www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Mary as co-redemptrix

Eric - indeed if you want to see what Eastern Christians do believe about the Theotokos, look at not only the Fathers, but especially look at the lex orandi. The Canons to the Theotokos of Matins and Compline are especially significant in the liturgical corpus- and none of these ever mention "co-Redemptrix" or anything like it.

Christ only is the Redeemer, the Savior, and the very nature of "co" which also can mean "equal to" leaves the term open to a great amount of misinterpretation. I disagree with Dr. Miravale's position on this. Pope John Paul II stayed away from a definitive statement on this, and I would bet a hefty sum (if I had it) that you also see Benedict XVI stay perhaps even farther from any dogmatic statements along this line.

When we cry out "Most Holy Theotokos save us", as we do frequently in the refrains to the Canons to the Theotokos in the Constantinopolitan tradition, we do this because she can and does intercede like a good Mother, and not because she is God.

Any good mother would save her children from calamaties. She saves through intercession, and not through her possessing a Divine Nature as one of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity as does her Son. Her Son saves as He is God and has completed the Paschal Mystery which has effected the possibility of that salvation.

I think the ecumenical consequences of this with the Orthodox could be quite disastrous and I hope it stays in the shadows of Latin theologumena.
FDD

And the Blessed Virgin is, indeed, the Mediatrix of All Graces. Jesus Christ is our Grace and gave us grace, and she, being the Birthgiver of God, is that mediatrix.

Logos Teen

Dear Teen,

St. Gregory Palamas, perhaps the greatest theologian that the post schism Orthodox East has known, has called the Virgin Mary mediator/mediatrix.

St. Gregory Palamas: �No divine gift can reach either angels or men, save through her mediation. As one cannot enjoy the light of a lamp � save through the medium of this lamp, so every movement towards God, every impulse towards good coming from Him is unrealizable save through the mediation of the Virgin. She does not cease to spread benefits on all creatures�.� [15]

As far as calling her 'co-redemptrix', if one puts aside feelings of hysteria and actually reads what it means, it is not heretical at all.
I believe that you can easily find it on the EWTN website. However, Pope JPII, did NOT like this title, knowing how easily it could be misinterpreted by others and even by those Marian extremists within his own church.

In Christ,
Alice

Dear Dr Eric,

Well, I'm not a theological expert, like our Administrator here and others, but this is how I understand this issue.

The Mother of Christ our God had a central role to play in God's plan for our salvation for the simple reason that it was from her that the Son of God took His human Flesh in the Divine Incarnation.

Through her, Christ became "consubstantial" with us - and certainly He had to be in order to save us.

And this was not simply a "physical act" without spiritual context.

God did not force her hand in this, but simply asked her if she would be willing. She herself, the Most Holy Virgin Mary, as St Paisius and others wrote, was constantly occupied in unceasing prayer in her heart, pondering the words of the prophets concerning the coming of the Messiah.

The Incarnate Word could only become a reality for our salvation in the Womb of the Virgin once the Virgin Mary came to that point in her tremendous spiritual growth and life in her God.

The Incarnate Word became a material reality after He became a spiritual reality in the Mother of God.

This is why the Fathers refer to her as the Spiritual Ladder on which the Son of God descended from heaven to earth to save us.

But Mary's worshipful pondering in her heart did not end with the words of the Archangel Gabriel (considered by tradition to be her Guardian Angel).

She constantly pondered these things in her heart and, as the Righteous Simeon foretold, "A sword shall pierce your soul/heart so that the thoughts of many may be laid bare."

The "sword" was the pain she suffered along with Her Son at the time of His saving Passion, a pain that was at once personal, as that of a mother for her Son, but also soteriological, pondering in her heart the meaning of this suffering by the Son of God, the fruition of the prophecies of the Old Testament in the suffering Servant of the Lord God Adonai.

