By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
The Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady is celebrated on August 15, and commemorates the fact that our Lady was taken up into Heaven body and soul and is now reigning as Queen of Heaven with her Son, Jesus Christ. The Blessed Virgin was privileged in this way because of the holiness of her life and also because she shared so intimately in the Passion and death of Christ.
This article will look at that aspect of her life from the point of view that just as Christ was regarded as the New Adam by St. Paul, so, too, later on the Church Fathers frequently compared Mary with Eve, describing here as the “New Eve.” It will also look at the way that the crucifixion and death of Christ recapitulate what happened in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were tempted and fell, and how vital our Lady’s role in all this was.
That is, we will look at connections between the two events and how Christ’s death undid the effects of Adam’s sin.
As regards seeing the Blessed Virgin as the “New Eve,” we can see from this passage by St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c.315-386), how he emphasized this point: “Through Eve, yet a virgin, came death; there was need that through a virgin, or rather from a virgin that life should appear, that as the serpent deceived the one, so Gabriel should bring good news to the other.”
In the same way, St. Augustine (354-430), also stressed the how Mary had become the “New Eve.”
“The first man, by persuasion of a virgin, fell; the Second Man, with consent of a Virgin, triumphed. By a woman the devil brought in death; by a woman the Lord brought in life. An evil angel of old seduced Eve, a good angel likewise encouraged Mary. Eve believed, so as to ruin her husband: Mary, so as to prepare her womb to be a habitation worthy of the Son of God, that Him whom she had as Lord, she might also have as Son. . . .
“From a woman was the beginning of sin, and on her account we all die; from a woman was the beginning of faith, and on her account are we repaired unto everlasting life.”
St. Jerome (c.347-420) summed up the thought of the Fathers on this subject: “But now that a virgin has conceived in the womb and has borne to us a child…now the chain of the curse is broken. Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary.”
This is what we find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 411) on this subject:
“The Christian tradition sees in [Genesis] an announcement of the ‘New Adam’ who, because he ‘became obedient unto death, even death on a cross,’ makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience, of Adam. Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the Protoevangelium as Mary, the mother of Christ, the ‘new Eve.’ Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.”
The second-century Church Father, St. Irenaeus, developed the idea of “recapitulation,” that is that Christ restored mankind’s sinful human nature to God, by Himself becoming man and dying on the cross, thus undoing the effect of the sin of Adam and Eve. It is instructive to look at the crucifixion and death of Christ in the light of Genesis, so as to see how this “recapitulation” was not just a general process, but actually very specific. That is, elements found in the Gospel accounts correspond very closely with the details of the creation and fall of man.
For instance, the idea that Eve came from the “side” or rib of Adam, is paralleled but reversed by the way in which Jesus came from Mary. To have been truly human Jesus had to come from human stock, that is from Mary, and just as Adam needed a “helper,” so also Mary was the “helper,” the companion of Christ, in this respect. At the time of the Annunciation, the good angel Gabriel came to our Lady to tell her that she had been chosen by God to be the Mother of Jesus, provided she consented. Mary listened and accepted God’s proposal and thus the Incarnation took place, and Jesus became man in her womb.
Eve also listened to the words of an “angel,” but in this case those of a fallen angel, Satan, in the guise of a serpent; but instead of demonstrating humility, she exhibited excessive pride in repeating the sin of Satan in wishing to become “like God.” Eve ate the fruit and encouraged Adam to do the same, thus dragging both them and their posterity into sin — and her role was not passive but active.
This indicates then that Mary’s role in redemption, too, must have had some active sense, that is that she was intimately involved in an important but subordinate way in redeeming man, that she was in some sense a “co-redemptrix.”
And whereas Adam and Eve went from being naked to sewing leaves together to make loincloths, Jesus was stripped for His crucifixion on the cross, with Mary standing before Him on His wooden cross, one which has been compared to the wooden tree at which Adam and Eve committed their sin. Eve shared in Adam’s guilt, and was actually the main cause of it, and so too in a reversal of the pride displayed by both Adam and Eve, Mary humbly stood at the foot of the cross, while Jesus endured the ultimate humiliation of being crucified.
Spiritual Maternity
In Genesis the Protoevangelium, or “First Gospel,” announced the punishment for the serpent, Satan, describing how God would, “put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This prophecy was fulfilled when the “seed of the woman” crushed the head of the serpent by overcoming the effects of sin and death through His Passion and Resurrection.
The fact that Jesus’ burial and Resurrection took place in a garden also parallels the way that the fall took place in the Garden of Eden. The ground was cursed because of the original sin, and sentence of death was pronounced on Adam and Eve, that they would have to work for their living until, “you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
But in a reversal of this, Christ overcame the power of death through His Resurrection, and so now believers can look forward to eternal life, unlike Adam and Eve who were driven from the garden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever.
Finally, Adam named gave the name “Eve” to his wife because she was “the mother of all living,” (Gen. 3:20), and this fact is paralleled by Mary’s spiritual maternity of all mankind.
This is how the Catechism (n. 518) sums all this up: “Christ’s whole life is a mystery of recapitulation. All Jesus did, said and suffered had for its aim restoring fallen man to his original vocation.”
These considerations of how intimately involved the Blessed Virgin was in Christ’s work of salvation should make us realize how important her role is in Catholic teaching. It should also make us realize how important a living devotion to her is, and why the Church puts so much emphasis on her feasts, and notably that of her Assumption into Heaven.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
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