Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We're continuing our reflections on Franciscan spirituality today, specifically on Our Lady and her role in Franciscan spirituality.
Today we'll speak about her co-redemption.
We know that Jesus' mission to glorify the Father is realized through suffering by means of redemption.
And if Jesus is the suffering servant and the man of sorrows, as Isaiah prophesies in Isaiah 53, then we know Our Lady is the mother of sorrows, Mater Dolorosa, as we sing during the Via Crucis.
In the work of redemption, the Virgin Mary is fully associated to the mission of her Son.
Her singular activity constitutes what's called a ministerial and secondary cause in the saving work of Christ.
With her fiat to the angel Gabriel, Mary was fully conscious of the redeeming work that needed to be done.
She was fully conscious of her active collaboration in that work as well.
St. Bernadine of Siena says that it was a question of consenting to form and to receive within herself the crucified one, or the one who was to be crucified, of consenting to the price of the satisfaction which had to surpass all sin and to merit in reparation and remedial mediation of all the elect.
And Mary, says St. Bernadine, generously asked and gave birth to the salvation of all the elect.
She carried everyone in her womb, just as a true mother does with her children.
All of us were present in her mind and in her spirit when Our Lady said yes to the angel.
Following her fiat, there was the offering of Jesus in the temple, which was a prelude and the beginning of the sacrificial action.
On behalf of all of humanity, Our Lady brought the living offering to the temple, the holy and acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God, to borrow from Philippians 4:18.
There as St. Bernadine says, she made Jesus Christ God and man a donation for all of humanity.
And the church, the spouse of God, was introduced into the possession of that gift.
And there the old Simeon prophesied, preannouncing the martyrdom of the maternal passion, saying to Our Lady, a sword will pierce through your own soul as well, Luke 2, verse 35.
So Jesus' apostles were slow to understand that the Christ had to suffer, and we see that in the Gospels.
Mary immediately understood the truth in its very depths.
And on Calvary, in the suffering of that supreme sacrifice, we find her strictly associated with Christ.
When the offer of the Holocaust is consumed on Calvary, the mother is there with him.
Jesus is hers, and she offers him and offers herself to the Heavenly Father for a singular sacrifice, in perfect union of will and heart with her Son.
Together with Jesus, Mary acquired merits, which also serve to satisfy God's divine justice and to pour out unto humanity the abundance of divine mercy as well.
The will of Jesus and Mary is one, just as their offering is one.
And so the Franciscan doctors teach that Jesus gave to his mother what they call the primacy of compassion.
It means that she had first place in the participation of his passion.
And Franciscans fix their eyes on Mary's heart, where the offering to God was accomplished.
An offering that, in union with her Son, was uninterrupted from cradle to cross, essentially.
Actually, we can say from conception to cross with the Annunciation.
From the cross, Jesus speaks the mysterious word, woman.
It's a word that has an eternal resonance to it.
It's in that moment that the supreme glorification of God is accomplished in sacrifice.
And it's there that our destiny is decided as well, on Calvary.
On Calvary, Jesus and Mary, the God-Man and the Woman-Elect, they accomplished the mission for which they were predestined from all eternity.
With that title, Woman, Jesus seemed to remind Mary of her mission, and also he seemed to go beyond their familiar relationship of just flesh and blood.
Mary is the woman clothed with the Son.
We read that in Revelation 12:1.
She's the woman who crushes the head of the serpent, Genesis 3:15.
She's the helper who is similar to Christ, Genesis 2:18.
And she's the true mother of all the living, again, Genesis 3:20.
Woman, behold your Son, Jesus says to her in John 19, verse 26.
In the moment of the supreme sacrifice, Jesus points all of humanity to her.
It's the moment when she gives birth to us in pain and suffering, as all mothers do when they bring children into the world, except her pain and suffering were far greater than that of any other mother.
The title of co-redemptrix has been used by Franciscans since the 17th century.
It seems that the Franciscan Venerable Bernadine de Bustis is the first to introduce that term into Mariology at the beginning of the previous century, actually at the beginning of the 16th century.
Properly understood, it's a title that doesn't take anything away from Jesus, and it doesn't really put Mary on the same level of her Son, either.
As we know, Mary herself was preserved from the stain of original sin and made full of grace by the merits of her Son.
But Mary herself, in as far as possible, for a creature, she collaborated in the redemption and merited for us in a singular and unique way, as only she could have done.
She merited because of the perfection of her human personality, because of her fullness of grace, because of her profound intelligence of the mystery of Christ and the ardent love which she had for him, and because of her intimate association to Jesus, thanks to those natural and supernatural bonds which were very tightly united to her with her and her Son, united her to him in a way which no other person has ever been united or will ever be united to Jesus.
It was the 13th century Franciscan Jacopone da Todi who authored the Stabat Mater Dolorosa hymn, he's the one who wrote it, which we often recite during the Via Crucis, and which poetically sums up Mary's co-redemptive offering and suffering, and her perfect conformity to her Son.
Stabat Mater dolorosa, 
Iuxta crucem lacrimosa, 
Dum pendebat Filius, 
at the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus, close to her Son, to the last.
So let's ask Our Lady then for the grace to assist her in her mission of converting, sanctifying, and saving our spiritual brothers and sisters, which are her own spiritual children as well.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.