Mary, Coredemptrix (Good Friday)

By Father Scott Archer

April 2, 2021

No grief could be more profound than the sinless Mother of God gazing upon her only Son as He suffered and gave His life on the cross for our redemption. The words of the Stabat Mater attempt to depict the sorrow of the ever-Virgin Mary and her union to Christ in His agony. "At the cross her station keeping,/Stood the mournful Mother weeping,/Close to Jesus to the last."

The suffering of Our Lady, however, was not in vain and was in the plan of God.

A title we use for Our Lady is Coredemptrix. Christ is the sole Redeemer of mankind and it was necessary for Mary to be redeemed by her Son’s death, though God applied the merits of His future death in a prevenient way at the first instant of her conception. The title Coredemptrix means she played a subordinate but indispensable role in the redemption by freely giving her assent to be the Mother of God; furthermore, she cooperated intimately in the events of our redemption. St. John Paul II said, “Mary, though conceived and born without the taint of sin, participated in a marvelous way in the sufferings of her divine Son, in order to be Coredemptrix of humanity” (General Audience, 8 September 1982).

The motherhood of Our Lady was inevitably pointing toward the sacrifice we commemorate on Good Friday; that is, the atoning sacrifice of her Son. The Son of God took on human flesh at her word so as to redeem mankind and free us from sin and death. Again submitting herself freely to the will of God, Mary stood beneath the cross and offered the suffering of her pierced heart while, as blood and water came forth from the side of Christ, she witnessed the birth of the Church.

Pope Pius XII wrote, “Mary, in taking an active part in the work of salvation, was, by God’s design, associated with Jesus Christ, the source of salvation itself, in a manner comparable to that in which Eve was associated with Adam, the source of death, so that it may be stated that the work of our salvation was accomplished by a kind of ‘recapitulation,’ in which a virgin was instrumental in the salvation of the human race, just as a virgin had been closely associated with its death” (Ad Caeli Reginam, October 14, 1954).

Therefore, Our Lady is the new Eve, as Christ is the new Adam. Saint Maximilian Kolbe said, “From that moment God promised a Redeemer and a Coredemptrix saying: ‘I will place enmities between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her Seed; She shall crush thy head.'”

As we commemorate Christ’s passion and death for our redemption, let us not forget the role played by Our Lady, and with her, faithfully stand at the foot of the Cross, knowing that it leads to eternal life.