Chapter VII. Mary, Model of the Life of Reparation

Some souls that have entered the unitive way are called to a life of reparation. Having reached perfect love through the cross, they are led by love to accept the cross anew, not only to promote their own purification but to make reparation for the sins of their fellow men and, through prayer and immolation, to obtain for them the graces necessary for salvation.

The Blessed Virgin is the eminent model of such souls. She has merited the title of co-red emptrix¹ and universal mediatrix² under, in, with, and through our Lord. In the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor Pope Pius XI willed to consecrate the title of Mary Reparatrix and to confirm the doctrine of the universal mediation of all graces.

We wish to speak of the fruitfulness of Mary's reparative sorrows and, to gain a better understanding of their worth, we shall consider them in relation to the greatest grace that the Mother of God can obtain for us, the grace of final perseverance, the consummation of the life of union and the crown of every Christian life. The second part of the Hail Mary asks this grace for us: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Every Christian perceives at least dimly the relationship of Mary's suffering to the grace of a good death, but the more we enter into Mary's sorrowful and immaculate heart, the more we see that the depth of her love for the agonizing Jesus has made her the strong and tender helper of all the dying who implore her aid. Our last sigh should express a holy love and a holy hatred: love of God and hatred for sin. Whence shall we draw final contrition and love stronger than death, if not from the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the sorrowful heart of His Blessed Mother ?

To understand die full worth of Mary's mediation, let us first consider die greatest grace asked dirough her and with her by diose who seek to make reparation for sinners — the grace of a good death. Let us see in what it consists and how it can be obtained.

To die well we need grace. Children studying their catechism know that to be saved we must be in the state of grace at the moment of death. So simply expressed, this lofty doctrine infinitely surpasses all the speculations of scholars and philosophers about death. When our body loses its powers, its life, it begins to corrupt and soon falls into dust, yet we have within us a principle of intellectual and moral life which cannot die: a spiritual soul. Right reason has the native ability to affirm this truth, and some non-Christian philosophers have taught it. From a purely natural point of view, philosophers have even been able to state the conditions of a good death, describing for us the just or wise man at die end of a life ennobled by the will to do his full duty as manifested and dictated by right reason. And the unbelieving think that we have no need of grace to die thus, that the will's natural energy suffices for it and sometimes rises even to heroism.

But in an order far higher than unaided reason, faith tells us what the catechism teaches: that to die a good death we must be in the state of grace. What does this mean ? It means that it is not enough for us to die in the love of our family and our country: we must die in God's love, in conformity to the will of our heavenly Fadier, who calls us to supernatural happiness, to the life of eternity, and gives to all souls of good will the grace to come to Him. He Himself rectifies the will, comes to its aid, and finally confirms it in goodness.

At death the germ of the life of heaven, semen gloriae, must exist in the soul. What an astonishing and sublime contrast: at the moment of death just when the body is losing its powers, growing cold and beginning to corrupt, the soul must, if we are to be saved, be living not only the natural life of a clear-sighted intellect and an energetic will but the divine life, a sharing in God's own inner life. We must die as Christians and have sanctifying grace in the very essence of our souls, in the intellect the supernatural light of faith, in the will the hope of heaven and the love of God above all things, charity. Through Jesus death becomes then only an entrance into eternal life. As soon as the last minute of our earthly existence is over, we have an interior and positive dis-

35 o THE LOVE OF GOD cernment of the state of our conscience, perceiving what is forever our due, according to our merits or demerits.

We should remember that almost all the soul's life is to be passed in the world to come. How can sixty or eighty years here on earth be compared to millions and millions of years, or rather, to a life without end, happy or unhappy, to be spent beyond the grave ? Nothing is more important for each of us than to die a Christian death in God's love and in true repentance. How precious is that sweet and strong grace that will lead us to perform our last act of contrition and confirm us in charity: the grace of a good death, or of final perseverance! Without it, we are lost for all eternity; with it, heaven opens to us or will be opened to us, after we have been purified, to remain ours forever.

