Note. Fr. Jeanjacquot was professor at the major seminaries in
Montauban and Besançon. His booklet on Mary as Co-Redemptrix initiated a
wide theological discussion: Simples explications sur la coopération
de la très Sainte Vierge à l‘oeuvre de la
Rédemption, Paris 1868.
Text quoted in French by Réné Laurentin (in Maria,
Ecclesia, Sacerdotium, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris 1952, pp.
401-403) and translated into English by John Wijngaards.
“It was necessary that we had a holy High Priest, innocent, without stain,
entirely separated from sinners (Hebrews 8,27). This High Priest is, without
any doubt, Jesus Christ. But is it not true that his divine mother who was so
closely associated with him and who cooperated with the work of redemption, was
not at the same time associated to his office of being High Priest, an office
which almost merges and identifies itself with that of being the redeemer? Is
it not true, therefore, that she must take part in all degrees possible in the
qualities of this supreme High Priest?” Simples
explications etc. , p. 45.
“
Jesus Christ is at once both priest and victim. He is victim because he is
being offered; but he is a priest at the same time....because it is of his own
accord that he gives up his life, of his own free will. The judges and the
executioners are only the instruments of this sacrifice which is truly offered
and accomplished by himself: “Of my own free will I give up my
life”....Well, following the thought of the holy Fathers, the blessed
Virgin shares with the divine saviour in his double quality of being victim and
priest. In the same way in which we could say that the Saviour himself
accomplished the sacrifice of his life because he abandoned himself to the
action of the executioners, so we can say in all truth that she immolated the
divine victim by the perfect union of her will with that of Jesus Christ,
joining herself to the sacrifice and the purpose of the sacrifice.”
Simples explications etc. , pp. 125-126.
“
In this thought of the holy Fathers that the divine mother has been both priest
and victim together with her adorable Son, priest and victim through her
offering with him the sacrifice of Calvary, we can find confirmation of what we
have been saying before: that just till the last moment, the Saviour wanted to
make his death dependent on the will and the consent of the Blessed Virgin. For
if the Saviour was priest because he offered himself and immolated himself in
such a way that without his will to suffer and to offer himself, the
executioners would not have done anything, it follows that it was the same with
regard to his Mother: that she was priest as he was and together with
him.” Simples explications, etc. , p. 126, note 1.
