Folio 534

Pius X, 1903-1914

printed p. 502 · pdf p. 534

mind, decide to rest at ease in some kind of a more religious life. For this sacrament (and there is none certainly more excellent or more conducive to salvation than this) pertains to absolutely all, of whatever office or pre-eminence they are, as many as wish (and no one ought not to wish this) to foster within themselves that life of divine grace, whose final end is the attainment of the blessed life with God.

PIUS X 1903-1914

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of Graces1

[From the Encyclical, "Ad diem," February 2, 1904]

1978a. As the result of this participation between Mary and Christ in the sorrows and the will, she deserved most worthily to be made the restorer of the lost world,"2 and so the dispenser of all the gifts which Jesus procured for us by His death and blood. . . . Since she excels all in sanctity, and by her union with Christ and by her adoption by Christ for the work of man's salvation, she merited for us de congruo, as they say, what Christ merited de condigno, and is the first minister of the graces to be bestowed.

"Implicit Citations" in Holy Scripture3

[From the Response of the Biblical Commission, February 13, 1905]

The question:

1979. Whether to solve difficulties that occur in some texts of Holy Scripture, which seem to present historical facts, it is permitted the Catholic exegete to state that it is a matter in these texts of the tacit or implicit citation of a document written by an author who was not inspired, all the asser-

  1. ASS 36 (1903/04), 453 f. ↩

  2. The monk, Eadmar, The Excellence of the Virgin Mary, c. 9 [ML 159, 573]. Cf. what Benedict XV, Litt. Apost., "Inter sodalicia," March 22, 1918 (AAS 10 [1918] 182) holds: "So did she suffer with her suffering and dying son, and almost die; so did she abdicate her maternal rights over her Son for the salvation of men, and to placate God's justice, insofar as was fitting for her, so did she sacrifice her Son, that it can properly be said that she with Christ redeemed the human race"; and also, what Pius XI has, Litt. Apost., "Explorata res," February 2, 1923 (AAS 15 [1923] 104): "The Virgin participated with Jesus Christ in the very painful act of redemption." In the decree of the S.C. of the Holy Office (section on Indulgences), "Sunt quos amor," June 26, 1913 (AAS 5 [1913] 364), he praises the custom of adding to the name of Jesus the name of "His Mother, our coredemptor, the blessed Mary"; cf. also the prayer enriched by the Holy Office with an indulgence, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is called "core-demptress of the human race" (Jan. 22, 1914; AAS 6 [1914] 108). ↩

  3. ASS 37 (1904/05), 666; AE 13 (1905) 172 b; EB n. 153. ↩