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Joachim Ventura

1792 - 1861 AD

Fr. Joachim Ventura was the influential author of La Madre di Dio, madre degli uomini [=The Mother of God, mother of people], Rome 1840. It was reprinted many times, also in its foreign language translations.

Texts quoted in French by Réné Laurentin (in Maria, Ecclesia, Sacerdotium, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris 1952, pp. 393-395) and translated into English by John Wijngaards.

Mary was a sacrificial priest
“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.
Mary offered Jesus on Calvary
“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.	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.
Mary’s prayer on Calvary, addressed to God the Father
“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.