towards the
accomplishment of the mystery of the redemp­
tion; if the Divine Redeemer, in coming to
save our race, had taken from her our human
nature, but without her knowing beforehand
either who He was, or what was the purpose
of His coining, she would have been in that
case, worthy of all honor on account of her
exalted station, but she would not have been,
strictly speaking, the Mother of mankind.
The Mother of God is our Mother, because,
in the first place, Mary merited to be the
41

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Mother of the Divine Redeemer, and prepared
herself for that unexampled dignity by the
constant practice of the highest virtue.* In
the second place, the mystery of the Incar­
nation, whereby Mary became the Mother of
God, was not effected without Mary’s free
consent. Lastly, by the perfect conformity of
her will to the divine will, and by her union
with her Son, Mary cooperated in His lifelong
oblation of Himself for our salvation, and, in
particular, in the bloody sacrifice by which
He completed it on Calvary.
In the first place then, we are indebted to
Mary for our supernatural life, because by the
extraordinary purity of her heart, the beauty
•That Mary merited to be the Mother of God is a truth
too often and too expressly enunciated by the Fathers and
doctors of the Church, and in her liturgy, for any one to
think of calling it in question. However, as theologians dis­
tinguish two lands of merit, one de condigno, to use the lan­
guage of the school, which is merit in the strictest sense of
the word, and the other, de congruo, implying a certain pro­
priety or fitness in the bestowal of the recompense, it may
be well to observe here once for all, that Mary did not and
could not merit de condigno either the Incarnation itself, or,
supposing this already decided upon, that it should be accom­
plished through her, in other words that she should be the
Mother of the God-man. And the reason is simple. The In­
carnation, as the first source or principle of grace, is also the
first source of merit, and therefore cannot be the result of
merit.
And at the same time it was eminently proper that God
should give to His Son the purest of Virgins for His Mother,
and that a Virgin as rich as she in privileges and in merits,
should have no other son than a God made man. When then
we say that Mary merited the Divine Maternity, it is of this
merit de congruo that we should be understood to speak.

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

43

and splendor of her virtues, the incomparable
treasure of her merits, she deserved that the
Son of God should choose her for His Mother.
There can be no doubt at all that she merited
to be the Mother of the God-Man. The Holy
Fathers, as well as the theologians of Holy
Church, are at one in asserting that she did.
The Church herself affirms it again and again,
in explicit terms in her liturgy, and the Angel,
who brings her word of the great things which
are about to be accomplished in her, salutes
her as full of grace and blessed among women.
Mary, according to a familiar axiom of
the Fathers, must first conceive the Son of
God in her heart, before conceiving Him in
her flesh. That spiritual conception, which
precedes and entails the other, consists in such
interior preparation as will render her a
worthy Mother of the Redeemer. When she
has freely done her part to prepare for Him
a worthy dwelling within her, the Son of God,
ravished by her charms, will gladly make
choice of her, in order that He may take from
her our human nature, and as a Son of man
make due atonement for our sins.
Certainly, if Mary, by her unexampled
holiness, no less than by the singular privi­
leges with which she was adorned, deserved

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that, through her, God should bestow on us
His Only-begotten Son, who alone is the
source to us of the life of grace, and the prin­
ciple of our spiritual regeneration, then clear­
ly we are indebted to her for our supernatural
life. And this is still more evident, if we con­
sider how God, as it were, waited for cen­
turies, from the fall of man till the appearance
of Mary, before sending His beloved Son to
redeem the world. She prepared the way
whereby God had resolved to introduce His
Son into the world. His coming depended
upon that preparation: without it He would
not have come.
Hence, in all truth, it is to Mary that we
are indebted for our Redeemer, and in our
Redeemer, for the life of grace, and all the
blessings that have come to us through Him.
For her to have given birth to the Redeemer
of mankind, and to have become our Mother
are, in point of fact, one and the same thing.
In claiming, however, that Mary merited
the Divine Motherhood, we do not claim either
that her merit was of the strictest kind, or
that she merited the Incarnation itself of the
Son of God. This mystery being the very
source of all grace, and hence of all merit, can­
not itself come within the object of merit;

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

45

and besides, being an infinite grace, and of
infinite value, it is beyond the power of merit­
ing of any pure creature.
But supposing the Incarnation to have
been fixed upon by the divine choice as the
means of accomplishing man’s redemption,
and supposing that the Son of God was to
have a human Mother, then it was eminent­
ly fitting that that Mother should be Mary,
whose purity, and innocence, and incompar­
able beauty recommended her as the only one
fit to be so intimately associated with the
Saviour of the world, as to furnish from her
own substance the flesh of the Son of God
made man.

CHAPTER VU

FOUNDATION OF MARY’S SPIRITUAL
MOTHERHOOD
II—Consent

to the

Incarnation

Mary was not an involuntary instrument
in the accomplishment of God’s merciful de­
sign for the redemption of mankind. An Angel
was sent from the court of Heaven to ask her,
in the name of the Most High, to consent to
play the part assigned to her in the plan of
salvation. The whole demeanor of the heaven­
ly ambassador implies that he did not come
with absolute orders, which God would ac­
complish whether His creature willed it or no.
On the contrary, the deference with which
the Angel addresses Mary, the detail into
which he enters in setting forth the divine pur­
pose, the explanations which he gives in re­
ply to Mary’s inquiry—all indicate that what
he had come to ask was her free cooperation
in the mystery that was about to be wrought
in her. Else, why does he wait till Mary has
acquiesced in what is proposed? Why does
46

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47

he withdraw only when he has heard from her
lips the words “Behold the handmaid of the
Lord; be it done to me according to thy
word”? Or why does Mary feel called upon
to speak those words, if not because she rec­
ognizes that her consent has been made a
necessary condition for the accomplishment
of the great mystery, which for the moment is
in abeyance, and in view of which God asks
of her this supreme act of obedience and
faith?
The Incarnation, whereby the Son of God
became man for the ransom of the world, is,
according to a constantly recurring thought,
suggested to us by the Fathers of the Church,
and having its confirmation in Holy Writ, a
sort of spiritual marriage, or mysterious es­
pousals of the Divine Word with our human
nature, or of Christ with His Church, the latter
union being the complement of the first. The
Son of God assumes to Himself our human
nature in the unity of the one Christ, in order
that He may one day unite to Himself His
Church in the unity of one mystical person.
But for the cementing of such an alliance,
the law of nature requires the consent of the
contracting parties, and in the order of grace
we find God uniformly respecting the lawful

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claims of nature. Hence it is not enough that
the Son of God seeks the alliance : there must
be some one to answer for our human nature,
to accept in its name the proffered honor; and
who so pure, so glorious as Mary, so fit to
treat with God of the great affair of our sal­
vation? The humanity of Christ, in which the
espousals are to be realized, and which would
have the foremost claim to be consulted, does
not yet exist, except in Mary. She then must
speak in behalf of all ; she must say the word
that shall seal forever the alliance between
our human nature and the Son of God.
This moreover is clearly required by the
antithesis between the first and the second
Eve—an antithesis which forms the subject of
a previous chapter of the present treatise. It
was from the very start that the first woman
freely cooperated in the work of our destruc­
tion, by offering to her husband the fruit which
brought death to him and to our race. Hence,
if the antithesis is to be perfect, Mary, the
second Eve, must also cooperate from the first
in the work of our salvation, and by freely
associating herself with her Divine Son in the
oblation which He makes to the Father from
the outset, must present to us the fruit which
once more gives life to the world.

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49

Mary knew from the Angel’s message that
the Son whom she should bear, was the longexpected Messias, the Saviour of the world.
She surely knew from her meditation of the
Prophets, even if we take no account of the
extraordinary lights which must have been
vouchsafed to her personally, as the Queen of
Prophets, that the promised Redeemer was to
pay the ransom of our sins, cancelling all our
debts in His Precious Blood, and when she
acquiesced in the proposal made to her by the
Angel, she gave Jesus to us by her own free
act
But in giving Jesus to us, she gave Him
for what He was, and what she knew Him to
be, and hence, as in Jesus we have everything,
she gave us all things together with Him. To
her then we owe the salvation, which Jesus
brought to us. To her we owe that spiritual
life of grace, without which there is no escape
from the death of sin. No one then is saved,
except through Mary. No one comes to life,
except through Mary. She then is our Mother,
the Mother of all the living.
Nor need we have any misgiving, lest, if
we should make the Incarnation of our Lord
to depend on Mary’s free consent, we should
thereby jeopardize the whole plan of man’s

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redemption. Mary was, to use her own words,
“the handmaid of the Lord.” Thoroughly and
solely devoted to the fulfilment of God’s holy
will, she needed only to be assured that her
consent was a necessary condition for the
carrying out of the divine plan for the redemp­
tion of mankind, in order to be persuaded to
give it with the most perfect abandonment of
herself into the hands of God.
Besides, the divine wisdom knows all the
secrets of the human heart, and has only to
adapt His graces to the dispositions of His
creatures, and to the end that He has in view,
in order infallibly to obtain their consent to
what He proposes, without in the least vio­
lating the liberty with which He has endowed
them.

