Coredemption and Maternal Mediation of the Immaculate "Reparatrix of the Human Race" according to de Montfort

Contemplate Mary's suffering
Near the Savior's holy cross,
See her saintly soul pierced
By the sword of sharp sorrow. ...

Seeing on a wicked gibbet
The object of her desires,
In her soul she suffers more
Than all martyrs together. ...

Sinners by our offenses
We make Mary and Jesus
Two very innocent victims (H 74:1, 4, 7).¹

There is manifest harmony between this hymn, which also makes allusion to the piercing of the sword announced by Simeon, and the passage already cited from the circular Letter to the Friends of the Cross. In contradiction to a surprising affirmation by the Abbé Laurentin,² when our author thus identifies Mary as "victime" with Christ, or again as "hostie,"³ he is not treating simply and solely with exterior cooperation remote to the Redemption,⁴ but very much on the contrary, he expresses just how far the depths of his contemplation of the mystery of coredemption go.

How, then, do we explain that what Father de Montfort wrote to his dear Friends of the Cross, has almost never been cited or commented upon by theologians today, who intend to shed light on Montfort's understanding of Marian coredemption, even when the text of the Letter to Friends of the Cross has been integrated, as it should be, into the OEuvres Complètes of our saint for the past forty years? Undoubtedly, the reason is that this text belongs to the epistolary genre, easier to pass over in silence than #18 of the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, where Montfort considers the active participation of Mary in the redemptive sacrifice:

God the Son came down into her virginal womb as a new Adam into his earthly paradise, to take his delight there and produce hidden wonders of grace. This God-made-man found freedom in imprisoning himself to be borne by this young maiden. He found his glory and that of his Father in hiding his splendors from all creatures here below and revealing them only to Mary. He glorified his independence and his majesty in depending upon this lovable Virgin in his conception, his birth, his presentation in the temple, and in the thirty years of his hidden life. Even at his death she had to be present so that he might be united with her in one sacrifice and be immolated with her consent to the Eternal Father, just as formerly Isaac was offered in sacrifice by Abraham when he accepted the will of God. It was Mary who nursed him, fed him, cared for him, reared him and sacrificed him for us (TD 18).

Impossible to camouflage, even for the most minimalist of the interpreters, this marvelous page of Saint Louis-Marie's masterpiece is much more frequently commented on than that of the Letter to the Friends of the Cross. But we wish to underscore here, our interest in reading these two major texts of Montfort in parallel, for in the one as in the other, it is clear that the cooperation of the Virgin Mary concerns the totality of the work of the Redemption.⁵ If there is a truth dear to Grignion de Montfort, it is that "God has decided to begin and accomplish his greatest works through the Blessed Virgin" (TD 15). It is not then surprising that all the "fixed points of Marian coredemption,"⁶ can be recognized in his writings.

5. The Fixed Points of Marian Coredemption According to Louis-Marie de Montfort

The Virgin Mary being "totally relative to God" (TD 225) according to the expression of Bérulle and Montfort, the subordinate character of Her cooperation in the work of the Redemption is beyond doubt to such an extent, that it isn't necessary to insist on this point. The reader would search in vain for such a lapse in the christocentrism that comes from the pen of Saint Louis-Marie.⁷ But if the cooperation of the Virgin Mary is clearly subordinate, it is just as completely active, immediate and formal:

In the passion of Christ-explains Hupperts-theologians distinguish a material element, that is to say the sufferings and death of Jesus on the Cross, and a formal element, the most important: the voluntary acceptance by Christ of his Passion and Death, or, in other terms, the obedience of Jesus to his Father even to death, death on a Cross. In the compassion of Mary we find again this double element ... Montfort depicted the sufferings of Mary during her entire life, but especially on Calvary. She was the Martyr, the Victim of her own Son. She suffered more at the foot of the Cross than all of the martyrs together ... And this is the formal element of this compassion. God will accept her sufferings and will make her collaborate in the great redemptive work by her hypothetically necessary consent to the passion and death of Christ'⁸ ... where she had to assist in order that he might make but one sacrifice with her (cf. TD 18).

