Why Mary's grace is unique

Mary is "the first" chronologically, because she was the first to have welcomed Christ, to have participated in her own way in Christ's Passion, and to have entered, with her body and soul, into a blessed eternity with God. Through our baptism, we too welcome Christ, participate in his death and Resurrection, and can reach the beatitude of Heaven. But we arrive "after" her.

Mary is also the "first" qualitatively, for no one has ever welcomed Christ better, or participated more intensely and intimately in Christ's Passion, or entered into the beatitude of Heaven in such a glorious way in fact, no one else has yet entered Heaven with their body and their soul at this time in history. All this we are experiencing or will experience, but never to the same degree as the Virgin Mary.

The predestination of Mary, her election, her setting apart, are admirable. But the truth revealed by St. Paul is that every baptized person is predestined, chosen, and set apart. God has an absolutely unique plan of love for each of his children!

If Mary has a temporal primacy and a primacy of excellence over us, we however have the same vocation: to respond to love with love. Mary's grace is special only because she perfectly accomplished what has only been partially accomplished in the other members of the Church.

Was Mary miraculously preserved from sin in anticipation of the merits of Christ? We too are healed of sin by the grace of Christ, through Baptism, in the Eucharist and through Confession, and we will be healed permanently in the glory of Heaven. The trajectories are identical, even if the temporality and intensity are different.

Translated from: Aleteïa