We seldom think seriously of the grace of final perseverance. Many of us live in foolish recklessness, believing that plenty of time still remains to be converted, putting it off until later, until that moment perhaps when, after we have abused all the divine helps and when consciousness itself has gone, we can no longer give our attention to the matter of salvation. Life on earth is like a great train in which people settle down comfortably, chatting, playing games, sleeping, and doing all so successfully that they pay no attention to the speed at which the train is traveling. In their journey toward eternity, many fail to notice how fast time is flying, and those without hope make no effort to prepare for death but try to divert themselves to keep from thinking about it. Sometimes others with the manners of Christian living manifest an assurance resembling presumption rather than real hope, apparently believing that they have merited the grace of a good death.

Can we claim to merit the last grace in the true sense of "merit"? Merit properly so called signifies a strict right to a reward. Have we a right to the grace of a good death because we have lived a Christian life for twenty, forty, sixty years or more? Because of our merits can we be assured of final perseverance ? Here we have a grave question, concerning which Pelagians and Protestants have both been mistaken, although in contrary ways. 3

Here as always the true faith has the simplicity of wonderful depth. Our Lord foretold to us: "The charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved." 4 "Then two shall be in one field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left." 5 St. Paul adds: " Wherefore, my dearly beloved . . . with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will." 0 "Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall." 7 Let him place his trust in die Almighty, alone capable of preserving the just in simplicity and above reproach in the midst of a corrupt and perverse world. 8

Holy Church, warning us against presumption and despair, tells us that, although we should hope firmly in God, with-

8 The Pelagians said that we can merit, in the strict sense of the term, both the first and last grace. The Protestants hold that to be saved faith without meritorious works suffices, and that in this life a man can be absolutely certain, without any special revelation, of his own predestination and can, moreover, be saved even without meriting.

out a special revelation none of us can have absolute certitude of persevering until the end. 9 Of course the good God will never first abandon us, but we ourselves can abandon Him; we can be unfaidiful to grace and relax in our struggle against the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Theology as taught by St. Augustine 10 and St. Thomas 11 renders Holy Scripture and the Church's teaching more explicit by adding that we cannot merit the very principle of merit itself. Now the principle of merit consists in the state of grace and perseverance in that state. Therefore, just as we cannot merit the first grace of conversion, we cannot strictly merit the last. But gifts that we are unable to merit in the strict sense, such as die grace of conversion and the still more precious grace of final perseverance, we can, and even should, ask for and dispose ourselves for. Not to pray for it, not to prepare ourselves for it, no matter what die quietists may say, is foolish and fatal negligence. "Ask, and it shall be given to you; . . . knock, and it shall be opened to you." 12 Our Lord Himself has taught us to say in the Our Fadier, "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil," that we may persevere.

Can we then by prayer infallibly obtain the grace of a good death? Theology teaches that prayer made under certain conditions obtains for us infallibly the goods necessary for salvation and therefore final grace. But what are the conditions for infallibly efficacious prayer? When begging the necessary goods for salvation it must be humble, trusting, and

B Council of Trent, Sess. VI, chap. 13 and can. 16.

10 Cf. St. Augustine, De dono perseverantiae, chaps. 6, 17; De praedestin. sanctorum, chap. 11.

11 la Hac, q.ii4, a. 9. "Matt. 7=7- persevering. 13 Here our weakness reappears: we can fail to persevere in prayer as well as in meritorious works. Bossuet says with much depth: "God so desires to keep us from succumbing to the temptation not to pray that He delivers us from the evil of losing the taste and the will to prayer. Is there any time in life when we experience more sensibly the need of grace that lays hold of the heart than in prayer ? The greatest, the most efficacious, and the most gratuitous of all graces is the grace of persevering in prayer without ever giving up . . . despite times of dryness and many temptations to abandon it all." 14

We need help until the end, not only to merit, but also to pray. From whom shall we ask help ? From the good God, the audior of all grace, surely ; from our Lord, who has shed His blood for our salvation. He Himself has told us: "Amen, amen I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you. Hitherto you have not asked anything in My name." 16 And as Jesus is our Mediator with the Father, Mary is our mediatrix with Jesus. "God wills to give all His gifts, even the gift of final perseverance, to diose who ask Him for it as He wills to be asked," 10 — through the intercession of the Savior and His Blessed Mother. We ought now to speak of Mary's mediation in order that we may show how she is the model of all souls dedicated to the work of reparation.

" Bossuet, Defense de la tradition el des saints pires, Bk. XII, chaps. 10, 8. We say the same during holy Mass before Communion: "Make me always adhere to Thy commandments and never suffer me to be separated from Thee."

