This will be a Marian year. Wait and see. She will be proclaimed the Lady/Mother of all Nations, coredemptrix, mediatrix, advocate. Why? It is fitting, it is within Gods power and design ... therefore it is so and will be proclaimed so ... ...soon. And we have a Pope who offers the gift of surprise. One would have expected this dogma come during the pontificate of John Paul II, and perhaps even Benedict XVI, but it would be totally unexpected from Francis I. Yet I believe it is very possible.
It is the famed proof for the Immaculate Conception given to us by Franciscan, Blessed John Duns Scotus, O.F.M., (doctor subtilis) which is the secret proof for the last and final Marian dogma. The word Coredemptrix makes some uneasy as though co is equal. It is meant to indicate the "participative" nature of our existential (in time and space) redemption. Mary's was the simultaneous (not equal) first cooperation between creation and the creator since preternatural (prior to the fall of Adam) time. God is not a body snatcher. This divine plan required the deliverance of "will" by Mary. The acknowledgement by creation, by the Church, that it has a participative role through Mary is the final clarification of a deposit of faith that is no innovation but is referenced alongside early church Fathers' inferences and direct commentary to the Theotokos (Mother of God), the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. Dogmas are never innovations or inventions but rather are clarifications to what has been ever present in the deposit of faith. The declaration of the Mother of God as Mediatrix and Coredemptrix in no way diminishes the singular divine redemptive initiative of Christ. That is metaphysically inane and "impotuitur" (impossible). Rather, they, in essence, act as a catalyst, a necessary voluntary opening of the inlet to humanity's veins through which the blood of God mingles with the blood of creation bringing about His incarnation which was necessary for nativity, proclamation, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost.
It is the struggle that often times allows, if even a little bit of understanding to come into view....never completely because these are indeed mysteries we can never say "I get this" or "I fully understand this." Anyone who says that they fully understand God's ways and mysteries is an arrogant fool. Rather, God's ways are mysteries with which we "struggle" in life. It is through that struggle that we grow and flourish always wrestling with our imperfections with the goal in mind of attaining the unattainable unless God is involved. Mary and especially her manifestation as Our Lady of Guadalupe is the quintessential "little one" who comes to Cuauhtlatoatzin (he who speaks like an eagle), (Juan Diegito), as Tonantzin (Coatlaxopeuh - She who crushes the head of the serpent... and when pronounced sounds amazingly like Guadalupe...).
Remember here is where the apparition of Mary says she is the Mother of the One True God. She confirms the first Dogma which was proclaimed by the Church at the Council of Ephesus as early as the year 431 (Our Lady of Guadalupe appears in 1531) that Mary, the mother of Jesus was indeed the Mother of God. (She even is so kind as to give us a photograph of herself on the tilma). Thus, Guadalupe is the quintessential Mediatrix who comes to Juan Diegito as his mother also and thus our mother. She says: "Am I not your mother? Do I not carry you in the folds of my mantel?" She is said to be as described in the 12th Chapter of Revelation, a Woman clothed with the sun, standing upon the moon and crowned with a crown of 12 stars." And then John sees the Beast and there was great war in heaven over God's plan to become something Lucifer saw as beneath him. Therefore, the plan was to be played out in a lacing together of holy participation by creation with the sacramental participation of God through his son Jesus Christ who is the sole "mediator (between unreconciled man and God) and redeemer (thus reconciling man to God by being born of a woman as Paul tells us, rebuilding the absent link caused by the Fall of man)." Guadalupe gives a clear sign by her downward look and her hands pointed upwards, that she is not a goddess, but a conduit of grace (the ultimate grace is the blood of her son; the blood which ran through His and her veins in the womb; and the blood that runs through our veins when we take Him in communion. She is a "conduit", a "highway" of grace, to the "one true God." She says to Juan Diego what she learned from Jesus on the cross: John, behold thy mother. “Juantzin, soy tu madre.” Imagine the great Lord of the Universe, the Alpha and Omega, in heaven smiling when He sees us honor His mother, our mother, our gift from Him at the moment when we were so undeserving of such a gift. There could be no salvation without Mary's selfless donation of her will to God.
In the end, why God continues to be good to us is all a mystery. Though we may not understand fully, let us not turn away from the mystery, but embrace it and participate in the music of salvation which requires both a voice and someone who hears. Jesus says: "Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it." (Luke 11:28)
It's no irony that Mary is a central figure at the moment Jesus says these words; not to dis his Mother, but to reference to the "woman" of Genesis, the "woman" of the Apocalypse, and oh so very subtly.
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