Cry aloud to the Lord! O wall of daughter Zion!
Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night!
Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite!
Lamentations 2, 18

And Simeon blessed them,
and said to Mary his mother:
Behold this child is set for the fall,
and for the resurrection of many in Israel,
and for a sign which shall be contradicted:
And thy own soul a sword shall pierce,
that, out of many hearts,
thoughts may be revealed.
Luke 2, 34-35

The Virgin Mary rejoiced in the good news brought to her by the angel Gabriel when she declared: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” She responded in a spirit of gladness despite whatever trials she might endure by being the mother of the expected Messiah. As our Blessed Lady joyfully contemplated the divine favor that was granted to her by God in His infinite mercy, she knew that she would eventually have to sacrifice her maternal rights to fulfill whatever purpose lay in her divine motherhood. Being the mother of Jesus (Heb. Yeshua: “God is salvation”) certainly entailed much more than the natural state of being a mother. Mary was chosen to nurse and raise a son destined to be much more than a carpenter (Lk 1:31-33). He was, in fact, God who became incarnate to save mankind from sin and death: a king-priest like his royal ancestor, David. Indeed, Mary’s maternity was a supernatural divine calling and a spiritual vocation that God preordained to benefit all human souls. God’s handmaid was chosen to render humanity a spiritual service since she had found favor with God (Lk 1:30).

Mary knew that the patriarchs, judges, and prophets were called to serve God lifelong, so she understood that her saving office shouldn’t end once she had completed raising Jesus upon his reaching manhood, nor would it preclude any hardships for her. Still, in the obscurity of faith, which demanded her full trust in God, our Blessed Lady could only imagine what might lay in store for her. She must have thought that her Son’s birth entailed a life-long mission, along with hers, and that the two of them would somehow be associated together in a work of great personal sacrifice until God’s plan should be fulfilled.

The Lord’s faithful handmaid would eventually come to see the fullness of this divine mystery of the Incarnation on Calvary beneath the Cross while enduring her terrible sorrow because of the world’s sins. The Annunciation marked the beginning of her journey in faith under the shadow of the Cross, which loomed before her, a journey she was valiantly prepared to take like the Hebrew heroes and heroines who had gone before her because of her love of God and humanity. Conversant with Judaic tradition, Mary understood that the time of the new exodus had arrived with the coming of the long-awaited Messiah who, as foretold by the prophets, would redeem not only Israel but all humanity of sin and, by doing so, liberate man from bondage and re-create the world. Mary’s faith and trust in God gave her the moral courage to endure the many trials that should come her way for the world's salvation and entry into the promised land of God’s eternal kingdom.

By pronouncing her Fiat, Mary dedicated herself to the spiritual service of mankind because of humanity’s fall from grace and its need to be restored to God’s favor. Working together with God in the salvation of souls required that Mary should suffer for the sins of the world together with her Divine Son (Col 1:24). In true faith, our Blessed Lady was willing to accept all the trials she might have to face as the mother of God’s anointed One. Her flight into Egypt with the infant Jesus was the first of several tremendous sorrows she would have to endure as the Lord’s handmaid (Mt 2:13-23). And so, she was prepared by the power of divine grace to renounce her maternal rights and satisfy God for the world's sins by offering His gift to her back to Him ultimately on Calvary in the faithful spirit of Abraham (Gen 22:9-10).

It was beneath the Cross where our sorrowful Lady understood all too well how the child she had joyfully conceived and borne was in His Divine Person the ultimate and final propitiation for sin; that he alone could accomplish once and for all what any of the paschal lambs of the Old Covenant could never do: achieve an eternal atonement for the people’s sins through the single sacrifice of himself (Heb 9:11-14, 23-26). Our Lord’s handmaid acted believing with all her heart that all the suffering she might have to endure because of her love of God and Son, who was God in the flesh, would be for the greater good (Gen 22:15-18).

The Lord’s faithful daughter begot us in Christ Jesus by having received the Gospel message in the depths of her heart (1 Cor 4:15). Mary became our spiritual mother once she accepted the word of the angel in good faith, despite all the suffering that might entail for her but remained obscure. And so, she could have asked herself as she stood at the foot of the Cross: “Was it I who conceived all these people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers?” (Num. 11:12). Mary became the spiritual mother of all the living – the new Eve – and the mother of all nations because she believed and acted on the word of God as Abraham had to become the father of many nations.

Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only beloved son, Isaac, foreshadowed Mary’s sacrificial offering of her only beloved Son, Jesus, when, in the shadow of the Cross, she presented her infant Son in the Temple partly as an act of consecration to his heavenly Father in commemoration of Abraham’s great act of faith (Lk 2:22-36). On this occasion, Simeon alluded to the greater soteriological importance of Mary’s maternal role in the economy of salvation when he prophesied to her: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts shall be revealed” (Lk 2:35).

Although Mary couldn’t have envisioned the scene in Golgotha that would take place about thirty-three years later, the time would arrive when the Mother should stand at the foot of the Cross to witness the horrible suffering and death of her precious Son at the hands of ungrateful sinners, recalling not only the prophetic words of Simeon but also those piercing words of the prophet Isaiah, which the Jews never associated with the expected Messiah (53:3-5). Along with Simeon, Mary was the first to know who the Suffering Servant was. Still, how he was to suffer, this she must experience in her pierced soul as the maternal participant and protagonist in the drama of salvation envisioned by Isaiah. Perhaps our sorrowful Lady drew the connection between Jesus and the Suffering Servant at some point afterward while pondering in her heart what Simeon had portentously said to her.

Thus, Mary came to fully realize through her sorrowful experience in the Paschal mystery that her motherhood was essentially more entwined with her Son’s suffering and death than it was with his birthing and nurturing (Lk 11:27-28). The relationship between Mary and Jesus, from his nativity to the inauguration of his public ministry at the wedding feast in Cana, where he performed his first miracle upon his mother’s request, mattered little compared to the Divine plan for her. The Lord’s handmaid was predestined to be much more than the natural mother of Jesus. She was chosen to be the spiritual mother of redeemed humanity. By pronouncing her Fiat, Mary acquired dual maternity, which was eschatological in scope and continues to this day and shall continue with the end of time.

Being the new Eve and promised woman, the Virgin Mary had no offspring other than Jesus, the new Adam. Her sacred womb was meant to produce the fruit of eternal life. But by having conceived our Lord and Saviour physiologically and borne the Font of all saving grace, Mary conceived and bore spiritually all who have been regenerated unto God in Christ her Son and bear fruit that lasts to eternal life. This required that she give birth to redeemed humanity in painful labor beneath the Cross. As Mary sorrowfully gazed upon her suffering and dying son, “She was pregnant, and she cried out in her birth pangs, in the anguish of her delivery” (Rev 12:2).

Mary became our spiritual mother at the Annunciation, for she first conceived Jesus in her heart before conceiving him in her womb, as St. Augustine said. Without Mary, the Incarnation would not have taken place, and there would be no hope of salvation since there would be no Calvary without the Lamb of God. This was all part of God’s perfect plan when He sent the angel Gabriel to an innocent fourteen-year-old girl and “fair ewe” in Nazareth by the name of Mary who, like Eve in her original innocence, was expected to place all her faith in Him over and against any wilfulness of hers. Eve’s unfaithfulness led to Adam’s fall from grace and banishment from Eden; Mary’s faithfulness resulted in the new Adam being raised from the dead and taken up to Heaven to sit on his throne at the right hand of God, where he has cast out the serpent or our accuser by the just merits of his precious blood (Rev 12:5, 10).

Mary’s motherhood was meant to be redefined when she said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” Of course, Mary may not have imagined this when she consented to be the mother of our Lord and Savior, but Mary was predestined to become the mother of all the living. Being the spouse of the Holy Spirit, by His overshadowing her (Lk 1:35), God’s faithful handmaid and the chaste virgin bride was predestined, in the order of grace, to become a mother of a spiritual kind. It was for this reason that God sent His Son to be “made of a woman” (Gal 4:4), and her Son called her “Woman” – notably from the Cross in the presence of the Disciple whom our Lord addressed as her own son (Jn 19:26-27).