CHAPTER VIII
FOUNDATION OF MARY’S SPIRITUAL
MOTHERHOOD
III—Union with Christ on Calvary

It was no mere matter of chance that
Mary’s Son was the Only-begotten of the
Father, the Redeemer of Mankind, who was
to ransom the world by His death on the
Cross. Mary had been prepared beforehand
for the glory of the Divine Maternity by the
extraordinary privileges which had been con­
ferred upon her, and she had earned for her­
self that dignity by the altogether exceptional
fidelity with which she had corresponded
throughout life with every grace vouchsafed
to her, thus amassing an immense treasure of
merit, ere the Angel, on the part of God, came
to salute her full of grace, and to ask her co­
operation in the work of the Redemption.
But it was not for herself alone that Mary
deserved the divine fecundity, through which
she became the Mother of our merciful
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of

All Graces

Saviour. Her deep humility, it is true, would
never have permitted her to aspire conscious­
ly to the high honor of which God deemed her
worthy, and yet, in point of fact, it is through
her, and by reason of her exalted merit, that
God has bestowed upon us the gift of His
Only-begotten Son, with whom and in whom
He has given us all things. We are all debtors
then to Mary for the life of grace which her
Son has purchased for us, a truth which be­
comes the more apparent, when to Mary's
life-long merit we add her free consent to be­
come the instrument of God’s mercy towards
us, and her readiness to accept, along with
the honor of the Divine Maternity, all its grave
responsibilities and crushing sorrows.
By the consent which she gave to the mys­
tery of the Incarnation, as proposed to her by
the Angel Gabriel in the name of God, Mary
became our Mother. For the Incarnation
looked forward to the Passion as to the con­
dition of our ransom, and the Son of God be­
came man that we might have life through
His death. That, in fact, is why Mary’s con­
sent was needed, and why God left it to her
free choice to say whether or not she would
accept a dignity involving so great a sacrifice.
Since then from the moment at which Our

Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

53

Blessed Lady declared to the Angel her ac­
quiescence in her Maker’s will, our Redemp­
tion was assured, it is also from that moment
that we must date her spiritual Motherhood
in our regard.
Something however is wanting to make
that Motherhood in every sense complete.
Mary has yet to tread with Jesus the dolorous
way of the Passion, she must ascend with
Him to Calvary, she must stand beside His
cross, till He expires upon it in torment and in
shame. On this condition only will He pro­
claim to the whole world her Motherhood ; for
then only will it have received its full com­
plement and crown. The Woman whose di­
vine offspring is to crush the serpent’s head,
may not be absent from the last scene of that
great drama, in which Eve, her faithless coun­
terpart, was at first so cruelly conspicuous.
True it is that Mary, in consenting to be­
come the Mother of our Blessed Redeemer,
had already consented to the privations, and
sufferings and ignominious death, whereby
her innocent Son was to pay to the divine jus­
tice the debt of our sins. She was well aware
of the plan of the redemption of the human
race, with which her profound meditation of
the inspired prophecies had rendered her fa­

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of

All Graces

miliar, even if we fail to take account of the
fuller and more splendid revelations, which
we may well assume to have been vouchsafed
to Mary personally, as to the future Queen of
Prophets. She knew therefore that the Messias, whom she was to bear, was to be a Man
of sorrows; that He was to take upon Himself
the iniquities of us all, and that by His stripes
we should be healed, and when she accepted
the proffered dignity of the Divine Mother­
hood, she accepted with it all the poignant
grief and anguish which, like a sword, must
pierce her own intrepid soul.
She foresaw and accepted it, but this is not
yet enough. Though any single act of the
Man-God would have sufficed to reconcile a
thousand worlds, His acts are not accepted
singly, but as forming part of one grand
whole, the work of man’s Redemption, which
will be completed only when the Redeemer
expires on the Cross. In this work Mary was
associated from the time at which she con­
sented to become the Mother of our Saviour,
and there would be a lack of unity in the di­
vine plan, if, united with Jesus at the outset,
and for a portion of His work, she were no
longer so at the hour of its completion.
Hence Maiy stands by the Cross of Jesus,

0 ük Lady Mediatrix

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All Graces

55

bringing forth her spiritual children in
anguish and bitterness of soul. As the ‘‘Mother
of all the living/’ she must give them life
through the Passion of her Son, and as their
future comforter in all their sorrows, she must
learn compassion through her own most griev­
ous pangs.
Jesus was not alone in the earlier stages
of His life-work, wherein He pledged Himself
to die, that we might live. It was as He re­
posed on Mary’s bosom that He took upon
Himself the solemn engagement wholly to
sacrifice Himself for us. It was under her
roof, and beneath her fostering care that He
grew up as a lamb destined for the slaughter.
And hence, when at length the sword is
lifted up, and is on the point of being plunged
into the flesh of the innocent Victim, Mary is
of necessity there at His side. For, ere it can
rend the fragile wall of clay, and open to us
the fount of never-ending life, it must first
pass even through the heart of the sorrowful
Mother.
It is on Calvary that the Only-begotten
wins for us the grace of the divine adoption
by the complete cancelling of the debt which
we contracted by our sins. How proper then
that Mary too should be at hand, cooperating

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

with her Son, by entire conformity of will, in
the last phase of His life-long sacrifice, and
thus completing and crowning her own spir­
itual Motherhood with regard to those on
whom it has pleased God to confer the price­
less boon of the adoption as of children !
Absolutely speaking, Our Lady’s acquies­
cence in the immolation of the Divine Victim,
as involved in her consent to the Incarnation
of the Son of God for the salvation of the
world, would have been all-sufficient to con­
stitute her Mother of our race, even if it had
been no part of God’s plan that she should be
actually present at the death of the Redeemer.
As a matter of fact, however, we know that
she was destined to stand on Calvary’s height
at the supreme moment, and, by the unfail­
ing union of her will with the divine will, was
to have her part in the bloody oblation, where­
by Christ offered Himself to the Father for
the redemption of mankind. Nor is it reason­
able to suppose that the foreknowledge of her
cruel transfixion was at first withheld from
Mary, when we know it to have been revealed
to holy Simeon, who prophesied that a sword
should pierce her soul.
Mary then, in consenting to become the
Mother of our Redeemer, already accepted the

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57

sacrifice that was asked of her in all its most
distressing features, and when at length she
stood beside the Cross on Calvary to receive
the last gasp of her dying Son, she was but
making good the complete donation she had
long since made to us of Him who is our life,
and who has willed that we should share with
Him all that He has, and that, in the order of
grace, His Mother should be our Mother, even
as His Father is also our Father.

CHAPTER IX

MARY, MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE
It is needless to observe that when we
claim that God’s Mother is also our Mother,
we do not ascribe quite the same meaning to
the word in both uses. For in the case of her
Divine Son, Mary is His Mother, in the sense
that she has physically begotten Him, whereas
in our case, she is our Mother only in the spir­
itual, not in the physical order, though, at the
same time, no other word would express near
so graphically the relation in which Mary
stands to us, nor stir within us, to the same
extent, the strong and tender emotions which
should correspond to all her watchful care in
our regard.
For she has not merely bestowed upon us
the supernatural life, by giving to us our most
Blessed Redeemer, and all that has come to
us through Him, but she is incessantly occu­
pied with whatever concerns us, procuring for
us all that may nourish and strengthen in us
the life of grace that we owe to her, and guard­
ing us against the dangers that threaten to
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steal it away, and to make void in us the
Passion of her Son.
When then we give to Mary the title of
Mother of Grace or Mother of Divine Grace,
we imply that hers is a spiritual Motherhood
in our regard, a Motherhood in the order, not
of nature, but of grace. She is the Mother of
Grace, because we are begotten of her to the
life of grace, being indebted to her, after
Jesus, for our supernatural life.
Among the similar forms of expression
which we apply to the ever Blessed Virgin, it
would perhaps be hard to find one whose
meaning is exactly parallel, yet a comparison
with some of them may not be without ad­
vantage towards a better understanding of
the title which we are at present considering.
Thus we speak of Mary as the “Mother of
fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and
of holy hope,” attributing to her words pri­
marily spoken by heavenly Wisdom concern­
ing herself (Eccli. xxiv, 24). The latter is the
mother of these virtuous qualities, inasmuch
as all spring from her, and hence the words
may not inappropriately be applied to Mary,
as in fact they are in the liturgy of the Church,
to signify that the effect of devotion to her is
to produce these same virtues in the souls of

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her clients. It is then in a like sense that the
title, “Mother of Divine Grace” is given to her
as conveying the idea that Mary is, together
with her Divine Son, and through Him, the
source of grace to all those who live the super­
natural life.
Again, Mary is called “Mother of Mercy,”
not only by reason of the plentifulness with
which mercy is apportioned to those who seek
it at her hands, but also in the sense that it is
her special, one might almost say, her exclu­
sive prerogative, inasmuch as God, while re­
serving to Himself the dispensing of justice
to all creatures, has, as it were, made over to
Mary the half of His kingdom, by empower­
ing her to deal with every sort of misery, to
which mankind is heir, healing the sick, re­
lieving the distressed, comforting the sorrow­
ful everywhere. Mary is the Mother of mercy,
because mercy proceeds from her as from an
abundant, never-failing source, and because
mercy is her characteristic role in the great
drama of human life. So too she is the Mother
of Grace, because whatever grace is bestowed
on us, is granted, as we shall see, through the
universal mediation of Mary, whereas apart
from her there is no approach for us to
the fountainhead of all heavenly gifts and
blessings.

