The Marian Principle of the Church: Mary Beside the Cross

Jn 19:25-27 and the “Marian principle”: Mary beside the cross as the summit of her maternal participation in the work of redemption

Mary’s presence beside the cross of Jesus constitutes the highest moment of her maternal participation in Christ’s work of redemption, in which she personifies in a singular way the maternal participation of the Church.

In Mary’s presence “beside the cross”, one can sum up the meaning of what is called, both within the Magisterium of John Paul II and in theology, the Marian principle of the Church. This is not, however, a return to the theme of the “first principle” of Mariology, maintained in the recent past. With this principle the intention is rather to affirm that contribution of light and of action within the mystery of the Church which comes from the person of Mary and from her singular participation in the mystery of redemption. John Paul II, in the “Letter to Women” (1995), prophetically announces a further future development of the Church in the third millennium, linked to new and surprising manifestations of the “feminine genius” (n. 11), precisely in harmony with the “Marian principle of the Church”. This principle is defined within a manifold context: that of the relationship between the “Church and Mary”, between the “Church-Mary” and “the sovereign redemptive mediation of Christ”, between “Mary” and “the identity of woman”. If it is true, in fact, that the relationship between Christ and the Church-Mary has its roots in the most ancient Christian tradition, beginning with Scripture itself, it also appears particularly important for the “question of woman”, which constitutes one of the signs of the times. In reality, the role of woman emerges, in salvation history, in that presence of the feminine which runs from the first pages of Scripture (Gen 1-3) to the last (Rev 12; 21).

It must be stated, however, from the outset, in order to avoid misunderstandings and for a correct assessment, that the “Marian principle of the Church” cannot be affirmed in an autonomous manner: it must always be considered in relation to the other principle, the structural sacramental-Petrine one, to which it must always be deeply united. It is above all in this relationship that the original value of the Marian principle of the Church is defined, by which no dependence of the Church as “institution” upon Mary is affirmed. It is rather a matter of understanding, as Paul VI affirmed, that “the reality of the Church is not exhausted in its theological structure, in its liturgy, in its sacraments, in its juridical ordinances. Its inmost essence, the first source of its sanctifying efficacy, must be sought in its mystical union with Christ”. Along these lines, it must also be affirmed, as the new Catechism of the Catholic Church says, citing the words of John Paul II, that the structure of the Church “is totally ordered to the holiness of Christ’s members. And holiness is measured according to the ‘great mystery”, in which the Bride responds with the gift of love to the gift of the Bridegroom”. Mary precedes us all on the path of holiness which is the mystery of the Church, the “Bride without spot or wrinkle” (Eph 5:27). For this reason, “the Marian dimension of the Church precedes her Petrine dimension”.

The “feminine principle” of the Church-Mary: the figure of the New Eve in Scripture, in the New Testament and in the patristic tradition

The importance of the feminine figures by which the people of God is represented already in the ancient Scripture, and then in the New Testament and in the patristic Tradition, is well known. The mystery of the Church is symbolically expressed in figures such as New Eve, Mother, Bride and Virgin. The relationship between Christ and the Church, represented through the profound analogy of these feminine figures, seeks to express that, if Christ stands at the center of the original plans of the Father, who chose all things and decided to recapitulate them in Him (Eph 1:10), the Church and the whole cosmos are never absent at any moment of this divine plan. Indeed, the Church is not even a mere setting in which this plan is brought about, but an essential (feminine) partner in the divine work. The fundamental argument for this affirmation rests on the fact that there is no authentic revelation of God without its “interiorization in the consciousness of a faithful community”. Thus the original and ever-living offer of the redemptive Trinitarian Love, revealed in the cross-resurrection of Christ, brings with it a faithful response to this same love. Such a response, however, is itself the fruit of the initiative of the Father, of the action of the Son and of the Holy Spirit who awakens it in the human heart.

One may therefore consider that in the design of the Father, corresponding to the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8), there is also an eternal “feminine partner” of Christ: it is the presence of the faithful community, the Church, which very early on, in the Tradition, was also referred to Mary. Therefore: “just as the Protoevangelium (Gen 3:15) indicates an ecclesia ab Adam, so too it indicates an ecclesia ab Eva-Maria, in which the first place in the new beginning of creation (2 Cor 5:17) that is to be accomplished in Christ, the New Adam, is attributed to woman”. The personification of the mystery of the Church in feminine images reaches a wholly singular moment in the real and historical person of Mary of Nazareth, culminating in her presence beside the cross and in the praying community in the Upper Room awaiting the coming of the Spirit (Acts 1:14). It is in her that the personal mystery of the Church is concretely and symbolically realized. Throughout the tradition, both patristic and medieval, the “Church-Mary” relationship tends to merge “within the framework of an identical motherhood, at once virginal and spousal, by which the opening of Mary’s womb is the opening of the womb of the Church”.