Mary was called to suffer as the mother of our Lord to “make up for what was lacking” in her Son’s suffering for the redemption of mankind (Col 1:24). Unless she did suffer in her maternal agony because of her love of God, who was offended by sin, and her love of the Son, who was nailed to the cross because of sin, her divine motherhood couldn’t have been redefined at all. Our Blessed Lady’s spiritual motherhood received its raison d’être in her association with Jesus in mankind’s redemption, which could be achieved only through reparatory suffering and dying to self. Jesus ratified and validated Mary’s universal motherhood of mankind from the Cross, given her moral participation in his passion.

Mary gave birth in the agony of labor to help redeem humanity, for she was willing to take up and lovingly embrace her cross in union with her Son. The Cross that bore her precious offspring and on which she rested her tear-stained cheek was hers as well. In spirit, Mary was nailed to the Cross. The nails that were driven into her Son’s flesh had pierced her soul, too. The Mother and the Son were crucified together on that dark but promising day for the world's sins, just as Simeon had foretold.  Perhaps our sorrowful Mother reflected on the words the apostle Paul would write in his Letter to the Galatians (2:20): ‘I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.’ 

Indeed, Mary sacrificed her maternal rights by faithfully offering the fruit of her womb over and against a mother’s natural instinct for the sins of the world. She made temporal satisfaction to God in union with her beloved Son’s satisfaction. God honored her peace offering to reconcile sinful humanity to God, for her Son lived in her by her supernatural act of charity and grace. The Lord was with His Blessed Mother, and she was with Him. The full force of the angel’s words at the Annunciation pierced her soul as she caressed the Cross in her mother’s anguish. Because of her sacrifice, Mary rightfully became the spiritual mother of all within whom her Son lives.  Our sorrowful “mother with the Redeemer” is our Mother by being our co-Redemptrix.

Hence, only through sorrow because of sin could Mary give birth to her descendants, regenerated in the life of grace. Her sacred womb, in which she bore the Head and Body of all her Son’s members, is the proto-type of his Mystical Body, which is the Church (Eph 4:4-13), her maternity being dual in aspect. Mary is our heavenly Mother because she conceived and gave birth to Jesus, the head and body of the Church, whose members we are. By her Divine Maternity, we are conceived in the Church and reborn in the Spirit when baptized. Spiritually and mystically, all validly baptized Christians are conceived in Mary’s womb and brought forth from it through the sacrament of initiation, by which they receive the grace of justification and forgiveness. Our Lord’s faithful handmaid is the Mother of the Church.

Our Lord implies this when he calls his Blessed Mother “Woman” from the Cross in allusion to Eve before her fall from grace and banishment from Eden to become the mother of all Adam’s fallen descendants. All Christ’s faithful disciples are made of Mary and are as much her sons and daughters as Jesus is her offspring, though not biologically or physically. Jesus is our “brother,” so this must be true. “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters”(Rom 8:29).

Now, why art thou drawn together with grief?
Hast thou no king in thee,
or is thy counsellor perished,
because sorrow hath taken thee as a woman in labour?
Micah 4, 9

As Mary sorrowfully stood beneath the Cross because of the world’s sins, her heart and soul were pierced with immeasurable anguish. What motherly agony she felt made temporal reparation for all the sinful pleasures man obstinately indulges in with no thought given to an offended God. Mary emptied herself and took the form of a slave together with her divine Son in his humanity to help restore the equity of justice between God and mankind. Suffice it to say, our Blessed Lady’s great personal sacrifice counter-acted Eve’s selfish act. Her interior suffering, therefore, gave temporal satisfaction to God, for she willingly suffered by her love of God, whom she wished to appease for the sins that offended Him, and her love for the Son who suffered because of sin.

