Mary’s Work in the Plan of Redemption
by Rev. Fr. Joseph Wilhelm D.D., Ph.D.

As Mother of Christ, Mary co-operated "physically" in the Incarnation. This privilege she shares with no other creature. Ministers of the Sacraments act as mere vehicles of God's power; Mary gives to Him of her own substance. Without having the sacramental power of the Priest, she in the conception, formation, and birth of the Saviour, presents the most perfect type of the Priest's functions. Moreover, her organic participation in the beginning of Christ's life, organically connects her with the whole course of that life.

Mary's actions had a singular moral value in singular themselves as being personal services rendered to God, and tending to further the great object of the Incarnation. But they acquire a special excellence from the personal excellence of their authoress: they flow from the "Bride of the Word, and Bearer of the Holy Ghost", and have the stamp of their origin. If the soul of the just is a temple in which the Spirit "asks with unspeakable groanings in order to help our infirmity" (Rom. 8), we are justified in assuming that in the sanctuary of Mary's soul His sanctifying influence attains the highest degree. He inspires acts, moves the will to carry them out, and assists in the work, so as to make it almost wholly His own. From this point of view the actions of the Blessed Virgin are seen to possess, like those of Christ and of the Church, a supernatural, moral, and legal efficacy, benefiting not herself only, but all mankind. There is, however, between the merits of Christ and those of Mary, an essential difference in their manner of benefiting others. The merits of Christ, infinitely perfect in themselves, are applied authoritatively to whom and in what measure He wills. What Mary does for us is neither infinitely perfect nor applied on her own authority; her work, however excellent and pleasing to God, is but "impetratory", viz. of its kind it is a prayer.

The titles given by the Church to Mary, "the New Eve, the Bride of the New Adam, the Sanctuary and Organ of the Holy Ghost", clearly contain the idea that her work is associated with the work of Christ by a special ordinance of God; that it enters into the plan of Redemption, and forms a subordinate but integral part of Redemption. The first act of Mary's co-operation in the work of Redemption is her consent to become the Mother of Christ. As Eve, through disobedience and disbelief, became the handmaid of the Devil in the work of destruction, even so Mary, through obedience and faith, becomes the handmaid of God in the work of restoration. And as Eve's consent to the temptation became fully co-operative in the fall when Adam added to it his own consent, so Mary's consent became a full co-operation when Christ united to it His first act of obedience.