The birth of the Church (Jn 19:31-37) in the Fathers: the New Eve and the sacramental mystery emerging from the Crucified

In the theological reflection of the Fathers, the “feminine principle” of the New Eve is affirmed first of all in the contemplation of the birth of the Church, as a “sacramental mystery”, from the event of the Cross, in the account of the thrust of the lance and the flowing of drops of blood and water (Jn 19:34-37). In this episode, patristic thought, recalling the symbolic description of Genesis (2:21-23), reads its fulfillment in the origin of the Church from the side of the New Adam, during the sleep of His death. She, as His Bride of the new times, is filled by the crucified Christ, her Bridegroom, with the superabundance of the gifts of grace, not to supply a lack of His own, but to meet our need. In this episode of the Gospel account of Jesus’ cross, one may say that the nuptials of the Word with our humanity are consummated and that the sacramental-Petrine face of the Church is defined, which, though it has its roots in the pre-paschal time itself of the history of Jesus, is nevertheless fulfilled in the paschal mystery and in the gift of the Spirit. Thus the Church, born of blood and water, as a “sign of Christ’s presence” (Lumen Gentium 48) in history, prolongs the exercise of the priestly ministry, as His “Body” and “universal Sacrament of salvation”.

On the part of many Fathers, no theological importance is given to the scene of Mary at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25-27). It is commented on, instead, as an expression of Christ’s filial piety toward His Mother.

Considered in this light, the sacramental face of the Church, born from the pierced side of the crucified Christ, brings out more the presence in her of the very person of Christ in His pastoral ministry. She participates in the saving mystery of Christ, in the action of His sacrifice, continuing in history His permanent priestly ministerial function, and underscores more both her unity with Christ and the presence of Christ in her liturgical life (SC 7.11). The predominance of the christological-sacramental-Petrine point of view in the Eve-Church image brings it closer to the Pauline idea of the Body of Christ.

Nevertheless, by placing the accent only on the unity-identity of the Church with the ministry of Christ, as a permanent and living sign of His love for mankind (cf. GS 76), and by insisting only on this register, which organically and harmoniously unites the theological-structural-institutional elements of the Church, constituted by Christ and founded on Christ, so that she exists in the world as a permanent presence of His, one runs the risk of depersonalizing the Church. She would become merely a christological function, that is, the act of communicative presence of the Risen One and of His offer of grace to mankind. It is well known that the Second Vatican Council, in order to avoid this danger, underscores the particular character of this sacramental sign which, besides its essential reference to the Person and ministry of Christ, includes that of its social, visible, human reality, by which the “being a sacrament” of the Church consists also in her existence as a universal human community. In this light, there is found, within the sacramental conception of the Church itself, that feminine principle which guarantees the spousal relationship between humanity and Christ, a principle that shines out particularly in the image of Mary at the foot of the cross.

Mary and the Church-New-Eve born from the cross: Mary’s personal participation in salvation in Jn 19:25-27

The Church New-Eve, which is born from the event of the cross (Jn 19:31-37), is not only a structural (sacramental) principle, operating through human persons “ordained” for a ministry (Petrine principle), in direct representation of Christ, but she is also a “someone”, as an “interlocutor” of the trinitarian event of God who offers Himself in Jesus Christ: she is someone whom Jesus Christ loved, for whom He gave Himself up and who responds to this love. The Church is also a subject, consisting of “human persons organically united in a fraternal communion”. Considering the Church from this point of view, as a person, in her spousal relationship with Christ, her own liturgical and pastoral life must not be restricted exclusively to the ministerial action of the ordained priesthood, to the grace-giving action which it exercises in persona Christi, as His “personal presence”, nor can it be limited to the active guidance of the pastors alone: the mystery of the Church also involves the totality of her members, in the spiritual action of the “we of all the faithful”, as subject and not only object of pastoral life.

