What Came First? The Sequence of God's Grace in the Life of the Blessed Mother

In the ordinary course of Christian life, there are two different sequences one can follow in the order of grace. In the first case, that of infant baptism, sanctifying grace precedes any act of the will on the part of the individual himself, and later as the faculties of the soul develop the grace received in infancy extends its influence to intellect and volition. By contrast, in the case of adult conversion, antecedent grace working on the adult soul elicits assent of mind and heart which subsequently prompts the receipt of the saving graces of baptism.

The question I am interested in pursuing here regards which scenario is exemplified in the personal history of the Mother of God. Which comes first for Mary, sanctifying grace at conception, or actual grace to move the will in adulthood?

Of course in a chronological sense the Church has already answered this question, and answered it definitively, in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. From her first moments in existence, before any exercise of her rational powers, Mary enjoys that unique degree of participation in divine life which will remain uninterrupted for the remainder of her life. So temporally speaking, the sanctifying grace received at conception precedes the actual graces of adulthood. So much is simply established doctrine.

But what I want to argue is that for Mary the chronological and causal sequences of grace do not run parallel. In other words, the burden of this article is to show that causally the actual graces present at the Annunciation are prior to the sanctifying grace bestowed at the Immaculate Conception. Put more concisely, the graces of Immaculate Conception² depend on what happens at the Annunciation, and not vice versa.

To make this case I will first present a reductio ad absurdum against the notion that Mary's fiat in the first chapter of Luke depends upon the extraordinary graces given at the Immaculate Conception. The reductio goes like this:

1. 1. Mary's fiat at the Annunciation depends on the Immaculate Conception.

2. 2. Mary's Immaculate Conception depends on Calvary.

3. 3. Calvary depends on Mary's fiat at the Annunciation.

The vicious circularity is textbook, such that if the second and third propositions are true the first simply cannot be true.³ In what follows we will examine the principles in question, conclude to the causal priority of the actual grace at the Annunciation, and close with a discussion of what implications this conclusion entails for Mariology as a whole.

Presentations of Mary's Fiat as Dependent on the Immaculate Conception

In the first volume of his massive Theological Investigations, Karl Rahner includes a chapter which attempts to deduce the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception from the fiat of Mary's divine motherhood. In other words, instead of seeing the formulation of Gabriel's greeting as the primary revealed axiom from which to derive the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he says that this latter teaching could be known simply from reflection on Mary's free cooperation in the Incarnation.

Rahner rightly sees the Incarnation (and therefore, we may presume, the events of Calvary) as resulting from Mary's free acceptance of her mission as the Mother of God. She therefore has the most perfect role of any mere creature, namely, the role of immediately assisting in bringing God to earth. But since Mary's creaturely role is of supreme importance, she must consequently be a creature of supreme holiness: "As Mother of God, Mary is most perfectly redeemed, and vice versa. … If this is so, then it includes a perfect correspondence between Mary's unique task in saving history and her personal holiness."⁴ And a little later on Rahner reemphasizes: "For here 'office' and personal holiness must coincide."⁵

Why? Why does Mary's role as Mother of God (and her free acceptance of that role) require maximal personal holiness? Rahner's answer is elusive. The closest he comes to an argument is in the following passage:

Redemption takes place as the reception of...