Volume V, Issue 16, May 31, 2008

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- The Blessed Virgin Mary's Cooperation in the Redemption: An Ecumenical Perspective by Rev. Judith Marie Gentle, Ph.D.

In his classic work on heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, my famous Anglican confrere, C.S. Lewis, provides a vivid depiction of what hell is like. He describes it as a town where all the inhabitants are quarrelsome. Their quarrels with one another are so constant that they are continually moving from house to house and from street to street to get away from one another. This moving away from one another has been going on for so long that no one would think seriously about turning around and going back to the center from which they each came. All of the inhabitants have built houses that please them individually without ever realizing that they have needs that only living in proximity with others can fulfill (1). In Lewis' words, "The trouble is they have no needs. You get everything you want just by imagining it. That's why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house" (2). They have no use for or need for what Lewis calls "real things" (3).

Contrast this image of hell with the image we have of the first Christian community as it awaited the outpouring of the Holy Spirit after the Lord's Ascension. The Acts of the Apostles describes this community as one where the apostles and other disciples of the Lord, including the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, are gathered together and devoted "with one accord" to prayer. St. Luke also tells us that in the midst of this community is "Mary, the mother of Jesus" (Acts 1:13-14). In both books of the New Testament attributed to St. Luke, whenever the Holy Spirit intervenes directly in human history in a salvific way, Mary is present and prominent. We know she is the key to the action of the Holy Spirit when God the Son becomes incarnate from her very flesh in her womb. And, since St. Luke mentions Mary the Mother of Jesus in this scene in the upper room at Pentecost, we are left to ponder just how she is likewise the key when the Holy Spirit empowers a motley, frightened ban of men and women to become the Lord's witnesses "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). St. Luke tells us that by the Power of the Holy Spirit, Joel's prophecy that both the sons and daughters of Israel would prophesy actually begins to happen (Acts 2:17). In an event that begins to reverse the curse of Babel, tongues of fire fall upon each of the men and women gathered in the upper room and they begin witnessing to Jesus Christ, proclaiming that He is both Lord and Messiah in all the languages of the earth, in a way that all the peoples of the earth could hear. The Acts of the Apostles records that many people of "good will" received the Gospel just as promised by the angels upon the Birth of Jesus Christ. Many were saved and countless lives were changed by the Grace and Mercy of God poured out on the whole world in Jesus Christ.

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