16 Bossuet, Instr. sur les flats d'oraison, Bk. IV, at the beginning (against the quietists). Cf. St. Augustine, De dono perseverantiae, chap. 6: "Hoc Dei donum suppliciter emereri potest."

One of the most profound, most touching, most luminous, and most fruitful mysteries of the Blessed Virgin's life is the mystery of her sorrows. Why is it that Mary, more than any other creature, can obtain for us the grace of final contrition ? Because, holy as she is, she has suffered the gravest evil due to sinners for their chastisement. Let us enter a little way into the mystery of Mary's loving heart and look upon the cause and fruitfulness of her sufferings.

The cause of Mary's sufferings Every Christian accustomed to making the way of the cross knows that the basic cause of Mary's sorrows, as well as of Christ's, was sin. Blessed are those simple souls, for whom this fundamental truth is not merely a formula committed to memory but a truth of life. Blessed are those who experience true sorrow for their sins. Of them our Lord has said, "Blessed are those who mourn." 17 Only grace can produce this blessed suffering in us. We suffer from sicknesses that try the body, still more perhaps from wounds to our selflove, our vanity, and our pride. We also suffer in an entirely natural way from the ingratitude of men, from injustices that afflict our family and our country. But we suffer far too little because of sin, from our own sins so far as they offend God.

On reflection we tell ourselves with truth that sin comprises the greatest of evils. Whether it goes by the name of

"Matt. 5=5- pride, avarice, envy, or lust, it strikes into our very soul and reaches all its energies; as a result it causes all the disorder that we deplore in families and societies and the sometimes exceedingly bitter struggles between classes and peoples. Despite our knowledge of the fact, we experience no really great sorrow for our personal sins, by which we contribute our share to the general disorder; our light-mindedness and inconstancy prevent us from becoming too conscious of evil, and its depth escapes us. It works like some dread malady that we carry around all unconsciously in our vital organs the while we cry over a scratch.

To experience vividly the good suffering of contrition we must have a deep love of God, whom sin offends; we need also an earnest desire for the salvation of souls, that sin leads astray from their last end. The saints suffered because of sin in the measure of their love for God and neighbor. St. Catherine of Siena recognized souls in the state of mortal sin by a most obnoxious odor which she perceived in their presence. A Carmelite, learning of the publication of Rcnan's work attacking Christ's divinity, almost fainted from grief. 18 But if you desire to grasp how far suffering caused by sin can go, ask Mary's heart for the secret. Her sorrow was measured by her love for God, for her Son, and for souls.

Who can measure Mary's love for God ? The most ardent charity of the greatest saints, St. Paul, St. John, cannot be compared with Mary's. Let us remember that, from the first instant of her immaculate conception, she who was to be called the Mother of the Savior received a fullness of grace and of love surpassing the grace of all the saints and angels together. As a diamond is worth countless less precious stones,

18 Vie de Sceur Marie-Aimce de Jesus, Carmelite, Part I, p. 310.

Mary from the first moment of her life surpassed all other souls in charity. Her initial fullness of grace never left off growing because of her perfect fidelity; no slightest venial sin checked the great upsurge of her love. Each of her meritorious acts, more fervent than the one preceding, multiplied the intensity of her charity, a wonderful development beyond our powers to conceive. 19 If the Blessed Virgin loved God with such fervor, how much she must have suffered from the gravest of all evils, which our frivolity prevents from troubling us at all!

Her intellect illuminated with supernatural light, Mary saw that all souls are called to hymn God's glory with praise incomparably greater than the stars of heaven. Each soul should be like a ray of the divinity, a spiritual beam of thought and love. Are not our minds made to know God, our hearts to love Him? Whereas the stars follow faithfully the padi fixed for them by Providence and tell die glory of their Creator, innumerable souls, each worth a world in itself, turn aside from God. Instead of a reflection of the divinity, a radiation of the glory of the Most High, diree horrible wounds are to be found in thousands of hearts: concupiscence of the flesh, as if carnal love alone were desirable; concupiscence of the eyes, as if no glory but fortune and honor existed ; the pride of life, as if we had no Creator and no God other than ourselves. Mary sees evil in souls, as we ourselves see purulent sores in a sick body. The perfection wrought in her through the Immaculate Conception makes her extraordinarily sensitive to all sharp griefs, and to sin particularly.