CHAPTER X
MARY, OUR MEDIATRIX

It is quite true that, according to the in­
spired teaching of St Paul, there is but one
Mediator between God and man, the Man
Christ Jesus. That is to say, there is but one
whose role in the great affair of our salvation
is indispensably necessary; but one who could
and did save us by offering to the justice of
God condign satisfaction for our sins.
When then we ascribe to Mary a part in
the work of our redemption, we do not by any
means propose to put her on a footing of
equality with Christ, her Divine Son. There is
no thought of affirming the necessity of her
cooperation. The question turns on a point of
fact, and must be determined solely from the
sources of divine revelation, that is to say,
from Holy Scripture and tradition.
Nor do we, by asserting the fact of Mar/s
cooperation with our Divine Saviour, detract
in any way from the value of His atonement,
as though our debt were not fully paid by
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Him. Christ offered to the Father a super­
abundant satisfaction for the sins of mankind.
He alone has paid the full price of our ransom,
and to this price no one else has contributed
a single mite or farthing. Nor could anyone
have done so, seeing that, by reason of the
revolt of our first parents, in which the whole
human race was involved, we all alike had
need of being ransomed, before we could re­
gain the grace and favor of our Maker.
And yet, in the whole work of the redemp­
tion, it was His will to associate His Blessed
Mother with Himself by indissoluble ties. The
part she takes in our restoration is indeed es­
sentially inferior to His. She does not pay
even the smallest fraction of our debt. On the
plane on which His mediation is exercised, He
is absolutely alone. Yet from first to last, she
cooperates in His work by the entire con­
formity of her will with His. Hence her role,
though of a lower order, is no less universal
than that of the one Mediator; our obligations
to her comprise in their extent the whole re­
deeming office of her Son.
When we speak of Mary as our Mediatrix,
we may have in mind either the function
which she exercised in the work of the re­
demption in general, or the position which she

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holds in our regard as go-between in our re­
lations with Jesus.
From the former point of view, Mary’s
mediation is inseparably bound up with that
of Jesus. Although He might have wrought
our salvation alone, without taking Mary into
His confidence, or inviting her to share in His
work, as a matter of fact, He did not choose
to do so, but willed that she should be present
at each successive stage of His mortal career,
renewing, continuing, completing, what she
had done at the Incarnation, and that every­
where His oblation of Himself should be pre­
sented to the Father through Mary’s hands.
This is what we see to have taken place at
His first entrance into the world; and again
when, in a more explicit manner, He took
upon Himself the office of Saviour in the mys­
tery of the Circumcision, and received from
Mary the Holy Name of Jesus ; and once more,
when He renewed His offering at the Presen­
tation in the Temple; and finally when the
holocaust was completed by His death upon
the Cross.
In every phase of the life of the Divine
Victim—when He first consecrates Himself to
His work, when He is nourished and reared
as a lamb destined for the sacrifice, or when

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at length He sheds the last drop of His blood
for the restoration of the world—Mary has her
place beside Him, thoroughly at one with Him
by an unswerving fidelity to the engagement
which she contracted at the Incarnation, and
ready to yield up her beloved Son to all the
severities of the Divine Justice, in order that
by His stripes we may be healed, and by His
death we may have life everlasting.
In the Prophets, we find the Woman in­
separably associated with the promised Re­
deemer and Mediator in the work of salvation,
even as the first woman was closely leagued
with Adam in the destruction of mankind.
And when Christ came to fulfil the Prophets,
He appeared with Mary, overthrowing the
power of Satan, and turning back his wiles
upon his head. As we owed our fall to a guilty
group, so it is another gracious and beneficent
group which is everywhere in evidence, when
there is question of our restoration to our
former high estate. Mary’s mediation is in
reality one with that of Jesus, who, though He
might have willed otherwise, has seen fit to
give Himself to us only through her. His as­
sumption of the role of Mediator He made
dependent on Mary’s consent, and it was her
motherly offices, exhibited towards Him

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through life, which made Him ready for the
sacrifice, whereby He was to reconcile the
world to God. Plainly then, as an important
factor in the mediation of her Son, Mary is
well entitled to be called our Mediatrix.
There is however a further sense in which
the name may rightly be applied to her; she
is for us a happy go-between in all our re­
lations with Jesus. Thus it is she from whom
we first received our loving Saviour, and who
bestows on us, as comprised in that supreme
gift, all the graces of salvation. Again, it is
she who introduces us to Jesus, as she once
introduced the Shepherds and the Wise Men,
and who pleads for us before His heavenly
throne, drawing down upon us mercy and end­
less blessings.

CHAPTER XI
MARY, MEDIATRIX OF GRACE
I—Acquisition of Grace

The purpose of our Blessed Lord in taking
to Himself our human nature was that He
might give His life and die for the salvation
of mankind. The Incarnation is not simply
for itself, but for our redemption, and though
the latter is a work comprising many parts, yet
these are all unified by the end towards which
they are directed, our salvation through Jesus.
Distinct in themselves, the mysteries of the
life of Christ all point to Calvary, as their ful­
filment ; the shadow of the Cross hanging over
them gives the true perspective, without which
they can be but imperfectly understood.
And Mary was privileged—who can doubt
it?—to view the mystery of the Word made
flesh, and then, as they gradually unfolded
themselves, all the events of the life of the
Man-God, in the light which the Passion shed
upon them. It was with this light streaming
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in upon her mind, that she gave her consent
to the Incarnation, and to all that it involved,
and was thus a cooperatrix or mediatrix in the
redemption as a whole, and hence in every
particular that is comprised in it.
True, in the strictest sense of the term, our
Mediator is one: for Christ alone by His
atonement reconciles us to the Father. At the
same time, it is Mary, who, by giving to Him
our human nature, makes of Him an apt
Mediator—not God alone, nor yet man alone,
but the Man-God subsisting in both natures—
and who by her union of will with His, offers
Him to fulfil in our regard that role. In this
sense, as being so important a factor in the
mediation of her Son, she herself is truly en­
titled to the name of Mediatrix.
Now it is by the death of Christ that we
have been redeemed, and yet so long as we
do not apply to our souls individually the
satisfactions and merits of the Redeemer, His
self-immolation will avail us nothing. Hence
the immediate effect of Our Lord’s death is
to win for us countless graces, without which
our salvation cannot be secured. The acqui­
sition of those graces is undoubtedly a part of
the work of the redemption. For it is the grace
of God which rouses the human will to the

—*

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performance of salutary acts, and equips it
with the requisite light and strength to per­
form them. Such acts may be wholly interior,
as those of faith, hope, love, contrition, or they
may be directed towards the worthy use of
the Sacraments or other means of grace, but
it is only through them that we appropriate to
ourselves the merits of Christ’s atonement, and
thus enter upon the way of salvation, or,
having already entered upon it, go forward
with a greater or less degree of celerity.
The treasure of grace, accumulated by our
Divine Mediator in behalf of sinful man, is
quite inexhaustible. As there is no end to the
merit of the Man-God, so there can be no end
to the store of grace, which is laid up for the
redeemed, and of which they can freely avail
themselves at every moment, and for every
need that can possibly befall them.
This treasure our Blessed Lord amassed,
not by His death alone, but by His life and
death, offered up to the Father and accepted
by Him as one grand oblation for the recon­
ciliation of the whole world, and the sanctifi­
cation of all the redeemed. In this offering
Mary concurred, in the first place, by prepar­
ing in her virginity a fit temple for the es-

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pousals of the Word with our human nature,*
and secondly, by the consent which she gave
to the whole plan of the redemption, as sub­
mitted to her by the Angel Gabriel, and by her
subsequent entire conformity of will with that
of the Redeemer, her Divine Son, even to the
completion of His sacrifice on the Cross.
But if she has part in the work of the re­
demption as a whole, then, by the very fact,
she has also part in all those graces which are
prepared for us in view of the merits of the
Redeemer, and for the working out of our
salvation. For they are included in the work
of the redemption. Deservedly then do we
give to Mary the title of Mediatrix of Grace.
•Mary did not merit, it is true, her Immaculate Concep­
tion, whereby God Himself undertook to prepare in her a
worthy dwelling· for His Son, but she did merit, de condigno,
that steady increase of grace and holiness, which at length
won for her the unique privilege of bearing in her womb the
Incarnate Son of God.

CHAPTER ΧΠ
MARY, MEDIATRIX OF GRACE
II—The Distribution of Grace

The piling up of an immense and quite in­
exhaustible treasure of grace, to be forever at
the disposal of man for his spiritual necessities
ceased with the death of the Mediator on the
Cross. But the great work of man’s redemp­
tion did not stop there. The graces which had
been won for us by the life and sufferings of
the Redeemer, were intended to be used. They
can only bring salvation to the individual soul,
when, by the appointed channels — such as
prayer, the Sacraments, and the Holy Sacri­
fice of the Mass — they are brought within
reach of those for whose sake they have been
amassed. So that after the question of the
acquisition of grace, there comes another, no
less important, which concerns its distribution,
and here, no less than in the previous question,
we assert that Mary is intimately and insepar­
ably associated with her Divine Son in His
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office of Mediator, and hence further entitled
to be called Mediatrix of Grace.
In fact, it is of her part in the distribution
of grace that we chiefly think, when we speak
of her mediation in our behalf. This is clear
from certain forms of speech to which we are
accustomed, and by which the faith of the
Church in this regard is vividly expressed.
Thus nothing is more common in the language
of the faithful than to refer to Mary as the
channel or universal dispenser of divine grace.
It does not follow as a logical consequence,
that if Mary cooperated in the acquisition of
grace, she must also have part in its distribu­
tion, but there is here unquestionably a cer­
tain propriety, which impels us to that con­
clusion. The hands that have amassed the
riches, should, it would seem, have the joy and
the privilege of distributing them.
Certainly, the acquisition of grace and its
distribution belong to one and the same work
of redemption. The purpose for which so rich
a store has been accumulated, is that it may
be dealt out liberally to those who stand in
need of it, and there would be a lack of unity
in the divine plan, if Mary, so closely asso­
ciated with Jesus in the first part of His work,
were not equally so in the latter. She was with