Here the importance of Mary’s particular role is revealed, in her maternal action, cooperating with the primordial mystery of Christ’s redemptive action in the event of His cross, and operating, in her iconic value, in relation to the whole Church. Mary advanced in the pilgrimage of faith and “faithfully preserved her union with her Son unto the cross, where, not without a divine plan, she stood (Jn 19:25), suffering deeply with her Only-begotten Son and associating herself with a maternal heart to His sacrifice, lovingly consenting to the immolation of the victim she had brought forth, and finally, by the same Jesus dying on the cross, she was given as a mother to the disciple with these words: Woman, behold your son” (Lumen Gentium 58). The presence of the person of Mary beside the cross sheds light both on the mystery of the redemption accomplished in Christ and on the image of the Church herself, revealing the importance of her “Marian principle”. Mary reveals, in fact, that the “fulfillment” (Jn 19:28) which was accomplished and continues to be accomplished (Jn 19:30) in Christ’s offering on the cross does not consist only in the work of Christ (Christus solus), by which the human being is saved, but also in the participation of the human creature in the very event of His death on the cross. This “active participation” must be understood, however, not only in reference to the ministers who, in the Person of Christ, carry on in history His saving pastoral ministry, but also in the active participation of all the faithful who, united to their pastors, constitute the “we” of the Church herself, in her communal face. The work of salvation must always be seen within this dialogical framework of the new covenant, which has its temporal beginning in the Incarnation of the Son, sent by the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and its consummation in His death and resurrection and in the participation of the Church as “subject”, united in a spousal relationship to this mystery.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, the event of Christ’s redemptive Incarnation is defined, already in its very existential being, as a will of obedience to the Father (Heb 10:9. Ps 40:7-9), culminating in the oblation accomplished by Him once for all (Heb 10:10). To this constant condition of a will of priestly obedience corresponds the obedience of Mary, both in the Incarnation itself (Lk 1:38) and in her participation in the sacrificial offering of the Son on the cross (Jn 19:25-27). One may say, then, that Christ’s “behold, I come” (Heb 10:9) simultaneously awakens and welcomes Mary’s yes, and in it, that of the whole Church. It is in the hour of the cross that this spousal relationship finds its consummation. It is not irrelevant that the “tetélestai” (it is finished) of the cross is intimately linked, for the first time (Jn 19:28), to the preceding scene of “the Mother and the disciple whom Jesus loved”. Such consummation is then expressed further in Jesus’ expiring, in the gift of His Spirit (Jn 19:30). If in the Spirit, already given on the cross, the consummation of the redemptive work is found, this is because the eternal Spirit inspires, at one and the same time, the supreme, spotless oblation of the Crucified One (Heb 9:14) and the oblation of the Mother Mary-Church, united to Him in a spousal manner. Thus, “at the foot of the cross stands” Mary, the first of the disciples and the Mother of the Lord and of the Church. She (…) is at the same time the icon of trinitarian love and the first fruits of the new humanity clothed in the nuptial garment of charity. In her are united the yes of God’s love and the yes of the response of humanity redeemed by Christ”. There is, then, no “consummation” of the priestly work of Jesus continuing in a “Church-sacrament” restricted solely to the ministry of the ordained priesthood, without an active participation of “Mary-Mother”, and in her, of the “Church-Mother”.

Mary’s personal active participation in the event of Christ’s cross is affirmed, then, in its iconic value, inasmuch as, by her spiritual and universal maternal action, she personalizes and anticipates in herself the oblative response of the universal priesthood of the whole Church. Mary, one may say, embodies the fundamental qualities of that universal priesthood which is exercised, in the Church, both through the exercise of “worship in spirit and truth” and through the offering, in life, of “spiritual sacrifices” on the part of all the faithful, who by virtue of God’s mercy offer themselves (their bodies) as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1. Cf. LG 34). Such an exercise of worship and spiritual offering is not carried out parallel to the offering of the ministerial priesthood, but is exercised, in communion with it, in a single oblative act with the one priestly offering of Jesus, raised up, in the Spirit, to the praise and glory of the Father.