First and foremost, however, the Mother of our Savior has seen, without any possible illusion, the greatest of all crimes

18 Hugon, La Mire de la divine grace (Paris, Lethiclleux), pp. 122 f.

planned and carried out, the sin against the divine liberating Light, the sin against the Author of salvation, deicide. The cause of Mary's sorrows was the whole mass of all sins taken together, of all revolts, of all sacrilegious furies, brought in one instant to a climax and implacably turned against our Lord Jesus Christ.

Think of Mary's love for her Son, not only beloved but rightly adored. Recall that she had miraculously conceived Him, that she loved Him with a mother's heart, a virgin's heart, the purest and most tender heart that ever existed, that she loved Him not only as her only child but as her God with a supernatural intensity of love that we cannot even conjecture. Realize that Mary knew full well the causes of the crucifixion; the human causes, the animosity of the Jews, the chosen people, her people; the higher causes, the redemption of sinful and sinning souls ; then you will catch a glimpse of the interior sorrows of the Virgin Mary.

There was no need for another cross for her, as Bossuet says, her Son's cross sufficed: love made her one with Him. All Christ's physical sufferings she felt in her keen affections, enduring more from die wounds in His hands and feet than any stigmatist has ever suffered. All the Savior's moral sufferings, those that came from men, their treason and mockery; those that came from hell ; and those that came from God, the just judge: Mary experienced them all according to the measure of her love.

Mary's heart, like Christ's whole bruised and crushed being, was transformed with anguish by the sins of mankind, being altered more than the bodies and hearts of the sick, the dying, the martyred. Mary became the queen of martyrs because, after Jesus, she has endured the greatest martyrdom

35 8 THE LOVE OF GOD of heart. Truly, as the aged Simeon had foretold, a sword pierced her breast; the thrust of the lance that opened the Savior's heart entered her own soul as the final outrage to the God-man on the cross and as a symbol of all those later to strike at Him in the Eucharist.

To get a vivid notion of the Virgin Mary's sufferings we would need to share with the saints those crucifying graces tiiat give souls a participation in the Savior's cross. St. Catherine de Ricci, for example, endured for twelve years an ecstacy of suffering beginning every Friday and lasting twenty-eight hours, during which she relived the Passion. Whenever it began she used to tremble and beg for grace, and our Lord would answer her that her sufferings would be accepted for a sinner whom she had recommended to His mercy. Then she would consent to make that terrible way of the cross again. Yet the sufferings of St. Catherine de Ricci fell far short of die Blessed Virgin's: all that rent the heart of Jesus was re-echoed in her own, and she would have died of such moral torture had she not been sustained supernaturally with exceptional grace. We who ask for the grace of a good death, for a holy sorrow for sin, should have recourse to our Savior's Mother. Her sufferings are fruitful for us in a measure we scarcely even suspect.

The fruitfulness of Mary's sufferings

In the order of salvation what really serves to draw us nearer to God? The progress of human science, of art, of industry, and of social works, certainly has value in their own order, assuring us of the necessities of life; but everything of this kind remains far inferior to the life of the soul. What counts as far as souls are concerned is merit, sacrifice, and prayer. Now the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin on Calvary have an inexhaustible fecundity for us, precisely because of their triple coredemptive value of merit, sacrifice, and prayer.

Her sufferings merit for us because in union with our Lord she has endured martyrdom of heart for our salvation and sanctification. All that the Word made flesh merited for us in strict justice, die Blessed Virgin merited for us by a certain congruity founded on the charity uniting her to die Most High. His Holiness Pope Pius X 20 approved the common teaching of theologians that Mary, in union with our Lord, has merited for us de congruo what Christ Himself has merited for us de condigno.

Who can appreciate the value of such merit as this, measured as it is by die degree of charity in Mary's immaculate heart? Because of her fullness of grace, the Mother of the Savior acquired more merit by her simplest actions than all the martyrs together achieved by their most difficult and painful deeds. How dien could we ever estimate the value of Mary's compassion at the foot of the cross ? To gain some hint of its wordi, let us consider die diree theological virtues as found in Mary's soul.