Mary’s maternal sacrifice was a peace offering to God for the sake of mankind, which was ravaged by sin. In harmony with the Divine will, she desired that humanity be liberated from slavery to sin and the oppression of death wrought by Adam and Eve’s transgression. Her temporal satisfaction to God was made with her Son’s temporal and eternal satisfaction. Both the sorrowful Mother and the afflicted divine Son aligned their human wills with the will of the Father so that He would be both temporally and eternally propitiated for the sins of the world. Temporal satisfaction for sin had to be made before Christ opened the gates of Heaven. And this he willed to do only in union with his most blessed Mother and Handmaid.

For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,
anguish as of one bringing forth her first child,
the cry of daughter Zion gasping for breath,
stretching out her hands,
“Woe is me! I am fainting before killers!”
Jeremiah 4, 31

I believe it is St. Paul who tells us: “For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (Heb 12:10). The apostle’s words reflect what he implicitly tells us in Colossians 1:24, that what is “lacking in Christ’s afflictions” refers to the debt of temporal punishment. He means to say that we can “complete” the eternal expiation for sin Christ has made for humanity by offering up our suffering in union with his suffering for the temporal remission of our debt of sin. God requires this redemptive form of suffering because it restores sinners to equality of justice in their relationship with Him through sanctification or justification to be worthy to enter heaven. God demands that such temporal satisfaction be made on our part in union with Christ’s eternal satisfaction, “for the Lord is a God of justice” (Isa 30:18), and “he judges the people with equity” (Ps 9:8). The Blessed Virgin Mary endured temporal punishment as a satisfaction for the past, present, and future sins of the world in union with her divine Son’s temporal and thereby eternal satisfaction.

Having been preserved free from the stain of original sin, she could help restore the friendship and the equality of justice between God and mankind, thereby completing what was lacking in her Son’s afflictions in his redemptive work. Her Son had taken up his cross, and so should she carry hers to complete and perfect God’s saving work by His decree. The handmaid of the Lord endured her suffering as our new maternal representative so that we might reign together with the Lord (2 Tim 2:12). We, too, must take up our cross along with her if we hope to benefit from what our Blessed Mother Mary gained to our credit by her congruous merits in union with her Son.

Our Lord’s Handmaid undid the transgression of the woman of Eden by being radically unlike her. Mary chose a painful loss in charity and grace to counterbalance Eve’s selfish pursuit of personal gain. Mary loved God to the extent of dying to her maternal self, whereas Eve loved herself more than God to the point of being totally indifferent toward Him. Thus, it took the Blessed Virgin’s pleasing sacrifice to temporally appease God for the virgin’s sin. Mary’s sacrifice was acceptable, for it was informed by love and mercy (Hos 6:6). Meanwhile, Jesus sacrificed himself more for his mother’s sake than ours because of her willingness to unite her suffering with his in charity and grace. The formal redemption of mankind (objective redemption) would be incomplete unless it was instrumentally applied – initially through the sorrow of a loving mother who has shown us what we must do to reap the fruit she has provided and be saved: take up our cross in union with her Son and follow him (“subjective redemption”).

There can be no greater sacrifice than that of a loving mother who offers the life of her beloved offspring to God and no greater sorrow to appease the Divine wrath than the sorrow of a mother who sacrifices her beloved child because of the offenses against Him. Being the Lord’s handmaid was a divine call for Mary to help reconcile the world to God in union with her divine Son by personal sacrifice, not in coordination with his merits, but in cooperation with them. Her divine motherhood was intended to be something that should extend to the whole world and embrace all of God’s fallen, created children. Having vindicated fallen Eve by persevering in grace and denying herself in faith and love, Mary rightfully became the mother of redeemed humanity: the mother of all those who have been restored to new life with God in and through the merits of her beloved Son.

