'Omnipotent by Grace' Briefly Explained

Often our Protestant friends, out of a pious desire to see God’s honor upheld, object to the idea that the Blessed Virgin Mary is called ‘Omnipotent by grace’ by St. Alphonsus Liguori and other Catholic saints. Omnipotence is a divine attribute and cannot be shared with a creature on pain of polytheism, and this means that Catholics affirming this title are committing idolatry. I understand the worry, both theologically and psychologically, as a former non-Catholic Christian. My goal isn’t to provide a knockdown argument for Catholic Mariology but to briefly clarify the seemingly (to those who haven’t looked into it) idolatrous title of ‘omnipotent by grace’.

Firstly, we should note that omnipotence in the strict sense is only attributable to God himself, as only he has absolute, intrinsic, infinite power. Any power outside of God will necessarily be constrained and participatory, drawing forth from God as from a fountain. Any power P will depend for it’s existence and exercise on God’s power (in a similar manner to how Gandalf’s acts are utterly dependent on the authorial power of Tolkien). St. Alphonsus and other saints are not ascribing omnipotence to the Blessed Virgin in this sense, and in context they usually clarify this. For example, St. Alphonsus in The Glories of Mary, Ch. VI, Section 1 states:

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As the mother, then, must have the same power as the Son, justly was Mary made omnipotent by Jesus, who is omnipotent; it being, however, al ways true, that whereas the Son is omnipotent by nature, the mother is so by grace. And her omnipotence consists in this, that the Son denies nothing that the mother asks (…) Mary is, then, called omnipotent in the sense in which it can be understood of a creature, who is not capable of any divine attribute. She is omnipotent, because she obtains by her prayers whatever she wishes.

St. John Eudes explains it similarly in his book on the Sacred Heart of Christ, but I think this quotation will suffice. When we pray, we do not change what God has ordained since this would violate his omniscience and providence. Rather, we seek to conform ourselves to what he has willed (“Thy Will be done”) and become secondary co-causes of the intended effect. For example, if you pray for a person to be healed and they are healed by God you have played a subordinate role in the healing of that person by your prayers. It isn’t that you changed what God was going to do, but rather that God has ordained that your prayers are part of the overall story as to how he will accomplish his will.

Power in the broadest sense is the ability to get what we want. If I long to do X and can obtain X, that is true power (this is why evil-doers have no power. They truly seek happiness but their actions do not get them happiness due to their defective status). Through prayer we conform our wants, our desires, our will, to the Divine Will. Since God is intrinsically and infinitely powerful, and the source of all things other than himself, he always gets “what he wants” (God doesn’t long for anything since he is sufficient in and of himself. His will is only oriented towards created goods in an accidental, secondary manner. If he truly longed for created goods in this way, he would be subordinated to an end outside of himself, making him a creature). Therefore the more our will is aligned with his own and the more we ask for those things that he has ordained to come to pass, the more powerful we become. If I truly want the conversion of my grandfather and pray for it, and God graciously converts him, I have become a subordinate cooperative cause in his conversion. God converted him, in some sense, with and through me as the source of my being and my prayer itself.

Scripture emphasizes God’s immutability (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17) and the power of prayer (Matthew 7:7-8, James 5:16, Luke 18:1-8). The apparent conflict is solved by understanding that we are praying not to change God’s plan but to participate in the plan he’s already decreed and is executing through us.

With all that said we can understand the Blessed Virgin being omnipotent by grace in the following way: everything she wants, she gets, because she simply only wants the things that God wants and only asks for all the things God is going to do. She thus always get what she wants, with a total dependence on God for her initial/continued existence, the actualization of her various potentialities, and the content and act of her prayers.

You might wonder why this isn’t said of all the saints. Well, it is true of the other saints insofar as they only pray for things God will actually do once they are in heaven and see him face to face. However, the scope of the things they are praying for seems to be different than the Blessed Virgin Mary’s (in our tradition she is called the Mediatrix of *all* graces, see my video on her unique role in redemption here) insofar as she prays for every single grace we receive before we receive them, whereas other saints seem to only pray for specific graces that we receive (this part is not taught anywhere explicitly to my knowledge, but is my conclusion). However, there are two other angles to consider here. Firstly, The Blessed Virgin’s will is more intensely (in terms of the love she has for God) united to the Divine Will than the will of any other saint is. Secondly, the Blessed Virgin has a parental relationship with Christ. In Luke 2 it is stated that Christ was obedient to her and St. Joseph (v. 51). The word for ‘obedient’ in Greek is the same one St. Paul uses in 1 Cor 15:27 to describe the subjection of all things in creation to Christ. The Blessed Virgin exercises a certain maternal influence on Christ and thus when Christ is considering her prayers he understands them as requests from his Mother, whose will is united to God’s will more than any other saint.

Yes, all saints can be said to have omnipotence by grace, but i) the scope of the BVM’s prayers, ii) the intensity of her union with God’s will, and iii) her maternal influence on Christ, all make her participation in God’s power unique, warranting the more frequent application of ‘omnipotent by grace’ to her in the spiritual tradition.