No greater act of faith than Mary's on Calvary is conceivable: in the deep gloom of diat day which has been called the hour of darkness, when the faidi of the apostles themselves wavered, when Jesus, humanly speaking, seemed wholly defeated and His work forever brought to nothing; when Heaven Itself seemed to make no answer to the entreaty of the Crucified, Mary never for a moment stopped believing that her Son was the Savior of mankind. When He spoke His last words, "Consummatum est" the Virgin

20 Encyclical Ad diem ilium, February 2, 1904.

understood, in the fullness of her faith, that the work of salvation was finished by her Son's terrible annihilation, that even then her agonizing Jesus was victorious over sin and in three days would conquer death, the result of -sin. Her great act of faith consisted in seeing die hand of God, even more than diat, God's intervention, where the best and most believing of men could not see anything but darkness and desolation. She offers us a great lesson for our times of deepest grief, when all seems lost, yet when everything can be saved by a great faith, drawing down upon us the words of resurrection, capable of producing what they signify.

Just when all seemed hopeless, Mary made a supreme act of hope as well. She understood the full meaning of the words spoken to the good thief: "This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise," and she saw heaven opening for the elect.

She made the greatest act of charity, loving God to the extent of offering Him her innocent and tormented Son, loving Him above all things at the very moment when He had struck her in her greatest and deepest affection, in the very object which she rightfully adored.

Her sacrifice equaled her merit, and both had inestimable value. Jesus alone, of course, can offer reparation equal to the offense of mortal sin; but in union witii Jesus, the eternal priest, Mary said her fiat in sorrow just as she had said it in joy on the day of the Annunciation. In union with her Son she too became a vicdm for us, a victim conscious of the gravity of the offenses to be expiated, a victim of boundless generosity, not only giving her whole self but offering her only Son, far, far dearer to her than life itself. Because she was an absolutely innocent victim and had no need to do reparation for herself, Mary Immaculate offered to God an expiation all the more acceptable to Him and profitable for mankind. Her whole spiritual treasure has become our heritage, and the Church unceasingly applies it to us through indulgences.

The sufferings of Mary had an inexhaustible fecundity. She bore indeed the pains of spiritual childbirth when Jesus confided to her the motherhood of our race in the person of St. John: "Son," said Jesus to John, "behold tiiy mother," and to Mary, "Woman, behold thy Son." 21 Uttered from the height of the cross, these words of our Savior produced, as His sacramental words do, what they signify. They were spoken by the Word made flesh about to die for us yet possessed of the same power as ever to touch and enliven hearts at will. His words created a close spiritual bond between Mary and John, giving Mary a deep and wholly motherly affection for John and all souls ransomed by the sacrifice of the cross, an affection reaching out and enfolding them all.

Calvary for Mary as well as for Jesus was truly the consummatum est of her mission as co-redemptrix. All who have a true devotion to Mary should say of the Mother of Sorrows : "I know nothing save Mary, who compassioned die Crucified"; just as St. Paul said of the Savior: "For I judge not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." 22

In heaven Mary, like her Son, no longer merits, no longer suffers to offer atonement to God for us, but she never ceases praying for us. Of her as of Jesus it can be truly said diat she is "always living to make intercession for us." 28 She prays

that we may be accorded all the helps merited by the sacrifice of the cross, and the prayer of the Virgin is an enlightened and universal prayer, for she knows all the graces that we need because she is our Mother and has received from God a universal mission to help us all on the way of salvation. Her prayer is fervent and extends to the last sinner without losing any of its intensity. She is sovereignly good and prays for all men, yet she prays especially for those who offer no resistance to her good inspirations and faithfully recommend themselves to her, looking upon diem with particular tenderness, interceding for them more pressingly, more absolutely, until she finally obtains what she asks and brings them safe home to the harbor of salvation.

The graces that she obtains, she dispenses. She herself being the ideal of the predestined, Mary progressively forms the elect, 24 distributing those supernatural helps during life that prepare for and assure a good death and at the end exerting her patronage as the advocate and help of the dying. At the hour of death, that supreme moment when the soul's destiny is decided, the Blessed Virgin Mary bears in mind the love diat has been shown to her, recalling how her servants have said to her time and time again: "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." She holds them up in the struggle of their last agony and defends them against the devil. She whose heart holds a peerless hatred for sin inspires them with the grief of true contrition and brings them to make an act of perfect charity, and when they have died she watches over them in purgatory that she may lead them at last into heaven.