Mary’s spiritual motherhood at the cross and the birth of the Church: the mother of all the redeemed in the redemptive event

I take up and develop further some reflections on the participation of Mary and of the Church-Mother in the redemptive event of the cross. The Mother of Jesus, throughout her earthly existence, appears as that human person who is made capable by the Spirit of welcoming and bringing forth the divine Word, first in her heart and then in her body. She is the Woman in whom there is revealed, in the context of the new covenant, to the highest degree (iconic aspect), not only the grace of the offer of the gift which precedes, in its absolute gratuitousness, the response of the human creature, but also the grace of receptivity which awakens the correspondence to the gift of divine love. Mary appears, in fact, above all as the predestined Woman, the Chosen One par excellence, as a “sign” of the predilection of the divine grace offered to humanity (κεχαριτωμένη: Lk 1:28), so as to welcome in herself, for all humanity, the fullness of the Father’s love. Thus she, over whom the Spirit hovers (Lk 1:35), personifies the New Zion, the one who has within herself the fullness of the Lord’s presence (Lk 1:28b). This mystery of election and of personification of the mystery of the Church shines out particularly in the event of the cross (Jn 19:25-27), in which she is proclaimed by Christ “Woman”, Mother of the disciples and of all men. If it is true, then, that in Mary the primordial idea of the Church, as the “mystery of birth from above” (Jn 3:3), takes on historical concreteness in its most perfect form, the Church, in Mary, recognizes herself in her identity as Mother in the order of the Spirit, in essential correlation to the Christ event and in essential correlation to the whole of humanity.

As Mother of the faithful, by the power of the Spirit, Mary appears as the icon revealing the fruitfulness of the Spirit Himself. I may say: since the Spirit is the divine Person who best reveals to us “that which can correspond in God, in the uncreated, to this created reality which is the feminine being” (L. Bouyer), so the work of God, as Spirit, who disposes the human being to welcome in depth and interiority the Word of the Son, constituted in Mary, in her very femininity, the historical subject who made possible the coming of this Word among us. In her pneumatic motherhood, proclaimed by the crucified Christ (Jn 19:25-27), Mary appears as the prototype of the spiritual dimension of the Church, which acts constantly by communing in holiness and directing the faithful to the values of the Spirit and to the mystical life. H.U. von Balthasar, in his theological aesthetics, describes what we might call the archetypal experience of the Marian character of the Church (the Marian experience of God), distinct from the archetypal experience of the apostles. This Marian experience expresses an iconic function, precisely because it appears in all its interior and trans-historical valence, communicative of transcendence. It plays an essential, irreplaceable role, so that the identity of the Church may not be contracted to its mere organizational structures, to expressions of technical conceptuality and to simple historicizations: “when the image of the Woman disappears from theological reality, a masculine and imageless abstract conceptuality and technique prevail. But then faith finds itself expelled from the world and relegated to the realm of the paradoxical and the absurd”.

This point of view is particularly important today within the ecumenical dialogue with the evangelical churches, with which, despite the differences regarding the affirmation of Catholic theology about the way in which the “Church-Mary” (and also the individual Christian) “cooperates” with the salvation of Christ, greater possibilities of understanding are opening up. Insofar as “in this example of Mary cooperation is understood as a receptive participating”, a first essential impediment according to evangelical thought falls away. For this reason Pope Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus (February 2, 1974, n. 33), affirms that, despite the recognition of the existing differences, “the veneration of the Virgin, the handmaid of the Lord, in whom the Almighty has done great things, is not an impediment but, however slowly, is becoming a path and a meeting point for the unity of all Christians”.

The Holy Spirit, Mary and the priestly people: the Marian principle and participation in the one priesthood of Christ

If in her spiritual motherhood, proclaimed on the cross, Mary appears as the icon revealing the fruitfulness of the grace of the Holy Spirit, we can say that in her there shines out the mystery of the Church, as a mystery of holiness, as the communion of saints, as worship in spirit and truth. This mystery is founded on participation in the holiness of Christ Himself. This state of holiness, however, in the context of the event of the incarnation, has its concrete realization within a framework of sacramental economy which it cannot do without: in order to worship the Father in spirit and truth it is in fact necessary to live a spiritual life coming from the Holy Spirit, a life that implies a new birth (Jn 3:5-6). This means that this holiness, this worship in spirit, for the Christian has its foundation in baptism, by which he lives his condition of consecration under the vital inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8; 1 Jn 2:20). To this condition of consecration belongs the name of spiritual priesthood, whose aim is not a particular ministry but a mode of existence and of life, a personal and communal attitude of adoration. “In order to worship the Father in spirit and truth, it is necessary to be inwardly sanctified by the Holy Spirit, to be penetrated by the revelation of Christ and animated by His filial life. Earthly life must be placed under the dominion of the divine life of the Trinity: this dominion constitutes a priestly consecration, a prolongation of the one that was perfectly realized in Jesus”.

