(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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Why did God need Mary ?
Fr. Angel Sotelo
First, God does not need anyone in the strict sense of need. His Infinite Beatitude consists in reflecting upon His own Trinitarian Mystery and is not affected by anything outside of His divine life, nor can He ever be found to want or need anything or anyone. In other words, when God thinks about God, He is infinitely blissful and without any needs whatsoever.
However, His creatures, after their fall from grace, are indeed in need of redemption and reconciliation with the God who has been offended by sin. In His infinite wisdom, God finds a way to repair the damage of sin and death in such a way that the human race itself can cooperate and be actively involved. Humanity can do nothing by itself, so God gives us the solution of the Incarnation.
Humanity must render an account for sin but humanity is incapable of self-redemption...people cannot save themselves. However, a Man-God could offer a sacrifice as Man, with the infinite saving power of a God. And so the Word, the Divine Logos, is united to a human body and soul without ever leaving His Father’s side. Humanity and creation, disfigured and disgraced by the leprosy of sin, are, by virtue of the Incarnation, infused with a Beauty ever ancient and ever new.
Jesus our Lord, the Savior and Messiah, could have come to us as a fully grown Man. He could have redeemed us by pricking his finger and offering one drop of the Precious Blood as the acceptable atonement. Then He could have returned to His Father, the redemption being complete and fulfilled. But here we see that a Man-God who is truly human could not appropriately escape the experiences which are part of the human condition.
It was proper and fitting that the Man-God should have a mom and dad. That He should be raised in a family where there was toil and struggle. That He should experience human joy and grief, and even suffering and death. That He should be a Man like us in all things but sin.
In all things but sin.
Now we see why Mary is needed. We will now discuss this point from the standpoint of what is fitting. It is fitting that He who came to restore lost innocence and purity should be knit and formed in the womb of a woman whose love of God is never stained by the presence of sin. He who is Grace Incarnate wished to be conceived in a Woman who is full of grace.
Sin visited our first parents when the Evil One seduced the Mother of all the living. It was fitting that God should humiliate the Evil One by raising up a Woman who would crush the pride and cunning of this Serpent by ignoring all his empty promises.
In the expulsion from paradise, God tells the woman that her sin so ruptures the relationship with her man that now the man will make her to be less than he. It was fitting that God should find a Woman who restores the dignity of all women as equal and noble cooperators in the plan of salvation.
As the first Adam was given a helpmate, so the second Adam, even as God Incarnate, needed a helpmate, for as Man, he could feel the need for loving and selfless support in His public ministry. He needed one who would always hear His Word and put it into practice with a generous and docile heart, a heart that pondered all the mysteries of the kingdom.
It was fitting that the Redeemer, after giving His mission over to the Church, should find for the Church a Mother to model faith. It was fitting that the Church should be shown a prototype of her future perfection to spur her on towards the final day of judgment.
A Protestant poet once called Mary the “solitary boast” of our tainted human nature. Throughout all eternity, the heavenly Father searched for that one soul with just the right love, just the right attitude, just the right personality, just the right heart and mind that would spare nothing, absolutely nothing, to please Him in all things. “How blest is She who believed that the Lord’s word to her would be fulfilled.” All Mary needed was the command of God and the assistance of grace, and she would gladly step forward and be the Mother that the Redeemer and Messiah was looking for.
The heavenly Father needed Mary, the new Eve, the new Mother of all the living, to reverse the damage done by the first Eve. He needed her to be the vessel, the perfect vessel, to receive the Incarnate Word and to nurture Him through infancy, childhood, and the adult years of the public ministry. He needed Mary to nurture and protect with motherly prayer the Infant Church, and to watch over with a Mother’s love this Church, until the Church will possess that beauty and divine aesthetic which shines already from the Church’s Mother, assumed and crowned in glory.