Just as the Mother of God offered her Son to God in the Temple when Simeon uttered those words of prophecy to her, so too she offered her Son to God in the Spirit on Golgotha, always pondering His words and actions, participating in them and in the pain that she experienced because of them, understanding her own role as having enabled God to suffer in the Flesh to save and "recreate anew" our sinful frame.

The sword pierced her heart so that the wish for salvation, that we all share, was laid bare. The sword pierced her heart so that our hearts might receive, through her and in Jesus, her Son, the Grace of salvation and sanctification.

As Mother of the Incarnate Word, she also became, at the foot of the Cross, the Mother of the Body of Christ that is the Church. She nurtures the members of that Body, just as she nurtured Christ Himself, to appropriate the fruits of salvation and sanctification from Christ her Son and our God.

In Christ the One and High Priest, she leads us all to participate in His Priesthood, the Priesthood of pondering in our hearts, and offering to the Father through the Spirit the Incarnate Son of God.

And by her intercession, she really does save us, bringing to us the fruits of redemption in a way no one else can.

She knows Christ as only a Mother can.

As we know from the Wedding at Cana in Galilee, Christ will do all His Mother asks by way of her intercession for us.

Did we think that the God Who ordered us at Mount Sinai to "honour our mothers" would do less when He obtained one at His Incarnation?

Again, this is related as part of a meditation on the Divine Incarnation in which Mary plays so central a part.

That's all that comes to me right now, cheers,

Alex

Alex,

Great post.

Alice,

Thanks for the quote! It seems that these two titles are just very loaded terms in our times, but if one steps back and takes a look it all makes sense, if viewed in the right context.

Logos Teen

Dear Eric,

In my first post I quoted the following by St. Gregory Palamas:

"It was through the Theotokos that the renewal of the human race came about, since it was through her that the gates of heaven were opened."

Could this mean that in a sense she is a co-redemtris, even though she is a mortal, and not part of the Holy Trinity. Now to continue on the writings from the book by Metropolitan Hierotheos on Saint Gregory Palamas:

"Because she became the mother of Christ, when she gave her flesh to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity to become incarnate, therefore, on the one hand she is a holy of all that is holy, above all the saints, and on the other hand she gives gifts to the saints, since she is the treasurer of the wealth of the goodness of the Lord. On this point St. Gregory Palamas is astonishing.

Truly the Panagia (Mary) is the crowning height of the saints. 'In the case of the crowning extreme of all the saints...in the case of her who is higher even than the saints of heaven...'.

In another place St. Gregory writes: 'The eternal holy of holies entered into the temporary holy of holies'. And again in another of his homilies he says: '...how much more the remembrance of the holy of holies through which all the holiness comes to the saints'.

She transmits grace to the saints. 'in order that as in charge of the office where holiness is given, she may convey gifts of holiness to all without exception, without leaving anyone without a share, even of the hidden things of the universe, that is to say of those inaccessible things'. This is because the Theotokos is not only holy, but she 'alone is the boundary between created and uncreated nature'. And therefore no one can come to God without her and through the mediation which has come from her; and none of the gifts from God could have been given to angels and men except through her'.

Indeed, making use of the example of the lamps, where no one can see in the direction of the light or receive its rays without the means of the lamps, it means that this is so in the case of the Panaghia: 'So also it is unfeasible to gaze towards God and proceed from him towards anything unless it is through this Godbearing and truly god-enlightened lamp, the ever-Virgin.

The granting of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is not only given by the Panagia to the saints now, while they are living, but they will receive gifts through her also in the age to come. We know well that the saints will have progress towards holiness during the age to come, that is to say, the saints will progress from glory to glory and from strength to strength.

This will happen, according to St. Gregory Palamas, through the Theotokos '..and so also in the coming unending age every advance in divine illumination and every revelation of the most divine mysteries and every idea of spiritual gifts is impossible to contain without her. She, having first received the fullness of that which fills the universe, made it containable to all, bestowing on each according to the ability and measure of his purity'. This is and will be, because the Panagia is 'both treasury and office for granting the wealth of the divinity".

Zenovia