Enlarge the place of thy tent,
and stretch out the skins of thy tabernacles,
spare not: lengthen thy cords,
and strengthen thy stakes.
For thou shalt pass on to the right hand, and to the left:
and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles,
and shall inhabit the desolate cities.
Isaiah 54, 2-3

Only in union with the Mother's sorrow in obedience to God's will would the Son justify fallen man by outpouring his blood and meriting the grace of forgiveness that leads to his spiritual regeneration. Our valiant Handmaid was prepared by the grace of God to make personal sacrifices for the redemption of Israel and the whole world before the Incarnation would occur, pending her consent. True, Jesus offered to lay down his life freely to eternally atone for mankind’s sins, that he might rescue all from the evils of sin and death (Jn 10:18; Gal 1:4), but only on the condition that his blessed mother should be willing to deny her maternal rights and carry her cross after him (Lk 9: 23-24). Mary precisely did this when she pronounced her Fiat by the prompting of the Holy Spirit with whom she collaborated in the obscurity of faith.

As the spiritual mother of the world, our Blessed Lady stood morally courageous in the culmination of her sorrow by having to face the terrible agony of gazing upon her beloved Son from beneath the Cross and losing him, all because of her great love for humanity which had been ravaged by sin, and insofar that she wished to align her will with God’s desire that “everyone be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:1-4). As the mother of all people and in the figure of Mother Zion, Mary acted as any mother normally would by interceding for her children and soliciting their needs. And because she acted in charity and grace in observance of the Divine will, God honored His handmaid’s sacrifice and blessed it as he had Abraham’s offering of Isaac.

Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
Then all your people will be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.”
Isaiah 60, 20-21

And so, Mary became the mother of our Lord and Savior by her free consent in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and cooperation with divine grace. The grace of the Holy Spirit conferred true merit on her. By His prompting, Mary acted in the only way acceptable and pleasing to God. She could not conceive Jesus physically unless she had first conceived him in her heart. Nor could she be the worthy mother of the Son unless she were willing to unite herself to him in his redemptive work in perfect oneness of love for God and human souls and hatred for sin and its ravaging. “In burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See, I have come to do your will, O God” (Heb 10:6-9). Mary’s consent was as important as her Son’s should be by the Father’s wisdom and righteousness. God could only honor her consent to bring the Messiah into the world because it conformed to His will, just as the Son’s consent to come into the world was honored by his Father. After all, it conformed to His will.

Mary’s faithful assent to the will of God had to follow throughout her entire life, just as the Son of Man’s assent to the will of the Father had to in his life on earth. Jesus became the source of our salvation through his perfect obedience to the will of the Father. His heavenly Father did designate him to be our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek because he was perfected by learning obedience through suffering for the sake of His love and goodness (Heb 5:8-10). Mary had to be perfected in the same way as her Son was in his humanity for God to redefine her motherhood and designate her Mother of the Church.

Mary conceived and bore the Divine Messiah because she was willing to do any good work that God may have prepared for her (Eph 2:10). Only by her good works of mercy in charity and grace could Mary become the spiritual mother of us all. We, her children, must follow in her footsteps if we hope to conceive Christ in the womb of our souls and be saved. Mary willed in a way that God had wanted her to will with the help of His grace in conformity to His will, which conferred supernatural merit on her act of faith. Her consent to the will of God eradicated Eve’s consent to the serpent's will. Mary’s Yes to God undid the No of sinful Eve. By her Fiat, Mary crushed the serpent’s head with her heel, and by her virtuous act of faith, not only did she humiliate the Devil after what he had done to Eve to reach Adam, but God’s saving light shone forth into the world. All this because God’s light had shone forth from our Blessed Handmaid’s soul, which magnified His glory (Lk 1:46).

​“But we must consider another marvelous aspect of the comparison between Eve and
Mary. Eve became for men the cause of death, because through her death entered the
world. Mary, however, was the cause of life, because life has come to us through her. For
this reason, the Son of God came into the world, and, ‘where sin abounded grace super
abounded (Rom. 5:20). Whence death had its origin, thence came forth life, so that life
would succeed death. If death came from woman, then death was shut out by him who, by
means of the woman, became our life.”
St. Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies, 87
(ante A.D. 403)

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God hath shined forth.
Psalm 50, 2

Salve Regina