This common and universal priesthood, a holy priesthood, by which the Church, as a “spiritual house”, is made able “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5), a priesthood already announced by Christ (Jn 4:23), finds its first fundamental realization precisely in the maternal figure of Mary at the foot of the cross. Indeed, Mary’s first participation in the condition of this spiritual priesthood begins already in the mystery of the Annunciation, through her singular union with the “archetypal Sacrament” who is Christ, as His Mother, clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35). At that moment she already welcomed the grace of the holiness of the spiritual priesthood, in her obedience to the divine will (Lk 1:38). But it is on the cross that the priestly holiness of Jesus, consummated in His sacrifice of obedience to the Father, has its perfect resonance in Mary, in whom the New Eve (the “Woman”: Jn 19:26. Gen 3:20), the Church, is personified. Spiritual participation in the sacrificial offering of Christ thus defines together the priesthood of the universal Church and its Marian qualification. And this, not because Mary exercises it by virtue of a power of her own or of a strength springing from the depths of her human faculties and potentialities. For Mary, the exercise of this spiritual priesthood “is a most singular gift of grace, of a grace that God alone can grant”. The Second Vatican Council admonishes theologians that, in treating of the Virgin Mary, they see how all her gifts are ordered to Christ (LG 67).

Therefore, if the Second Vatican Council affirms that, in the Church, Mary is invoked “under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, Mediatrix” (LG 62), these attributions (particularly “Mediatrix”) must be interpreted in a context in which the transcendence and efficacy of Christ, the one Mediator, is properly affirmed (cf. LG 62). In this context, the language preferred by the Council is that of “cooperation”, language which must itself be dissociated from any ambiguity: to “cooperate”, for the Catholic vision, is always to correspond to the initiative of grace, it is to respond gratefully to the gifts of God. Thus Mary’s work, her yes, is affirmed within an economy of “the offer of grace” which makes room for the free response of the creature.

Mary’s singular role in the saving event of the cross must be better described, however, not merely as cooperation but, “in keeping with the ancient tradition of faith, as ‘spiritual motherhood’” or as “maternal mediation”. By this it is affirmed, at least implicitly, that Mary’s participation, however subordinate and derived it may be in relation to that of Christ, must also be understood “in a sense different from the line of His saving efficacy”. Mary’s efficacious role must not, in fact, be placed in the line of the communication, the giving of grace, which in theology is referred to the efficacy of Christ’s redemptive action in the sacraments. Mary must not be considered as an eighth sacrament, much less as a super-sacrament. Mary’s personal active role must rather be understood in the line of the welcoming of grace, which is offered by Christ, through the action of the Holy Spirit, to those who, in faith, participate in the sacramental life of the Church. The Christian conception of grace in fact entails, as I mentioned above, the requirement of combining two of its essential aspects: that of the precedence of God’s gift and that of the gratuitousness of the personal-communal response to that gift. In Mary these two aspects are found. Indeed, not only does the gift of grace coming from the crucified and risen Christ break forth in her, but there is also realized, in her welcoming of it, the response of love, always under the action of the Spirit. In her is historically realized the ‘fiat’ of welcome, of consent and of spousal communion with the gift that comes from the Father in Christ Jesus, in the unity of the Spirit, which is perpetuated in the life of the Church. I may say, then, that Mary, in her physical motherhood, not only brings forth, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the One who incarnates salvation itself, the Savior, the objective content of faith, which gives itself only in her, but also brings forth, in the Holy Spirit, the very fides qua creditur of the Church, which, as Mother, generates spiritually in Mary. And wherever the generative work of the Church is realized in history, Mary’s spiritual motherhood is prolonged. Hence one may affirm with the Fathers that when the faithful soul, in faith, opens itself to welcome, in the Spirit, the seed of the Word, it, like the Church and Mary, becomes a “begetter of the Word”. Therefore Mary, in her maternal mediation, “personally” and not merely exemplarily, lives and works in the Church, in that maternal influence generative of holiness, made up of welcome and of dedication.

The Marian principle of the Church, in recalling Mary’s participation in the mystery of Christ’s cross, does not compromise the absolute primacy of grace. On the contrary, it shows that the gift of grace itself does not exclude the human response; rather, it awakens it, makes it possible and even makes it obligatory. The receptivity of grace is expressed in the indefeasible principle that “we are not the origin of ourselves”, and it places us within ourselves as responsible persons: “the grace that descends becomes grace that makes it possible to respond”. Thus the “Marian principle” recalls that the human response is an integral part of the redemptive process. But this means that this active aspect which shines in the maternal action of Mary and of the Church, in its own free personal character, must be considered, not isolated in itself, but in the context of the influence deriving from the offer of divine love in Christ, who with the gift of His merciful love also nourishes the attitude of the faithful and total response, in which the action of Christ finds its consummation (Jn 19:25-28).