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Him on earth from first to last, from the incep­
tion of His mission to its completion : she must
likewise be with Him now in Heaven, con­
tinuing in us the great affair for which He
became incarnate.
Christ Himself, having once labored and
died for us, does not, as it were, pass us over
to the Father, that the latter may dispense to
us the fruits of His toils and His sufferings,
whilst He himself absorbed in His glory and
beatitude, is all forgetful of those whom He
has ransomed with His blood. On the con­
trary, He continues ceaselessly to intervene in
our behalf, offering for us to His Heavenly
Father His infinite merits and satisfactions,
and causing the floods of grace to descend
upon us, in order to achieve in us the end for
which He suffered and died. For not only does
God do nothing in the supernatural order save
in view of the merits of Christ; He does
nothing except in view of the actual interven­
tion of His Divine Son in our behalf.
Since then Mary had her place beside
Jesus, so long as there was question of ran­
soming us, reconciling us, meriting for us all
the graces necessary for our salvation, she
must in like manner have her place beside Him
now, where there is question of securing for

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us by actual intercession in Heaven the graces
prepared for us in view of the merits of Christ.
It is Mary who gave us Jesus, that He
might save us from our sins, and incorporate
us in His everlasting Kingdom. How can we
possibly doubt that with Him she has given
us all things, and hence those graces too
whereby we are saved, and by which we be­
come members of His Heavenly Kingdom?
At the Incarnation, the whole price of our
ransom was delivered to Mary : for that price
is Jesus. Again, on Calvary, when payment
has actually been made, our ransom is de­
posited in Mary’s hands, to intimate to us, no
doubt, that all the graces of the supernatural
life, which the death of Christ has purchased
for us, must come to us through Mary’s inter­
vention, even as Christ, the author of grace, is
Mary’s gift to us. She must present Him to the
Father, with His merits and His satisfactions,
in order that they may be accepted in behalf
of all mankind, and may draw upon us the
graces by which salvation is actually achieved,
and in this precisely Mary’s mediation mainly
consists.
Note.—No one, we think, will consider it amiss, if we add
a word here concerning the function of the Holy Spirit in the
distribution of grace. There is not, it is true, any operation
of the Divinity, having for its term an exterior effect, which

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is in reality proper to this or that Divine Person. All opera*
tions of the Godhead thus terminated are common to the three
Persons. Nevertheless, by reason of the personal character­
istic of the Holy Ghost, which is love, those operations of God
in the world in which love is specially manifested, are at­
tributed to the third Person, as if He alone were their cause.
Thus it is that the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son
of God, in which the love of God towards man shines forth
with such transcendent lustre, is ascribed to the Holy Ghost
as to its efficient cause. “The Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee” was the Angel’s reply to Mary’s query as to how his
word was to be accomplished, and we are wont to say of
her Divine Son, that He was conceived by the operation of
the Holy Ghost.
So, in like manner, the whole order of grace is attributed
to the third Person of the ever Blessed Trinity. He is “the
Spirit of the adoption as of sons, whereby we cry: Abba,
Father,” and sanctifying grace, which makes us children,
being a participation of the Divine Nature, is poured abroad
in our hearts, together with divine charity, by the Holy Ghost
who is given to us.
If then, in these pages, we claim for Mary the exalted
rôle of universal distributer of grace, we are not assuredly
ascribing to her a function that is the peculiar prerogative
of the Divine Spirit. The Holy Ghost is the Author of grace,
its physical and efficient cause. He is the “Father of the
poor,” without whose largess we should all be poor indeed,
and utterly destitute. He is the “Giver of gifts,” from whom
descends upon us every good and perfect gift, and who is
Himself, in fact, the best of all gifts, the most delightful
Guest of the soul, and its sweetest Comforter.
Mary, on her part, is the channel through which all grace
must flow in upon the souls of men. She is however some­
thing more, far more, than a mere inert instrument of God’s
bounties towards us. She herself is full of grace, and from
the bosom of her Divine Spouse she has imbibed, in over­
flowing measure, of His boundless love for all mankind, and
is ever active to procure for each and every one of us, by
fervent and ceaseless intercession, such heavenly gifts as
may assure to us the everlasting indwelling in our hearts of
the Holy Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, and
that endless life which is its blessed fruit.

CHAPTER ΧΙΠ

THE UNIVERSAL MEDIATION OF MARY
r
That Mary is our Mediatrix in all that ap­
pertains to salvation, we have seen in the fore­
going chapters. To her we owe it that an in­
finite store of heavenly grace has been laid
up for us through the merits of the Redeemer,
her Divine Son. Mary’s hands are busy
too distributing the graces, which Jesus has
amassed. But can we state with certainty just
how far the dispensation of divine grace has
been committed to her?
To be sure, it is commonly said, in the lan­
guage of St. Bernard, that it is God’s will that
we should have all things through Mary. But
is this pious exaggeration, or is it literal truth?
Obviously there is a sense in which we
have all things through her, for through her
we have Jesus, and the gift of Jesus includes
all others ; because all good things, absolutely
without exception, are bestowed upon us only
in view of the merits of Jesus.
But this is not the popular understanding
of the axiom, generally received, that all good
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things come to us through Mary's hands. The
idea that is current everywhere among the
faithful represents Mary as at every moment
interesting herself in our behalf in heaven,
and procuring for us by her actual intercession
all the graces whereby we hope to attain sal­
vation. Her cooperation in the matter of grace
is not a thing of the past, but an ever present
consoling fact, and Mary in heaven is the
channel by which all Christ’s favors descend
upon us, even as it is through her, and in union
with her, that during His mortal life He won
for us whatever title we have to His gifts and
graces.
Evidently there is question here only of
gifts of the supernatural order, and of such
things in general as may contribute to the
salvation of our souls. For Christ Himself did
not come to put us in possession of mere
earthly riches, or honors, or pleasures, but to
lead us to the Kingdom of God. Besides, the
phraseology itself commonly expresses this
limitation. For we say that Mary is the channel
of God’s grace, and the Mother of divine
grace.
What is then the value of the axiom which
we are considering? Does the belief in Mary’s
universal mediation rest upon a sound theo­

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logical basis, or is it an opinion that may be
safely rejected as lacking solid proof, and ap­
pealing to sentiment rather than to reason?
We shall undertake, in the present chapter,
to show that it is abundantly supported by
arguments drawn from Catholic tradition, and
confirmed by Holy Scripture, and, in doing so,
we shall avail ourselves of the brief summary,
which is presented by the writer in the Civiltà
Cattolica, to whom reference has been made
in our preface, and who himself acknowledges
his indebtedness to Father Terrien, S. J., and
his great work,“La Mere de Dieu et des
Hommes.”
And first of all, many titles are ascribed to
our Blessed Lady by the piety of the faithful
in every clime, which, strictly speaking, are
applicable only to Christ, the divine Mediator.
It is of Him that they are spoken in Holy Writ,
and it is to Him that they are attributed by
the teaching of the Catholic Church. And yet
hundreds upon hundreds of times, from the
remotest periods, we find them applied to the
Blessed Virgin in liturgical hymns, in homi­
lies, in panegyrics, in a word, in all sorts of
compositions in MaryX honor, even among
the Greek and oriental schismatics, so long
separated from the Church.

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All are familiar with the remarkable lan­
guage of the Salve Regina, in which Mary is
saluted by the faithful of all lands as “our life,
our sweetness, and our hope.” Elsewhere she
is the light, that enlightens the whole world;
the living fount of immortality, of all graces
and holiness ; or the true vine, the fertile vine,
ever in bloom, and laden with grapes, which
bring heavenly joy.
She is the breath of Christians, the root of
liberty, restored by her to the human race.
Better still, she is the cause of salvation, the
mother of universal salvation, the salvation
of the world, the salvation of all men even to
the ends of the earth. She is the common
source of our happiness, of our renovation, in
a word of all blessings; the repairer and re­
storer of the human family, the redemption of
mortals : through whom we have passed from
death to life, from darkness to wonderful
light. She is the royal bridge uniting heaven
and earth, the hope of Christians, and their
only hope; our refuge and our strength.
These titles are given to Mary again and
again, in all languages, and under every va­
riety of form. They are to be understood as
is evident from the context and from other
circumstances, only in a secondary sense, and

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are applied to her with dependence on her
Son.
And what do we thence conclude? That
Mary, through her association with. Jesus in
His office of Mediator and Redeemer, par­
takes, in a measure quite incommunicable to
any other, of all that is included in the above
and similar titles, when understood of Our
Saviour Himself. The whole Church then re­
gards her, and has ever regarded her, as our
Mediatrix; and as the expressions, or for­
mulas, used are not in any sense restrictive,
she is our universal Mediatrix, not only for
the acquisition, but also for the distribution
of graces. In other words, Mary’s part in the
work of our salvation, though only secondary,
is no less general, no less extensive, than that
of Christ her Son.
Another class of testimonies to the tra­
ditional view, according to which no grace is
accorded to anyone except through Mary, is
drawn from what is taught by theologians and
Fathers of the Church respecting the position
which she occupies in the mystical body of
Christ. Christ is the Head, the faithful are the
members, Mary is the neck. For, as in the
physical body all movement and sensation is
communicated from the head to the other por­

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tions of the organism only by means of the
neck, so, in the Church of Christ, all spiritu­
al gifts proceeding from Christ must pass
through Mary’s hands before reaching the
body of the faithful.
“Christ,” says the distinguished and saint­
ly Cardinal Bellarmine, “is the Head of the
Church, and Mary is its neck. All gifts, all
graces, all heavenly influences descend from
Christ, as from the Head, by means of Mary,
as the neck, to the body of the Church; and
as, in the human body, there is more than one
hand, more than one arm, more than one
shoulder, more than one foot, so in the Church
there are many apostles, many martyrs, many
confessors, many virgins, many widows; but
there is only one Son of God, and one alone is
the Mother of God. Oh, unhappy they who
do not recognize, do not venerate such a neck !
For just as a limb, if it wished to receive the
wholesome influences that flow from the head,
but scorned to receive them through the neck,
would wither and die, so they who desire to
have life and grace from Christ, but do not
wish to have them through Mary, remain, and
will forever remain, parched and hungry.”
A further argument in favor of Mary’s
universal mediation may be deduced from

