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“Jesus Christ presented himself in the Temple as
sacrificial victim. Mary shared his feelings of compassion for people and she
too presented herself in the Temple, as St Epiphanius tells us, as a
sacrificial priest: “I call the Virgin a priest”. La Madre di
Dio, madre degli uomini, French edition, Lyon 1845, p. 224.
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“If it had been necessary . . . . , she would herself have offered the
nails, handed the hammer, readied the cords to tie her Son to the sacrificial
wood, as Abraham had done.”
. . . It was as if, with her maternal
hands, she had tied down the victim.
She wanted effectively that the
sanctity and the innocence of her Son was charged with our sins . . . . that he
suffered . . . . that he was treated as a criminal . . . . that he died a
shameful and cruel death. She has sacrificed him for us.
While Jesus
suffers, Mary drinks his pains till the last drop and becomes inebriated with
them . . . . She approves of them. She agrees with them. She makes them her
delight. She applauds them.” La Madre di Dio, madre degli
uomini, French edition, Lyon 1845, pp. 214, 294, 297, 325-327.
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Ventura accepted the medieval satisfaction theory, according to which God
willed Jesus’ bloody death by an absolute decree.
As sacrificial
priest. Mary was believed to have made God’s will her own. |
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“Dear Father, you have abandoned him, well, so have I. You don’t
spare him. Neither do I. You condemn him. I condemn him even more. Crucify him,
crucify him!” See then that the same cry for the death of the innocent
Jesus rises not only from the wrathful heart of the Pharisees, but also from
the tender and loving heart of Mary. La Madre di Dio, madre degli
uomini, French edition, Lyon 1845, p. 308. |
This shows how far the medieval
satisfaction theory went. Even Mary is made part of God’s presumed cruelty. |
