Mary the New Eve-Part One

The Incarnation of Jesus in the fullness of time results from the participation of creatures with God, specifically the Virgin Mary.  God’s grace made the relationship between the Creator and Mary perfect through the Incarnation of Jesus. The sinless Mother and the Word of God, so spiritually inseparable, brought forth through the power of the Holy Spirit, the God and man, Jesus Christ, into the world. 

It wasn’t the first time an intimate connection between a creature and the Creator existed. It happened at the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden. However, the union was short-lived and had dramatic and deadly consequences after disobedience ruptured the bond. 

The chaos and the destruction caused by Adam and Eve would multiply with each successive generation, and the death sentence of our first parents would become their children’s sentence and their children until God’s creation would be completely engulfed in death. 

Humanity’s condition was so hopeless that any source of relief could only come from God. The rectification, however, could not only be God’s work but had to include the creature in the restoration. To accomplish this plan, God, in the fullness of time, united himself with humanity through the Virgin Mary, and the union of the two would establish a new order, a New Adam and a New Eve. 

The chosen vessel for the transformation of humanity was a woman born without sin. In theological terms, Mary’s sinless conception meant she was preemptively given the gift of salvation. In other words, the future salvation brought about by Christ was given to her before he died on the cross.

The theological explanation begs the question: Why couldn’t God provide that gift to everyone if Mary could receive the preemptive graces? The answer is simple: future generations could have been born without original sin, but that would defy the meaning of creation whereby one generation becomes the foundation of the next, warts and all. Creation demands an inheritance, and what has come before is a part of the future. Nature around us is resplendent with this principle; from trees to dogs, DNA is continuously passed on.  

Even if God were to overlook the original sin, He can’t ignore the evil that happened, creating a wedge between Himself and man. Once evil entered the world, the potential to be one with God ceased, and the result could only be death to his creatures because they would lack the source of life, which is God.  

For God and man to become once again, the sin committed at the beginning of time and years afterward demands justice of atonement. Paying the debt can only be achieved by a person who doesn’t owe the debt but is willing to pay for others. The remitter himself must be free of sin, for if he were not, he would only be paying for himself. But the person who owed no debt and reversed the effects of evil by his life had to be one like us, born in a generational chain without inheriting original sin.

Jesus was that person, and through the participation of the Blessed Mother, he received all that was human yet without sin because of Mary’s contribution as his sinless mother.  

To some degree, we can now examine Mary’s unique role in the plan of salvation. She was a human creature absolved from original sin but not spared from the evil world she would have to live in. In God’s plan, humanity was to be transformed, not covered up by salvation. Even though Mary did not have original sin, she would be transformed from a lowly Virgin to being the Mother of Jesus and, finally, the New Eve.

Thursday’s post will chronicle the Blessed Mother’s earthly transformation and willingness to become the Mother of all in order of grace. She has become the New Eve, and all those in a relationship with God call her their most holy Mother.