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such common formulas as proclaim that “there
is no salvation except through Mary/’ and that
“to implore God’s favors independently of
Mary is to wish to fly without wings,” a form
of expression employed by St. Antoninus of
Florence, echoing perhaps the thought of the
poet Dante, as found in the 38th canto of the
Paradiso. For, if Mary is not the Mediatrix,
through whose hands all graces must pass,
then it is not impossible to obtain grace, and
hence salvation, without having recourse to
her.
f
Space does not pennit us to accumulate
particular passages from the Fathers and
theologians of the Church in support of the
thesis which we are upholding, and we must
refer those of our readers who desire to ex­
amine them, to such authorities as Fr. Terrien,
S. J., in his great work, “La Mere de Dieu et
des Hommes,” Part Π, as well as to other
authors who, like him, have discussed the sub­
ject at length. We shall only observe here
that the question was not raised by Catholic
writers, nor treated by them ex professo, until
after the fifteenth century, and hence although
there is not wanting an abundance of testi­
monies even from the earliest ages, it is chiefly
in more recent times, that is, from the seven-

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teenth century on, that we find the doctrine
set forth in express terms, and with entire
theological precision.
We cannot however forbear inserting here
a most explicit and striking testimony to
Mary’s universal mediation from a discourse
of the eloquent St. Germanus, Patriarch of
Constantinople, who flourished early in the
eighth century. “As for us,” he says, address­
ing Our Lady, “far removed from God, amid
the multitude of our sins, it is through thee
that we have sought God and found Him, and
finding Him have been saved. For thy protec­
tion, O Mother of God, is mighty unto sal­
vation, and needs no other intermediary with
God. Truly, thy bounty has no limits, thy pro­
tection is never weary; thy favors are without
number. For no one is saved, unless through
thee, 0 all holy; no one is delivered from his
ills, save through thee, O immaculate ; no one
obtains any gift, unless through thee, O allpure ; no one receives mercy and grace, unless
through thee, O all-venerable! Wherefore,
who will fail to call thee blessed? Who will
fail to exalt thee, if not as he should, at least
with his whole heart? Thee, replete with
glory; thee, filled with beatitude; thee, great
and admirable, who hast received from thy

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Son and God so many great gifts; thee, who
on that account art praised by all genera­
tions!” (Sermon on Mary’s Girdle, Migne,
XCVm, 380.)
And indeed, when we reflect that the ac­
quisition of grace and its distribution, as has
been already observed, make up one and the
same complete work, we see how fitting it is
that Mary should cooperate in both its parts in
the same manner, that is, quite universally.
The work of redemption, from starting point
to completion, that is, from the Incarnation
to the moment when it reaches the individual
soul, is an uninterrupted stream, which should
in consequence flow always through the same
channels.
It would seem in fact to be for the purpose
of removing any uncertainty on this head, that
the inspired text itself presents Mary to us as
associated with our Blessed Redeemer in the
dispensing of His most signal favors. And
first of all, we see her taking a conspicuous
part in the sanctification of the Baptist. It is
Jesus, to be sure, who is the primary cause of
the wonderful effect produced in the soul of
the yet unborn infant, but it is at the sound of
Mary’s voice that his sanctification is effected,
and that both he and Elizabeth, his mother,

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are filled with the Holy Ghost. Mary then is
plainly indicated, in the inspired word, as the
instillment employed by the Redeemer of
mankind for the spiritual regeneration of His
holy Precursor, the first marvel wrought by
Our Lord in the interior realm of souls.
Similarly, she appears as Mediatrix in the
first of His miracles in the physical order. For
it was at her suggestion and prayer that her
Son changed the water into wine at the wed­
ding-feast in Cana of Galilee, manifesting thus
His glory, and winning the whole-hearted al­
legiance of His disciples.
Now it is entirely in keeping with the prac­
tice of the inspired writers, of the New Testa­
ment especially, rather to hint at what may
be deduced, than needlessly to multiply ex­
plicit statement, where at least the inference
is obvious enough to such as are spiritualminded, and able to penetrate beyond the dry
husk of the letter. In the present instance, the
plain inference is that Mary, who is thus pre­
sented to us as Mediatrix on the first two oc­
casions on which her Divine Son signally dis­
plays His power for the advantage of man­
kind, will always have her place beside Him
whenever there is question of the distribution
of His favors or of drawing souls to Him.

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God’s gifts are without repentance, and
having once given Jesus to us through Mary,
“that order,” as Bossuet remarks, “is not sub­
ject to change. It is, and it will always be
true, that having received through her charity
the universal principle of grace, we shall also
receive through her mediation its varied appli­
cations in all the different states of which the
Christian life is composed.”
The same truth, so honorable to Our Lady,
and so consoling to her children, is also clear­
ly taught by the Supreme Pontiffs themselves,
who, without actually defining it as of faith,
have openly inculcated it in various docu­
ments addressed to the flock of Christ. Thus
Pius IX, in his encyclical letter, Ubi primum,
addressed to the Bishops of the whole Catho­
lic world, speaks as follows :
“You well know, Venerable Brothers, that
the whole motive of our confidence lies in the
holy Virgin, seeing that God has bestowed
upon her the fulness of every good thing; so
that if there is in us any hope, any grace, any
safety, we know that it is all derived from
Mary. Such is the will of Him, who has
willed that we should have all things through
Mary.” In like manner, Leo XHI, in his en­
cyclical, Jucunda (1894), approves the opin­

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ion of St. Bernardine of Sienna, to the effect
that God dispenses all his graces through her.
And Pius X, in his encyclical, Ad diem
ilium, of the 2nd February, 1904, in which
he treats at length of Mary’s universal media­
tion, deducing it from her spiritual mother­
hood in our regard, says as follows λ
“By this community of suffering and iden­
tity of will between Jesus and Mary, she
merited to become most deservedly the Re­
pairer of the ruin of the world, and conse­
quently the Dispenser of all the gifts, which
Jesus procured for us by His death and by
His precious Blood.”
Finally, Pope Benedict XV, writing to the
Director of the Perpetual Rosary in Italy,
recommended that familiar form of prayer,
as “addressed to her, through whom it has
pleased God that all graces should come to
us.” The same Pontiff also granted to the
episcopacy of Belgium, and to as many others
as requested the favor, the privilege of re­
citing the Mass and Office of “Mary, Medi­
atrix of all Graces.”
We have thus the authority of Holy Scrip­
ture, the constant tradition of the Church,
and the utterances of the Supreme Pontiffs,
all on the side of this great prerogative of

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our Blessed Lady, which is not assailed per­
haps by a single theologian of note either of
our day, or in the past, and whose outspoken
champions are growing in number from day
to day.
As a sort of corollary to what precedes
we may-add that, in the actual order of Provi­
dence, no supernatural favor is granted to
anyone, unless through the concurrence of a
threefold will. It must be willed, in the first
place, by God Himself, who is the Author of
all graces. It must be solicited, in the second
place, by Christ, the one Mediator, who ob­
tains what He asks through His own merits,
and as a matter of strict justice. In the third
place, there must be added the intercession
of Mary, whose prayer will never be rejected,
because it is God’s design to honor her by
associating her with her Son in the distribu­
tion of His gifts.
There are thus three steps that must be
taken in every prayer, and Pope Leo XIII, in
his encyclical of September 8th, 1894, apply­
ing this principle to the Rosary, says : “In the
recitation of the Rosary, we pause more readi­
ly, so to say, and more at length, on the first
of these steps. We repeat the Angelical Salu­
tation, decade after decade, as if to climb with

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more assurance the two remaining steps,
whereby we go through Christ to God, the
Father.
‘Our prayer is imperfect and feeble, it
needs a prop to support it, and inspire confi­
dence. Hence we address to Mary the same
greeting many times over, entreating her to
pray to God for us, and to speak in our name.
Our words will find favor and credit with
God, if they have her prayers to recommend
them. For it is to her that God extends this
invitation so full of love : ‘Let thy voice sound
in mine ears, for thy voice is sweet? ”

CHAPTER XIV

WHAT IS MEANT BY “ALL GRACES”
According to the teaching of the Sovereign
Pontiff, Pius X, in his encyclical, Ad diem
ilium, (2 Feb. 1904), Mary, by her union of
will with her Divine Son, merited to become
“the Dispenser of all the gifts which Jesus pro­
cured for us by His death and precious Blood.”
And Leo ΧΠΙ had previously taught, approv­
ing the opinion of St. Bernardine of Sienna,
and lending to it the weight of his apostolic
authority, that “God dispenses all His graces
through her.” Just how Mary is the dispenser
or distributer of God’s gifts, we shall see in
a future chapter, but a question arises as to
what is meant precisely, not by the word all,
but by the word which it qualifies.
There are some writers, it is true, who hesi­
tate to attribute absolute universality to Mary’s
actual intervention in the distribution of grace,
but, as it would seem, for motives which are
far from strong, or which might be urged with
equal force against any sort of universality in
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her mediation. It seems more in conformity
with sound logic to take the texts and argu­
ments in favor of Mary’s universal interces­
sion in their fullest breadth and in all their
bearing, as positively excluding any limitation
or exception.
This, however, does not settle for us the
question as to what is comprised in the term
gifts or graces. Pope Pius X, in the encyclical
letter just referred to, deduces Mary’s uni­
versal intervention in the distribution of God’s
gifts to us, from her spiritual Motherhood.
Now Mary is our Mother in order to give us
the supernatural life, to nourish and foster
that life within us, and to bring us little by
little to our full spiritual growth. It is the one
purpose of her spiritual Motherhood in our re­
gard, and hence we may not conclude from
this relationship in which she stands to us,
that she has power to procure for us gifts or
favors, which do not in some way or other con­
tribute to our supernatural life.
Does it follow from this that it is useless
to apply to her for material favors? Or is it
not rather the daily experience of the faithful
that Mary does indeed actively interest her­
self in their temporal affairs? Was it not so
at the wedding feast of Cana, when she ob­