Since it is She, as Montfort tells us, "who nursed him, fed him, cared for him reared him, and sacrificed him for us" (TD 18), it is clear that She is neither unsconsciously nor only passively involved in the adventure of the Redemption. Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort would have signed, without hesitation, the Marian comment of Pope Benedict XVI at the conclusion of his first Encyclical Deus Caritas est: "She knows that she will contribute to the salvation of the world ... her thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God ... her will is one with the will of God" (# 41). Daughter of Abraham, Mary whose maternal Love is an active participation in the Father's Love, consented to the redemptive death of her Son. As François-Marie Léthel so rightly emphasized:

The Mystery of the Cross is always very present in the doctrine of Montfort, and Mary is intimately associated in this mystery. Near the Cross, she wills the sacrifice of her Son. In offering himself to the Father, Jesus is also offered by his holy Mother, 'immolated with her consent to the Eternal Father, just as formerly was Isaac by the consent of Abraham to the will of God' (TD 18). Mary, then, is the perfect imitator of the Father, 'who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all' (cf. Rom 8:32). It is there, on Calvary that Jesus gave her as Mother to this disciple.⁹

As the finale of the Treatise on True Devotion, our author exhorts his reader, who has already been invited to do all his actions with Mary, to examine and to meditate on "Her lively faith, by which she believed the angel's word without the least hesitation, and believed faithfully and constantly even to the foot of the Cross on Calvary" (TD 260). With regard to the interpreters who believe themselves obliged to doubt that one can find the thesis of an immediate and formal coredemption in Montfort, they would profit from reading the Prayer for Missionaries which contains this passage inspired by the Protoevangelium: "From the beginning of the world, you have given her the authority to crush this proud spirit by the humility of her heart and of her heel: Ipsa conteret caput tuum (cf. Gen 3:15)" (PM 13). Quite evidently Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort should be ranked among the spiritual authors who agree in recognizing in the Protoevangelium "the first revealed root of the mystery of Marian coredemption."¹⁰ With reference to Genesis 3:15, in his Rule of the Missionary Priests of the Company of Mary, of which he was the founder, Father de Montfort discerns, in the spiritual combat to which the preachers of the Gospel are subject, an effect of the enmity which God himself has ordained between the lineage of the Holy Virgin and the accursed race of the serpent (cf. RM, 61).

In the Treatise on True Devotion, when he explains to his reader that God wishes to reveal and make Mary progressively known in the last times, Saint Louis-Marie comments on the Protoevangelium at length in a coredemptive and eschatological perspective:

[51] It is chiefly in reference to these last wicked persecutions of the devil, daily increasing until the advent of the reign of anti-Christ, that we should understand that first and well-known prophecy and curse of God uttered against the serpent in the garden of paradise. It is opportune to explain it here for the glory of the Blessed Virgin, the salvation of her children and the confusion of the devil.

Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius; ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus (Gen 3:15): I will place enmities between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel.

[52] God has established only one enmity-but it is an irreconcilable one which will last and even go on increasing to the end of time. That enmity is between Mary, his worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and followers of Lucifer. Thus the most fearful enemy that God has set up against the devil is Mary, his holy Mother. From the time of the earthly paradise, although she existed then only in his mind, he gave her such a hatred for his accursed enemy, such ingenuity in exposing the wickedness of the ancient serpent and such power to defeat, overthrow and crush this proud rebel, that Satan fears her not only more than angels and men but in a certain sense more than God himself. This does not mean that the anger, hatred and power of God are not infinitely greater than the Blessed Virgin's, since her attributes are limited. It simply means that Satan, being so proud, suffers infinitely more in being vanquished and punished by a lowly and humble servant of God, for her humility humiliates him more than the power of God. Moreover, God has given Mary such great power over the evil spirits that, as they have often been forced unwillingly to admit through the lips of possessed persons, they fear one of her pleadings for a soul more than the prayers of all the saints, and one of her threats more than all their other torments.

[53] What Lucifer lost by pride Mary won by humility. What Eve ruined and lost by disobedience Mary saved by obedience. By obeying the serpent, Eve ruined her children as well as herself and delivered them up to him. Mary by her perfect fidelity to God saved her children with herself and consecrated them to his divine majesty (TD 51-53).