Jesus Gives Us His Mother: Part II

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.   I Tim. 2: 13-14    

  To understand Mary’s role in salvation history, we must start “in the beginning…”

  

God created male and female in His image. He placed man in the garden with a list of do’s and don’ts. He forms the woman from a rib from the man’s side. Then we read that the woman being deceived by the serpent, took and ate with her husband the forbidden fruit. After the curse of the Fall, Scripture tells us in Gen. 3:20, The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.  

 

As we’ve always looked to Adam and Eve in perpetuating the physical human existence, the many teachings of the early Church Fathers apply this foreshadowing to Jesus (the New Adam) and Mary (the New Eve) in the spiritual realm.

 

Saint Irenaeus, who was a second-generation disciple of John the Apostle, taught of creation’s recapitulation (recapitulate: to repeat in concise form) in Christ. Building on the image that Saint Paul used of Jesus as the New Adam: “[Jesus] became incarnate and was made man, He recapitulated in Himself the long history of man, summing up and giving us salvation in order that we might receive again in Christ Jesus what we had lost in Adam – that is, the image of God.” He also recognized the place of the New Eve in this process. “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. The knot which the virgin Eve tied by her unbelief, the Virgin Mary opened by her belief.”

 

Saint Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Saint Augustine, Saint John Damascene and Saint Thomas Aquinas are just a few to teach Mary as the New Eve. As the first Eve was the mother of all the living, the New Eve is the Mother of all the truly living.

 

Our Mother looks to lead us to her Son, “the Son of the Most High”, who from the first moment believed what the Angel had told her (making her the first Christian, right) saying, “be it done to me according to your word.”

 

Mary asked questions, she pondered things in her heart but she moved forward in her faith.

 

Her mission (like ours) is a partnership with God in His work of redemption. Her call was to first, give flesh to the Word of God. Our call is to share the word of the Word made flesh.

 

So when we ask our Mother to intercede to her Son for us, we know she will for she loves all those who love her Son. She wants the best for them and prays for us according to the will of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

 And she will always reply to her children, Do whatever He tells you. John 2:5  

Amen.