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tained for the guests at table the miraculous
gift of an abundance of wine? And does not
Holy Church herself teach us to appeal to God
through Mary for bodily health, for rain or
sunshine according to our need, and other
earthly blessings? What again of the number­
less miraculous cures effected through her in­
tercession at Lourdes, and at others of Our
Lady’s shrines?
But temporal favors must always be prayed
for with the proviso that they would, if
granted, prove conducive to God’s honor and
the good of souls. If they have no connection
with these, they do not come within the sphere
of Mary’s influence, and it would be idle to
ask her to intervene.
The most precious of God’s gifts is grace.
As the author of the Imitation of Christ says
so beautifully, it is “the proper mark of the
elect.” Earthly riches God bestows often, even
lavishly, upon His enemies, but to His friends
He gives grace, and the stronger the friend­
ship the greater the grace. To Mary He gave
it in such measure that the Angel who an­
nounced to her the mystery of the Incarna­
tion, saluted her as “full of grace.” For as St
Jerome says, “to others it is given by parts, but
on Mary the whole fulness of grace was at

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once poured out.” And as he says again : “The
fulness of all the grace that is in Christ, came
upon Mary, though in a different way.”
But grace is twofold, sanctifying or habitu­
al grace, and actual or transient grace. Of
these the former is the nobler. It is like a sec­
ond nature, raising us above ourselves to a
share in the divine nature. It is called for that
reason the grace of the adoption as of children.
Actual grace, on the other hand is not a per­
manent gift, but is offered or actually given to
us, only as we need it for the overcoming of
temptation, and for the fulfilment of the
duties of our state. It consists in light for the
mind, and inspiration for the will, impelling
it to act, and strengthening and supporting it
in the act
Now it is chiefly these actual graces that
we have in mind, when we say that all graces
come to us through Mary’s hands. Not that
we would deny our indebtedness to her for the
gift of sanctifying grace itself ; rather we owe
this to her on more than one account. If she
is our Mother, she is so in order to impart to
us the life of the spirit, and by her watchful
and loving care gradually to effect our com­
plete spiritual formation. But our super­
natural life consists in sanctifying grace, and

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our growth in this is the measure of the de­
velopment in us of the life of the soul.
Again, our spiritual birth implies, in the
present order, our incorporation with Jesus,
with whom henceforth we form but one moral
being, receiving from Him, as members from
their head, all that appertains to the formation
in us of Christ. Mary then, in the very act of
consenting to become the Mother of Jesus,
consents to become the Mother of all who are
to form part of Christ's mystical body. She
thus cooperates in our spiritual birth, and as
this is effected by sanctifying grace, we are
indebted to her for the latter, no less than for
the manifold actual or transient graces at any
time conferred upon us.
However, in attributing all graces to
Mary's actual intervention in our behalf, we
make no distinction between the various kinds
of grace, regarding them all merely in their
common aspect, as supernatural or gratuitous
gifts of God. These, we say, without excep­
tion, are bestowed upon us through Mary's in­
tercession.
True, the Sacraments of the Church infal­
libly produce habitual grace in the souls of
those who receive them with the requisite dis­
positions, and they are the divinely appointed

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means for communicating grace to men. So
that Mary*s actual intervention might here ap­
pear superfluous. On the other hand, the im­
pulse itself to receive the Sacraments is a
gratuitous gift of God, and hence like all
others comes through Mary, while the prepa­
ration for receiving the Sacraments, as well
as their worthy reception, implies often a
series of graces, of which Mary is the universal
intermediary. Or it may be question, say, of
the baptism of infants, incapable of disposing
themselves, or of like cases, when not the re­
cipient himself, but some one else has secured
for him the benefit of the Sacrament. Here
too, there was need of various actual graces
to incite the responsible agent to do his part,
and to aid him in the carrying out of his pious
purpose, and these are the direct fruit of
Mary's prayer.
Again every salutary act merits, in the
strict sense of the word, an increase of sancti­
fying grace, for one who is already in the state
of grace, and it might be asked what room is
left for Mary’s intervention, when, in the
nature of the case, said increase is already as­
sured. But the answer is clear: the salutary
act itself presupposes for its performance cer­
tain actual supernatural helps, and these are

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not accorded except through the intercession
of Mary.
In the foregoing paragraphs our aim has
been to show that from the point of view of
the benefits which it procures for us, there is
no solid motive for limiting the universality of
Mary’s mediation, which we suppose to have
been established in the preceding chapters.
In that which immediately follows we shall
inquire how far it is universal with respect to
the persons benefited.

CHAPTER XV

TO WHOM DOES MARY’S MEDIATION
EXTEND?
Our Divine Lord is the Redeemer of all
mankind. By His death on the Cross He paid
the debt of the whole human race, and no one
is reconciled to the Father unless through
Him. The atonement which He offered for
the sins of men was accepted by God in ad­
vance, in favor of those who lived and died
before the coming of their Deliverer, and
hence before the actual payment of their
ransom. But in the whole work of the redemp­
tion Christ has associated His Blessed Mother
with Himself arctissimo et indissolubili vin­
culo, that is to say, by a close and indissoluble
bond. The redemption has not been accom­
plished without her cooperation, and they
who are its beneficiaries, whether they lived
before the birth of Christ or since, are all in­
debted to Mary for this cooperation, which
has made her the Mother of all the redeemed.
When however we affirm that Mary is the
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dispenser of all God’s graces, we go still
farther, and say that she actually intervenes
with Him in order to obtain for us, by her
prayers, every gift, without exception, that is
conferred upon us through the merits of Christ
for the salvation of our souls. Here a new
question presents itself. Can we understand
this universal intercession of Mary as em­
bracing, in its full extent, even those who lived
and died during the long period of expecta­
tion, which preceded the coming of the Messias? Would this not imply that in her life­
time, Mary knew every individual soul of all
the ages past, and was cognizant at the same
time of all their needs, and was able thus to
ask for each in particular all the helps which
it was in the providence of God to bestow
upon it?
Certainly, our Divine Saviour, even as
Man, knew every human soul, and all the
wants of each, and every one, and every grace
that His sacred Passion was to win for them.
But we have by no means the same assurance
in the case of our Blessed Lady. It may be
that at certain moments in her life God made
them known to her, and that she was thus en­
abled to ask for all men individually the
graces that were specially adapted to their

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needs. It is an opinion for which some weighty
authorities might be quoted, but still it is only
an opinion, and one may maintain the univer­
sal intercession of Mary without subscribing
to it. For Mary, by uniting her prayer with
that of her Divine Son, as she undoubtedly
did, asked and obtained, without knowing
them distinctly, each and every grace be­
stowed in ages past through the passion and
death of Christ. As Father de la Broise ob­
serves, if I ask of a rich man assistance for
the inhabitants of a devastated town to be dis­
tributed according to the needs of each, I am
really the moral cause of the aid apportioned
to each individual, even though I know not,
and may never know the individual or his
wants.
Nor would this “general and implicit, but
indistinct, knowledge of the graces obtained,”
to quote from the same pious and learned
author, “reduce Our Lady’s mediation to the
rank of a mediation merely remote. The head
of a state, who, by his signature, grants all the
favors comprised in a list, bestows them on
the various individuals immediately and prox­
imately, even if he has not read their names.
His collective will reaches each term of the
collection.”

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As for ourselves, and all who have lived
since the apostolic age, the universal inter­
cession of Mary, that is to say, her actual in­
tervention in every grace bestowed upon us,
presents less serious difficulties. For if we
were not known distinctly by our Blessed Lady
during her lifetime here on earth, as we may
well have been by special revelation, we cer­
tainly are known to her at present, and have
been so ever since her glorious Assumption
into heaven. Mary, as the universal Media­
trix of the human race, knows all that con­
cerns the work of salvation, in which the di­
vine will has inseparably associated her with
her Son. Besides the knowledge then of every
individual soul, she must also know all that
would serve to advance or retard it on the
way to heaven. She is thus able to intervene
in our behalf at every moment, not only with
the deepest and tenderest affection, but also
with the clearest intelligence of our needs.
No other Saint exerts such universal in­
fluence in the affair of our salvation, as Mary,
the Mother of God. No wonder then if no
other has a like understanding of our miseries,
or is in a position to render us on all occasions
timely and efficacious assistance. We may
indeed address ourselves to the Saints for

—

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favors of various kinds, but our prayer must
always pass through Mary’s hands if it is to
reach the throne of grace, and draw down the
divine blessing upon us. Does it not seem then
that, just as it must enhance the value of our
prayers to make explicit mention, when we
pray, of Him whose merits are the source of
all our hope, so too, our petitions will surely
be more promptly and more fully granted, if
in making them we are not unmindful of her
without whose intervention no prayer is ac­
cepted by her Son?
I

