Since Pope Pius XII declared the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, Marian devotees within the Church have been championing the cause of a fifth Marian dogma. namely Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces. Whether or not a formal declaration comes soon, Tradition up and through the Second Vatican Council supports this as a definitive belief, although the particulars still need to be worked out. Yet most people’s response to this is that it simply goes too far. We may be willing to concede that she intercedes for us or that she is a mediatrix of grace in some ways, but the title of Mediatrix of All Graces tips the dogmatic scales towards Mariolotry. But before rejecting it wholesale, we might examine exactly what this doctrine means.
A mediator, in the sense we are using it here, is one who stands between God and man, taking the gifts from God and distributing them to men. Christ as Mediator, in strict justice, is able to take as much grace as He wants and distribute it to mankind as He sees fit. One of the ways in which He does so is through secondary mediators. These mediators no longer act in strict justice but instead as friends of Christ. When Christ sought to heal the paralytic who encountered Peter and John, He did so through the mediation of Peter (Act 3:1-7). This, of course, is but one example of many throughout all of history that continues even down to our day when Christians still perform miracles and priests become mediators of grace through the Sacraments. In this very broad sense Scripture and common sense testify that Mary is a mediatrix (Note: mediatrix is just the feminine form of mediator, like waiter and waitress) in a unique and wholly unrivaled way. But to go any further we must first set a foundation upon which the doctrine of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces can be built.
The One Mediator
The cornerstone of such a foundation is necessarily built upon the stone that the builders rejected—Christ—“Who is the one mediator between God and man” (1Tim 2:5). Anything that we say from this point forward can never diminish or overshadow that truth. Mary may have been supreme and unique in her co-operation with Christ, but it was He Who was the primary operator. Mary’s mediation is always sub-ordinated to Christ’s and not co-ordinated. She may be the branch from which all the fruit grows, but He is the Tree. He is the one mediator between God and man, but through the designs of Divine Providence chose His Mother to share uniquely in His mission as the source of all grace and in a very real sense made His distribution of grace dependent upon her. Her role as co-operator in His redeeming mission was entirely unique, for He made Himself dependent upon her “[N]ot only because she consented to make sacrifice for the salvation of men possible, but also in the fact that she accepted the mission of protecting and nourishing the Lamb of sacrifice, and when the time came led Him to the altar of immolation…” (Pope St. Pius X Ad Diem Ilium).
It is because Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God that she received a fullness of grace. This fullness is exceeded only by Christ’s sacred humanity; hypostatically united to the second Person of the Trinity. She who is “full of grace” is the pre-eminent beneficiary of Him from Whose “fullness we have received grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16). Her fullness of grace and its cause, namely the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit, makes the Spirit more operative in and through her than all the other saints combined. We shall come back to this point shortly but it is worth noting that anything that any of the saints can do in the supernatural realm, Mary can do better.
If the source of Mary’s greatness comes from her mission as Mother of God then anything we say about her can only serve to glorify God rather than to eclipse Him. Many object to the very idea of the Mediatrix of All Graces because it seems to turn her into a goddess. And if we didn’t know better we might agree because it is such a supreme calling. But in truth it is meant to reveal the greatness of God’s saving act. So powerfully did Christ trample sin and death that He is able to elevate a mere creature to an almost full participation in the life of God. Rather than diminishing the work of Christ, Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, reveals it more fully. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2). Mary’s heavenly life is the realization of this promise and the Church presents her as such in order to stoke the fires of our faith, hope and charity.
All Graces?
With the necessary foundation in place, we may now begin to build the house. When we say that Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces what we mean is not just that Mary obtains grace from God by her prayers but that she also transmits them to us by her actions. We must first admit its possibility based on what was mentioned above. If angels and saints can be secondary causes of grace then Mary can do so to a greater degree. This “greater degree” is not just some graces, but all graces. As Pope Leo XIII, building on a line of tradition that traces all the way back to the Fathers of the Church, says, “no grace is given to us except through Mary, such being the Divine Will” (Pope Leo XIII, Octobri Mense). We must not see this however as eliminating all other secondary causes of grace or making them “tertiary” causes of grace. Instead what this means is, say for something like the Sacraments, that she would obtain for us the grace of a good disposition to receive them. In other words we should see her as the mother who nurtures us with the milk of docility to the grace of the present moment. She is not the cause of our holiness, but she works behind the scenes to set us to receive its increase. In this way we say that all graces pass through her Immaculate hands.
Before concluding there is one final objection worth examining. If Mary truly is the Mediatrix of All Graces, then why would there be any prayers that do not invoke her? As should be clear by now this objection does not fully grasp what it means to say that she is mediatrix of all graces. But it also confuses our prayer to her with her prayer to God. This doctrine does not mean that no grace is given without our asking her, only that she plays such an intimate role in our interior life that no grace is given to us without her asking God for it. In fact, the only reason why we do ask her and not go directly to God is because she gives more glory to God in the asking than we do. As God’s most perfect creature, whose soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, her asking is more pleasing to God and becomes an offer He can’t refuse. This is why she is Our Lady of Mercy and never Our Lady of Justice.