An Excerpt from a talk given by
Professor Courtenay Bartholomew
Behind every great man there is a great woman. Obviously behind every little man there is a great woman. I am a scientist and therefore I am not here to give a homily. I am here to tell you about my research on a woman called Mary. Most of it is expressed in my book (A Scientist Researches Mary: The Ark of the Covenant) but I was intrigued recently by the Newsweek magazine of two weeks ago. Now Time magazines front cover of December 30th, 1991 featured the Virgin Mary with a caption, "The Search for Mary." The inside article began, "When her womb was touched by eternity 2000 years ago the Virgin Mary uttered a prediction, 'All generations will call me blessed.'" and five years later the December 1996 issue of Life also devoted its front cover to Mary, with a caption "The Mystery of Mary," and the words: "Two thousands years after the Nativity, the mother of Jesus is more beloved, powerful,and controversial than ever."
On August 25th of this year Newsweek also gave her front coverage with the headline "The Meaning of Mary" the cover inside story also began, "a growing movement in the Roman Catholic Church wants the Pope to proclaim a new controversial dogma that Mary is the co-redeemer. Will he do it, maybe in time for the millenium? Should he?"
While deploying the headline captions of three famous magazines namely, "the Search for Mary," "the mystery of Mary," "the meaning of Mary." May I say that in my own personal search for Mary, I began to discover the meaning of Mary and I'm now awed more than ever by the mystery of Mary.
Now when Satan seduced Eve and Adam in the garden of Eden. As you know sin entered the world for the first time and God then said to Satan, because you have done this I will put emnity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed and she will crush your head. God was of course referring to the woman the second Eve, Mary. Now she is hidden in the Old Testament but she is the virgin foretold by Isaiah who will conceive and bring forth a son, Emmanuel. She is the woman that shall encompass a man. Indeed a long time ago Ezekiel also prophesied about her, I saw a closed gate and behold He who was God before all ages proceeded by it for the salvation of the world and it was again closed signifying the virgin who remained a virgin after birth. Now in the fullness of time the official visit of an emissary to this virgin. His excellency the ambassador Gabriel journeyed to earth and in the first time in recorded history an angel knelt in reverence before a creature. He didn't do so before Daniel but, she was no ordinary creature was she? He then extended an invitation to her from God to be the mother of His son. It was the most important marriage proposal in time and in eternity. Her reply was awaited with anxious suspense in heaven. As heaven and earth depended on her response. After requesting a brief verification she said, "Yes" to God. Then the Holy Spirit lovingly descended upon her and she conceived the God-man. The work of redemption had begun. This is the point of the incarnation. This the incarnation was the beginning of the greatest love story ever told. Indeed it was the most important event in world history.
Now two wonderous things then happened. A woman while remaining a virgin became a mother and more wonderous yet, if you think about it, a woman became the mother of her own creator!! The uncontainable contained himself in the womb of a mere mortal woman, God became one of us. She on the other hand became the Ark of the Covenant, the living ark that is, of the mediator of the new covenant. Moses was the mediator of the old covenant.
Now as you know, she lays hidden in the Old Testament Many of the great women of the Bible foreshadows her. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Judith, Esther, and many others are preimminent types of Mary prefiguring different sides of her all embracing majesty,. In the New Testament Mary is a little more evident. The story of the conception, birth, and infancy of Jesus is in fact a story of his mother and he is almost lost in her shadow for a whole thirty years. When at last, he did manifest himself to the world, it was her maternal authority which brought about his first public miracle even though his time had not come.
Then Mary recedes into the background for example, she is nowhere to be seen during the glorious precession of Palm Sunday. Neither is her place on Tabor. She is with her son on His sorrowful way of the cross to Mount Calvary. That was her place!
It was on that very spot that Abraham was ordered to immolate his son Isaac but, was spared the agony at the last moment. His wife Sarah was also spared the anguish but, God did not spare the sorrowful agony of his own mother! No angel held back the sword like in the case of Isaac. A lance pierced her sons heart and a sword pierced hers. It was the ultimate sacrifice! A man on a cross and a woman standing beneath it. Stabbard, martyr, Dellarosa you see. And if there were a thousand mothers standing at the feet of a thousand crosses bearing their thousand crucified sons the sum total of their anguish could not messure the anguish of that woman, on that day, on that Friday, that some men call good.
As Father Papalli once said, "Hers is the most spiritual and most pure, the most selfless, the most intense, incomprehensible suffering ever known. One solitary creature with God, and for God, suffering for all. For mankind and from them. This is price of becoming coredemptrix,." He said, "That is the meaning of being the second Eve."
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux also recognized appropriateness of God's redress to the Eden situation when he said, "One man and one Woman harmed us grieviously, thanks be to God all things are restored by one man and one woman, and that with interest. It is true that Christ would have been adequate, " he said, "Since all our sufficiency is from him. But, it was not good for us that it should be a man alone. It was appropriate that both sexes should take part in our reparation, since both sexes had wrought our ruin. " That is common sense, not theological sense but, common sense is not so common these days.
Her cooperation means much more than this, it implies the true dependance of the whole work of redemption on her free will because God, himself willed it to be conditioned by her consent. Because God respects our free will, because He has given us our free will to decide, to choose. It is the wisdom of God. In that sense therefore redemption in its entirety is her cooperative work also. I stress cooperative also! For that reason alone she deserves to be called co-redemptrix. A co-pilot is not the same as a pilot.
This is not a new doctrine. The Church has repeatedly emphasized Mary's title of co-redemptrix. Thus in 1908 for example, the Sacred Congregation of Rites mentioned her as the co-redemptrix of the human race. In 1914 Pope Pius X granted an indulgence to a prayer in which she is addressed as co-redemptrix of human kind. Benedict XV in his letter of 1918 asserted that, " It may truly be said that she with Christ redeemed the human race." Pope Pius XI in 1923 wrote the sorrowful Virgin took part with Jesus Christ in the work of redemption.
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