CHAPTER XVI

THE CHURCH AT MARY’S FEET
In his account of the extraordinary vision
granted to him on the island of Patmos, the
Beloved Disciple tells us that “a great sign
appeared in heaven: a Woman clothed with
the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on
her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apoc. 12.
1). If in the Woman here described we see,
as undoubtedly we should see, a striking im­
age of the Virgin Mother of God, the attitude
of the Church toward Mary is admirably ex­
pressed by the symbol of the moon under the
Woman’s feet.
The attitude is that of a suppliant—a sup­
pliant who is forever entreating Mary to use
her good offices in favor of her children ; for­
ever imploring her to interpose in their behalf
with Him who has enveloped her with His
light and His glory, and has poured out upon
her the whole fulness of His grace. And is it
not, in fact, in a spirit of loving trustfulness

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that the faithful have recourse to Mary on all
occasions? Is it not to her that they commend
their hopes and their fears alike? Are not
their eyes upraised to her in sorrow and in
joy?
No prayer is so often on their lips as the
Hail Mary, or Angelical Salutation. The little
ones of the fold are taught from the first to
join its recitation to that of the best of all
prayers, and from the tenderest age, to ask
Mary’s intercession for them during life and
at the hour of death. It is not long before they
learn to recite the Rosary, and to carry about
with them their beads, as a cherished badge
of devotion to the Queen of Heaven, and a
special pledge of her loving protection. In
all their needs, her children, young and old,
are wont to invoke her, and, as they proclaim
in one of their favorite prayers, they are quite
persuaded that no one ever sought her inter­
cession in vain
Many is the triumph that has been won, in
times of gravest danger for the Church and
for Christendom, by the recitation in common
of the Rosary, that efficacious form of prayer,
which must indeed be dear to Mary, as re­
minding her so insistently of the message
brought to her from Heaven by an Angel, and

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of the unexampled dignity, which was then
conferred upon her.
But it is in our day that, more than ever
before, a combined and persevering effort has
been made to secure the peace and prosperity
of Holy Church, amid calamitous times,
through a united appeal to our Blessed Lady
from her children, gathered together before
the tabernacle, in all the churches and chapels
of the Catholic world, and united with one
another in the recitation of the beads.
It is many years since the Holy Father, Leo
ΧΠΙ, in the exercise of his supreme authority
as the visible Head of the Church, commanded
that the entire month of October should be
thus sanctified by so remarkable a display of
confidence in the power of Mary’s interces­
sion, and there can be no doubt, in the mind
of one who contrasts the present outlook for
the Church with the conditions so widely pre­
valent some forty or fifty years ago, that the
confidence thus shown in the Virgin Mother
has in no way been misplaced.
But apart from any such public devotion
of the faithful, as well as from any particular
enactment of this or that supreme Pontiff, we
have in the sacred liturgy itself, which is the
official prayer of the Church, most convincing

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evidence of the place accorded by her to Mary,
as standing ever between the Fount of all
grace and mercy and the prayers of our af­
flicted race. The yearly calendar shows a far
larger number of Feast-days solemnized in
honor of Mary, than of any other of the
Blessed. They occur each month, and within
one and the same month there are sometimes
several, the Mass and Office on such occasions
being specially adapted to bring out and to
emphasize the wonderful prerogatives of
Mary, and the confidence of her children in
her all-powerful intercession.
But besides her own peculiar Festivals,
Mar/s aid is invoked in four distinct places
in every Mass that is said throughout the year,
and while a few of the greater Saints are men­
tioned with her, her name is always first, and
its introduction is accompanied with a more
marked solemnity.
Similarly, in the Divine Office, both at the
beginning and at the end, as well as before
each separate hour, the Hail Mary is recited
along with the Our Father, even on the last
three days of Holy Week, when the invo­
cation of the other Saints is suppressed. Twice
also, once at the end of Lauds, and again at
the conclusion of the Office for the day, when

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they who chant the canonical hours are about
to withdraw from the choir, an antiphon is
sung in honor of our Blessed Lady, as if to
place under her special patronage the divine
praises that have just been recited, and the
manifold petitions that have been addressed
to the throne of grace.
Furthermore, since an early period in the
Pontificate of Pope Leo ΧΠΙ, and by direction
of that great Pontiff, so devoted to Mary, the
priest, after every low Mass, must recite alter­
nately with his people three Hail Marys, to­
gether with the antiphon, Hail, Holy Queen—
surely a significant fact, as bearing witness to
the urgent desire of the Church that her chil­
dren should always and everywhere seek to
combine the mediation of Mary with that of
her Divine Son. Nothing indeed can appeal to
God with anything comparable to the force
and efficacy of the adorable sacrifice of the
Mass, and yet, as though it lacked something
of its full persuasive power, we are bidden to
ask Mary to supplement the pleadings of the
Precious Blood by her own earnest prayers in
our behalf.
The practice then of the Church being the
expression of her faith, it would seem to fol­
low that, independently of the three degrees

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by which it must pass—through Mary to Jesus,
and through Jesus to the Father—there is no
intercessory prayer available for throwing
open the treasures of divine grace. Hence the
Church is ever prostrate at the feet of Mary,
and her children, taught by her the value and
the necessity of Mary’s mediation, bow down
in never-ceasing supplication before her
throne.
Other Saints have been set, so to say, on
the path of certain definite classes of heaven­
ly gifts, whence their intercession is happily
invoked for this or that particular sort of
favor; but there is no possible species of gift,
no grace of whatever kind, but must pass
through Mary’s hands, if it is to reach the
earth, and bring aid or comfort to some human
heart. We address ourselves then, now to
one, now to another of God’s elect in Heaven,
desiring them to use their influence in our be­
half, in order to procure for us this or that
coveted grace, but to Mary we turn at every
moment, and on every occasion, persuaded
that whatever she asks she obtains, and that
she is withal no whit less gracious than she is
wondrously rich and mighty.
In the great cathedrals that were erected
to the honor of God, in Catholic times, our

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forefathers loved to dedicate one of the gates
to Mary, or at least to place her image near
that of her Divine Son in the decoration of the
main portal. Often too, within the sacred edi­
fice, the statue of Our Lady was set up close
to the spot where the Blessed Sacrament was
- reserved, or even served as a support for it,
and, in more recent times, it has become cus­
tomary in many cathedrals to reserve the Holy
Eucharist at the altar in the Lady chapel.
What, I ask, does all this symbolize? What
is the mind of Holy Church which finds such
apt expression in these outward practices?
Surely, the dominant idea is that of Mary, as
associated with Jesus, when He calls souls to
the faith and to the Church, and when with
bread from heaven He nourishes in them the
spiritual life. And if, in the representations
of Christian art, quite generally, we constant­
ly find Jesus and Mary united together, it sure­
ly is because in Christian thought they are not
separated, and because Mary is ever the
Mediatrix through whom we most readily gain
access to Jesus, and apart from whom there is
no approach to Him. That is why the true
children of Holy Church are unceasingly at
Mary's feet, while from her hands the rich
treasures of grace are ever descending upon

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them — treasures which her Divine Son has
amassed for them by His Passion and death,
but of which He has made her the universal
dispenser.

- ---------

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHAT MARY’S MEDIATION
CONSISTS

When we affirm that Our Lord has de­
posited all His treasures in Mary’s hands, for
her to distribute them at pleasure; or that
every heavenly grace that comes to us, must
pass through Mary’s hands, it would be pos­
sible to give too literal an interpretation to
our words. It is not with grace as with phys­
ical wealth, or material resources. An earth­
ly potentate might indeed make his mother
the direct dispenser of the royal alms, com­
missioning her to handle what she distributes,
but such a process would scarcely be intelli­
gible on the part of a pure creature in the
matter of divine grace. To distribute it, as
though from hand to hand, would involve
producing it, an effect which is beyond the
province of any creature; grace, whether
habitual or actual, being purely supernatural,
and, as such, requiring God for its author.
If then the causality which we ascribe to
Mary in respect of grace is not physical, it
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Our Lady Mediatrix of Ate Graces

must be moral. It is by her prayer that she
obtains for us all manner of graces. Her in­
tercession is all-powerful. It would avail to
offset the pleading in a contrary sense, were
such a thing conceivable, of the whole multi­
tude of the Blessed. Mary’s slightest wish is
law, because her Son has made her the dis­
penser of all His treasures.
It is in view of the merits of Christ that
His heavenly Father is willing to be reconciled
to mankind, to forget our sins, to pour out His
grace abundantly upon us. It is when He be­
holds the Divine Victim, that has been slain
for us, and sees His wounds, and hears the
voice of His Blood crying out for pardon for
His brethren, that the heart of the Father is
moved, that the gates of His mercy are un­
locked, and that the streams of grace flow
downward to bathe the earth, and render
fruitful the barren hearts of men.
But the Lamb of God, immolated on Cal­
vary, was offered up through Mary’s hands.
He did indeed offer Himself as the principal
agent, even as in Holy Mass it is He who is
High Priest no less than Victim. But as in the
Eucharistic Sacrifice He is pleased to use as
His instrument a mortal man, so too it was
His will, that, as He hung upon the Cross, His

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Mother should be present at His side, that by
the union of her will with His, she might co­
operate with Him in His saving oblation.
And so, even now in Heaven, while no
gift is bestowed on us by God except in virtue
of the Passion and death of His Divine Son,
the Precious Blood, the sacred wounds of
Jesus, must be presented to God by Mary, and,
apart from her cooperation, no grace descends
to earth, no dew from Heaven refreshes the
human heart, no bounteous rain, dropping on
it from above, makes it fruitful in salutary
works.
In this the mediation of our Blessed Lady
mainly consists. She does, indeed, intercede
for us in our varied needs, and her own extra­
ordinary grace and merit, her own wondrous
prerogatives, give to her prayer an irresistible
force and efficacy. She is the Mother of Jesus,
she is the glorious daughter of the Most High,
she is the cherished Spouse of the Holy Ghost,
and as such she can never meet with a rebuff.
Her slightest wish carries with it a resistless
appeal, to which the Lord of all things can
never be insensible. Yet more powerfully still
than even Mary’s exalted merit does the
Precious Blood of Jesus plead for us, and
whatever power her prayers possess to ren-

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der God propitious to the sinner, all comes to
them from the Passion of Christ, her Son.
On the other hand, it has been the will of
God, that from first to last Jesus, as the Vic­
tim of atonement for our sins, should be pre­
sented to Him by Mary. It was so when the
Virgin Mother gave her consent to the divine
plan of the Redemption, as declared to her by
the Angel at Nazareth. It was so when she
ratified her consent at the birth of the Saviour
at Bethlehem, at His Presentation in the
temple at Jerusalem, and finally as she stood
beneath the Cross on Calvary.
And now in Heaven, when the fruits of the
Redemption are applied to our souls, and the
graces won for us by the Passion of Our
Saviour, are distributed to the redeemed,
Mary “united to Him by a close and indissol­
uble bond/’ still continues her part as Media­
trix in the work of our salvation, by offering
to the Father the merits of Christ, uniting
meanwhile her prayers, and, in a secondary
sense, her merits, to the intercession of her
Divine Son.