Thus we can see exercised in Mary, in an exemplary way, the twofold participation of the universal priesthood of the Church in the priestly action of Christ:
a. In relation to His descending mediation, in the communication of grace, Mary appears as an excellent model of the Church, in the attitude of welcoming grace in the Spirit. Thus she recalls that faith is not first of all a search for God on man’s part, but the recognition that God, in Christ, comes to meet him in His grace. b. In relation to the ascending mediation of Christ, expressed in His prayer and in His offering to the Father, Mary embodies in a prototypical way for the Church the principle of the creature who participates actively in the oblation of Christ. It is thus that after Marialis cultus the presence of Mary in the liturgy of the Church is studied with particular attention, so that “to discover the living and active presence of the Mother of the Lord in the liturgy and to celebrate her memorial becomes the highest expression of veneration and, for that very reason, an acknowledgment of her exemplarity. Looking to Mary, we are invited to make of our life a worship of God and of our worship a commitment of life” (MC, 21).

This movement in which the Church welcomes and offers, through her prayer, the gifts that descend from the Father, through the Incarnate Son, and through Him ascend to the Father, finds in the eucharistic action its most complete realization. But in the Eucharist there appears as well, in all its value, the Marian principle that characterizes the Church in her role.

It is particularly in the Eucharist, in fact, that the twofold dimension of the Priesthood of Christ operates, in the action of the ministerial priesthood and of the universal priesthood. In it the profound meaning of their reciprocal relationship of complementarity appears in an exemplary way. If it is true, as the Second Vatican Council says, that it is “in order to form and lead the priestly people” and to offer in their name the eucharistic Sacrifice that the sacra potestas of the ordained priesthood exists, it is also true that the ecclesial universal priesthood is related to the priestly ministry inasmuch as it can be exercised only in communion with this ministry. By that ministry, in fact, this royal priesthood is constituted and, through it, the faithful “concur in the oblation of the Eucharist, and exercise it by receiving the sacraments, by prayer and thanksgiving, by the witness of a holy life, by self-denial and active charity”. But the baptized, consecrated in the image of Christ, is called to live a life of welcoming grace in the school of Mary, in her existence of faith, participating in the priestly and filial worship which in Christ ascends to the Father, in Spirit and Truth, in the mystery of the Eucharist. This task must continue, in the world, with its action of witness, by which the universal priesthood draws into the worship of Christ and of the Church the very life of the world and contributes to its sanctification. In this sense, the baptized are priests of humanity, priests whose personal worship benefits all. The common priesthood tends to raise the holiness of the universe.

Synthesis: Mary beside the cross as icon of the fruitfulness of grace and the Marian principle in the ecclesial mystery

Mary’s presence beside the cross of Jesus represents the summit of her maternal participation in Christ’s redemptive work, symbolizing in a singular way the participation of the Church. This moment, highlighted both by the Magisterium of John Paul II and by contemporary theology, encapsulates the “Marian principle” of the Church, a principle which must not be considered in isolation, but always in profound connection with the structural sacramental-Petrine principle.

Mary, in her union with Christ on the cross, reveals the mystery of the Church as a mystery of holiness and communion of saints, grounded in participation in the holiness of Christ Himself. This mystery is manifested in the sacramental reality of the Church, born from the pierced side of Christ, and is expressed through the common spiritual priesthood of the faithful. Mary, as the New Eve, not only cooperates in Christ’s redemptive work but personifies the Church in her maternal dimension, highlighting the importance of the human response to divine grace.

Mary’s role as Mother of the faithful and icon of the Church underscores the need for a spirituality lived in communion with the Holy Spirit, with a commitment to holiness and to the mystical life. Her presence in the eucharistic liturgy exemplifies the complementarity between the ministerial priesthood and the universal priesthood of the faithful, where the active participation of the faithful in the oblation of Christ is fully realized.

The Marian principle of the Church does not compromise the primacy of grace, but emphasizes the integration of the human response into the redemptive process. Mary, in her spiritual motherhood, exemplifies the welcoming of and the dedication to divine grace, showing that true holiness involves both the reception of grace and the active and faithful response to it. Thus the Marian principle reminds the reader that Mary’s participation in the cross of Christ is a model for the whole Church, a commitment to live fully the universal priesthood in communion with Christ and with one another.