21 Grignon de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, chap. 5, art. 2.

It is said that St. John of God, who had great devotion to Mary throughout his life, longed to feel her near him in his last agony but could not and gently complained to her for having left him alone. She deigned to appear to him and addressed to him the consoling words reported to us by die Bollandists: "John, it is not my way to abandon my servants at such a time."

If she does not abandon saints, neither does she forsake sinners, leaving no stone unturned to bring them to repentance, to open up their minds to let in confidence. There must be very few last minute conversions not due to some practice in honor of the Blessed Virgin, the wearing of the scapular, the recitation of the Hail Mary, the Angelus, the Memorare, the Rosary. In recent years a certain extremely frivolous writer finally acceded to his mother's insistent requests and promised to say a daily Hail Mary. He kept his promise, but outside of that prayer his life held nothing that would dispose him for a good death; yet at the last moment he made his confession and died like a Christian. Many times during the last war Mary came to the help of dying soldiers. It is told that a young Frenchman in his agony was saying the Ave Maria in Latin but could not finish it and a dying German soldier beside him took up die prayer and completed it. Mary watched over them both and led them to make the supernatural sacrifice of their lives, that she might bring them to a better world. With our Blessed Mother helping us, death is no longer death but, as Bossuet says, die beginning of deliverance, die doorway to immortality.

What can we conclude but that devotion to Mary is a sign of predestination and that the closer we are bound to diis distributer of grace the nearer we are to our Lord ; the more united we are to her, die more we receive of the divine influence? For devotion to Mary to become a guaranty of salvation it must be more dian lip-service prayers and external practices that leave the passions unchecked: it must be a work of imitation. The mediation of the Mother of God surely calls for cooperation on our part. The best means of assuring that we give our cooperadon is to live in union with Mary, meditating on the joyous, the sorrowful, and the glorious mysteries of her holy life, pardcularly recalling her sorrows in order to sanctify our own trials, which we often meet irrationally, accept morosely, and carry without profit. Let us live by our devotion to Mary, consecrating ourselves to her as Blessed Grignon de Montfort counsels, offering her all that is incommunicable in our merits that she make it fruitful, and all that is communicable that she may use it according to her good pleasure for the benefit of erring and suffering souls. 26

In this spirit, let us often repeat the invocation, "Sorrowful and immaculate heart of Mary, pray for us." Because Mary's heart was immaculate and pure it suffered so much for the sins of mankind. Sorrowful heart, overflowing with divine life, pray for us. We do well to become used to saying this invocation, for then at death it will come back to mind spontaneously and become the expression of our last sigh. Then Mary will lead us to make the sacrifice of our life in a spirit

25 In our good works there is something incommunicable, merit properly so called, merit de condigno, and also something communicable to other souls, the merit of congruity, or de congruo, and in addition to this, prayer for our neighbor and satisfaction for the punishment due to sin. Cf. St. Thomas, la Ilac, q."4. a-6- If after making the act of oblation we forget to pray for our neighbor, Mary will be the first to remind us of it.

of adoradon, thanksgiving, reparation, and supplication, uniting our intention with all the Masses being celebrated diroughout the world. 26

26 His Holiness, Pope Benedict XV, in a letter to the director of the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of a Holy Death, strongly recommended that the faithful have Masses said to obtain the grace of a good death; this greatest grace we cannot merit but only obtain by prayer, and the greatest of all prayers is that which our Lord continues by offering Himself on the altar through the ministry of His priests: "Idem nunc offerens sacerdotum ministerio, qui se ipsum tunc in cruce oblulil, sola offerendi rationc diversa" (Council of Trent, Denzinger, no. 940).

Footnotes

1. Benedict XV ratified this title by saying that Mary, in union with Christ, has redeemed mankind: "tit did merilo queat ipsam cum Christo humanum genus redemisse." Letter of March 22, 1918, Acta Apost. Sed., X, 182. ↩

2. This Otic has been approved by Pius IX in the bull Ineffabilis, December 8, 1854; by Pius X, in the encyclical Ad diem ilium, February 2, 1904; by Benedict XV in the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, January 21, 1921, approving the feast of Mary Mediatrix. ↩