CHAPTER XVni

DEGREE OF CERTAINTY OF WHAT
PRECEDES

i

The name of second Eve, so universally
accorded to Mary from the earliest times, im­
plies on her part a cooperation in the restoraÎtion of mankind parallel to that of Eve in the
fall. If then we speak in general terms of
Mary’s cooperation in the work of the Re­
demption, it is undoubtedly a truth so closely
connected with faith, that it might without
difficulty be defined, were anyone disposed to
deny it
The same should be said of the two parts
into which that cooperation may be divided,
the first embracing Mary’s concurrence in the
work of the Redeemer from the Incarnation
to the close of her earthly days ; the other her
share in that same work since her Assump­
tion into Heaven. And surely the faith of the
Church is no less explicit with reference to
the motherly solicitude, with which Mary
watches over her children now from her ex113

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alted throne above, than to the role she played
on earth by her consent to the Incarnation,
and the constant union of her will with that
of our Divine Saviour. The latter has to do
with the acquisition of grace, the former with
its distribution.
As for the terms Mediatrix and mediation,
they are so commonly applied to Mary by the
Fathers and by Catholic divines, that they
evidently express the mind of Holy Church,
and are susceptible of dogmatic definition.
Besides, they do not really differ in sense from
cooperatrix and cooperation, although the
latter are more readily understood of the part
which Mary played in the work of Our Lord
here on earth, whereby He paid the penalty
of our sins, and reconciled us with the Father,
while the former are more commonly referred
to Mary’s intercession in our behalf with a
view to the distribution of the graces won for
us by Christ.
Mary’s universal mediation is taken to
mean her universal intercession, which is ob­
viously equivalent—though a distinction has
been made—to her actual intervention in all
the graces conferred on man in view of the
merits of her Son, and this it is sought to have
the Church define.

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Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces

115

As yet it is only a pious belief, but one
which is gaining in favor from day to day,
and which perhaps not a single Catholic
author now rejects. The more it is studied,
the more solid the foundations upon which it
is seen to rest, and the more conformable it
appears to Catholic tradition from the outset.
But what perhaps more than anything else
gives weight to this belief, and seems decided­
ly to raise it to a loftier plane than that of
mere opinion, is the fact that the Sovereign
Pontiffs themselves, Leo XIII and Pius X in
particular, have, in documents addressed to
the whole word, proclaimed Mary’s universal
mediation again and again, declaring with
much insistence that no grace comes to man­
kind without passing through her hands.
There has been as yet no formal definition
of the belief as a dogma of the faith, but sure­
ly its emphatic and repeated assertion by the
Vicar of Christ is proof enough that it is no
new or strange doctrine, no mere pious ex­
aggeration, but is thoroughly in harmony with
the teaching of the Church and worthy of
being accepted by the faithful with all rever­
ence and submission. In fact, it is not easy to
see how, in the face of such clear and un­
equivocal affirmation, one could reject the

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belief in question without a certain degree of
temerity.
Pope Pius X, in his Encyclical of 2nd Feb­
ruary, 1904, already quoted, deduces the ac­
tual intervention of Mary in all the graces
bestowed by God on men from her spiritual
maternity. The latter he proves from the pur- *
pose Our Lord had in view in taking to Him­
self our human flesh. It was that He might be
the Saviour and Deliverer of our race, and, as
such, the Head of that spiritual and mystical
body, which was to be made up of all those
who should believe in Him. And hence Mary,
who became His Mother not merely that the
Son of God might be made man, but also that
He might be the Deliverer of mankind, be­
came at one and the same time the natural
Mother of Christ and our spiritual Mother.
But if Mary is our Mother, she must dis­
charge towards us the functions of mother­
hood. She must not only intervene to confer
on us the supernatural life of sanctifying
grace, through which we are incorporated
with Christ, and made members of His mys­
tical body, but she must also nourish that life
within us; hence she must likewise have part
in those actual graces, which God does not

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117

bestow save with a view to the acquisition,
preservation and increase of sanctifying grace.
As for the spiritual Motherhood itself, thus
authoritatively attributed to Mary by the Holy
Father, we may assert, without fear of contra­
diction, that it is theologically certain. The
learned Servite theologian, Alexis M. Lepicier, recently elevated to the archiépiscopal
dignity, in his treatise on the Blessed Virgin,
pronounces it a “Catholic truth, most closely
connected with the faith” (veritas Catholica,
ad fidem proxime pertinens), and the Civiltà
Cattolica, quoting his verdict with evident ap­
proval, adds : “To deny it then would not only
be rash; it would savor even of heresy. For
this truth, though never expressly defined, is
none the less universally enshrined in the
heart, even as it is ever on the lips, of the
Christian people.”

CHAPTER XIX
DEVOTION TO OUR LADY

There can be no doubt that the Mother­
hood of Grace, attributed to Mary, is a most
important factor in giving to the Christian
religion much of its charm and attractiveness.
It imparts to our relations with our Divine
Saviour a certain tenderness which would be
lacking, were not the Mother of Jesus our
Mother also. It is not quite the same thing to
have been redeemed by Jesus with her co­
operation, as it would have been to have been
saved by Jesus alone. Jesus Himself would
not be the same to us, had He not chosen to
have a Mother, or had He not associated her
with Himself as Mother of Grace at every
stage of His work. The motherly solicitude
of our Blessed Lady, which is everywhere
present, gives a human touch, that inspires
confidence even in the most conscience stricken, and the most timid. And God, who
knows the human heart, has provided here as
elsewhere, in all things accommodating Him118

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119

self to our needs, and seeking everywhere our
greatest advantage.
We have from our infancy regarded Mary
as our Mother, and have been accustomed to
turn to her in all our gravest dangers. We
know that she is prompt to succor those who
invoke her, and are sure that her prayer can­
not possibly suffer a refusal.
At the same time, we have not perhaps
fully realized that, even when not invoked,
she is the Mediatrix apart from whom no grace
descends to earth to refresh our souls, and to
quicken within us the life of the spirit We
may call upon others of the Blessed to aid and
comfort us, but even so, our prayers must be
presented at the throne of grace by Mary. We
may, if we will, go directly to God, we may
address our appeal immediately to our Divine
Lord, but even thus, if Mary's mediation is
universal, our petition in order to be granted,
must pass through Mary's hands; she must
first add to it the weight of her all-powerful
intercession.
On the other hand, when we have recourse
directly to Maiy, we conform to the plan of
divine Providence, and to the order which
God Himself has established. For Mary is, in
reality, the dispenser of all His graces, and we

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practically affirm that it is so, as often as we
appeal to her with humble confidence. Our
Lord, who loves His Blessed Mother far be­
yond all other creatures, cannot fail to be
pleased, when, by our recourse to her in our
needs, we recognize her association with Him
in the distribution of all His gifts.
Mary’s love for each and everyone of us
is that of the wisest and tenderest Mother. She
is indeed our Mother, and the best of mothers.
She knows each one of us individually, to­
gether with all that concerns us. — Of this
there can be no question now that she beholds
all things in the beatific vision; whether she
may not have done so during her lifetime here
on earth is a matter for theologians to discuss.
—And cherishing us, as she does, with the
deepest and fondest love, she is most de­
sirous of including us within the range of her
choicest benefactions. Every grace that is ac­
corded to us, even without our praying for it,
is due to her prayer. Why then should we not
eagerly avail ourselves of her power and in­
fluence, when she is so ready to assist us?
God hears, no doubt, the prayers of his
other elect, when they entreat Him in our be­
half, and He does unquestionably impel the
faithful at particular periods to invoke the

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intercession of this or that Saint, whom for
His own wise reasons He would specially
glorify, but what is true of particular Saints
at particular epochs, and with reference to
certain classes of gifts, is true of Mary at all
times and with respect to every sort of grace.
God wishes always to honor her, and to pro­
cure her honor from all His creatures.
It would be a serious mistake, and one
that could not fail to result in spiritual loss,
to allow oneself to be so taken up with prac­
tices of devotion towards this or that Saint,
to whom one is naturally or artificially at­
tracted, as to be lukewarm towards the really
great and primary devotions of the Church.
Among these is undoubtedly devotion to the
ever Blessed Mother of God, Mother of grace,
and our Mediatrix. For those who cherish and
practice this devotion, it is a strong safeguard
against the wiles of the old serpent, a source
of chaste and holy living amid incentives to
evil-doing, an assured hope at the hour of
death, and a pledge of eternal salvation.