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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I am an animator for catechesis with adults; there is a point for which I would like a clarification: I know that with Baptism we become children of God and members of the body of Christ and a community of brothers, etc.

But these are the questions I cannot answer myself with certainty: is it thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus that we become children of God, children in the Son, isn’t it?

Can we say that, before the death-resurrection of Jesus, Mary was a daughter of God in her Son? Did Jesus’ death and resurrection bring us Salvation, or sonship as well?

Excuse me, but I feel the need for answers to these questions!

Best regards

AMH

The answer of the priest

Dear friend,

1. we are saved certainly by virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, that makes us regenerated to supernatural life and participants in the life of the Son.

Therefore St. Paul reminds us that we “have been purchased at a price” (1Cor 6:20).

2. However, that does not mean that we have become children of God only since the Lord’s death and resurrection.

In fact, that was so powerful to be also retroactive, so to speak.

3. So, among the men who are made children, there are also those of the Old Testament who accepted the grace.

Most of the time they received that without knowing, but always through a pure or purified conscience.

4. God never abandoned men who lived before the existence of Christ.

God has always loved everyone with His divine love for them and gave everyone the means (the grace) to enable their salvation.

5. St. Thomas and St. Augustine speak of three ages or states of humanity.

In the first time, God was instructing men through the natural law.

Then, time came when He also instructed them through the Law given by revelation (by means of Moses).

And then, a third time came when the new Law was given by Christ.

6. Here is what St. Thomas writes: “As Augustine says (Contra Faust. xix), diverse sacraments suit different times; just as different times are signified by different parts of the verb, viz. present, past, and future. Consequently, just as under the state of the Law of nature man was moved by inward instinct and without any outward law, to worship God, so also the sensible things to be employed in the worship of God were determined by inward instinct. But later on it became necessary for a law to be given (to man) from without: both because the Law of nature had become obscured by man’s sins; and in order to signify more expressly the grace of Christ, by which the human race is sanctified” (Summa Theologiae, III, 60, 5, ad 3).

7. However, nothing prevents a specific reality from expressing some of its effects even before being implemented in its fullness.

St. Thomas writes: “Nevertheless the Fathers of old were justified by faith in Christ’s Passion, just as we are. And the sacraments of the old Law were a kind of protestation of that faith, inasmuch as they signified Christ’s Passion and its effects. It is therefore manifest that the sacraments of the Old Law were not endowed with any power by which they conduced to the bestowal of justifying grace: and they merely signified faith by which men were justified” (Summa Theologiae, III, 62, 6).

This is why in the Acts of the Apostles we read about Cornelius, a pagan centurion: “Your prayers and almsgiving have ascended as a memorial offering before God” (Acts 10:4).

However, “when baptized, they receive a yet greater fulness of grace and virtues” (Summa Theologiae, III, 69, 4, ad 2).

8. Here is what Leo XIII says in the encyclical Divinum illud munus:

“It is indeed true that in those of the just who lived before Christ, the Holy Ghost resided by grace, as we read in the Scriptures concerning the prophets, Zachary, John the Baptist, Simeon, and Anna; so that on Pentecost the Holy Ghost did not communicate Himself in such a way ‘as then for the first time to begin to dwell in the saints, but by pouring Himself forth more abundantly; crowning, not beginning His gifts; not commencing a new work, but giving more abundantly’ (St. Leo the Great, Hom. iii., de Pentec.). But if they also were numbered among the children of God, they were in a state like that of servants, for ‘as long as the heir is not of age, he is no different from a slave […], but is under the supervision of guardians’ (Gal 4:1-2). Moreover, not only was their justice derived from the merits of Christ who was to come, but the communication of the Holy Ghost after Christ was much more abundant, just as the price surpasses in value the earnest and the reality excels the image. Wherefore St. John declares: “There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:39). So soon, therefore, as Christ, ‘ascending on high’, entered into possession of the glory of His Kingdom which He had won with so much labour, He munificently opened out the treasures of the Holy Ghost: ‘He gave gifts to men’ (Eph 4:8). For ‘that giving or sending forth of the Holy Ghost after Christ’s glorification was to be such as had never been before; not that there had been none before, but it had not been of the same kind’ (St. Aug., DeTrin., 1. iv. c. 20)” (EE, III, 1312).

9. And also, in anticipation of Jesus’ death Mary was exempted by singular privilege from original sin and filled with grace. This is what Pius IX recalls in the Ineffabilis Deus pronouncing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful”.

Mary was therefore the most excellent daughter of God from the very first moment of her existence. And, she was a daughter in the anticipation of the merits of Christ.

With the hope of having brought clarity, I wish you every good with my prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo