 Living the Year of the Eucharist
in the school of the
Heart of Mary
Mother Adela, SCTJM
Foundress
For private use only -©
The
Year of the Rosary and the Year of the Eucharist
On October 16, 2002, the Holy Father
John Paul II surprised the whole Church by proclaiming the Year of
the Rosary. This culminated the Great Jubilee Year with a Marian
crown. It was an exhortation for all of us to contemplate the face
of Christ at the school of, and in union with, our Blessed Mother.
“With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary
and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ, and to
experience the depths of his love” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae,
RVM, 1)
Together with the proclamation of the
year of the Rosary, John Paul II gave us an apostolic letter on the
Rosary, incorporating the Mysteries of Light to make this
privileged form of contemplation an even more complete “compendium
of the Gospel” (RVM, 19). They are called the Mysteries
of Light because they reveal the brilliance of the salvific
presence of the Word Incarnate among us. How could the Mysteries
of Light not but culminate with the Institution of the Most Holy
Eucharist? In the midst of the Year of the Rosary, John Paul II
issued his fourteenth encyclical letter entitled, Ecclesia de
Eucharistia or The Church Lives from the Eucharist. He
wrote this with the intention of shedding light on the mystery of
the Eucharist and its inseparable and vital relation to the Church.
Above all, the Holy Father suggested once again the need for a
Eucharistic spirituality, pointing to Mary, the “woman of the
Eucharist,” as its model (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, EE,
53).
On the feast of the Body and Blood of
Christ (Corpus Christi), in June 2004 during the 150th anniversary
of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Holy Father announced
that a Year of the Eucharist would begin that October for the whole
Church. On October 7th, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, he
gave us an apostolic letter for this Eucharistic year entitled,
Mane Nobiscum Domine, translated, Stay with us, Lord.
Here, he exhorted us to rediscover the mystery of love of the Real
Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (Mane Nobiscum Domine, MND,16).
This is like the saints, who “many times shed tears of profound
emotion in the presence of this great mystery, or experienced hours
of inexpressible ‘spousal’ joy before the sacrament of the altar” (MND,
31). However, in a very special way, he again directed us to the
Blessed Virgin Mary, who spent Her whole life pondering and
contemplating the meaning and mystery of the Eucharist. The Holy
Father concluded his apostolic letter with these words: “the Church,
which looks to Mary as a model, is also called to imitate her, in
her relationship with this most holy mystery” (MND, 31).
We can see that the Holy Father is
leading the Church with a pedagogy of love for Christ that can only
come as a fruit of contemplation. First, in the great Jubilee year
of grace and mercy we were called to contemplate the face of Christ;
in the Year of Rosary, to contemplate Him with the heart of Mary; in
the Year of Eucharist, to rediscover the mystery of the real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist within the school of the Heart
of Mary.
We could recapitulate this journey in
the words which Blessed Pope John XXIII wrote in his diary: “O,
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I would like to be filled with love
for you. . . O Mary of the Rosary, keep me recollected when I say
this prayer of yours; bind me forever with your rosary to Jesus in
the Blessed Sacrament. Blessed be Jesus, my love, and blessed be
the Immaculate Virgin Mary” (John XXIII, Journal of a Soul).
When the Holy Father initiated the
Year of the Eucharist, he entrusted it to the Virgin Mary. He went
on to say, “May the one who in the Year of the Rosary helped us to
contemplate Christ with her eyes and her heart (cf. RVM, nn.
10-17) enable every community in the Year of the Eucharist to grow
in faith and love for the mystery of the Body and Blood of the
Lord.” As we can see, the Holy Father in this prayer joined both
years, calling us to a profound contemplation of the Eucharistic
Christ with the Heart of Mary because Her life is intrinsically
united to the mysteries of Christ. Therefore, Mary and the
Eucharist are inextricably linked . . . because the Heart of the Son
and the Heart of the Mother are indissolubly one.
It seems to me that, with these two
years, our Holy Father has lifted high – just as the dream of St.
John Bosco described – two pillars of strength and nourishment for
us at the beginning of the Third Millennium: Mary and the
Eucharist. The Holy Spirit has called the Church to “go out into
the deep” of a very rough sea: our world. The Holy Father told
us, “Let us go forward in hope! A new millennium is opening before
the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on
the help of Christ” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, NMI, 58). He
goes on to say that we are daily nourished by the Eucharist and
accompanied on this journey by the Blessed Virgin Mary.
John Paul II has pointed out to us
the key to the springtime of the Church and to the renewal of our
spiritual life, through what he has called “a Eucharistic culture” (MND,
26). In other words, we should contemplate the Eucharistic Lord as
the center of the life of the Church and of our lives, leading a
Eucharistic centered life. We should learn to do this in the School
of Mary, allowing ourselves to be formed, molded and guided in this
intimate relationship with the Eucharist by the Heart that is most
closely united to Him. He told us that he wished to put the Church
under the sign of the “contemplation of Christ at the school of
Mary. Consequently, I cannot let this Holy Thursday 2003 pass
without halting before the ‘Eucharistic face’ of Christ and pointing
out with new force to the Church the centrality of the Eucharist” (EE,
7). The Holy Father is, in a few words, calling us to live for
Jesus just as the Blessed Mother did. He is calling us to learn in
the school of Her Heart in order to contemplate with love the
mysteries of the Eucharistic Heart of Christ. St. Gemma Galgani
used to say, “There is a heavenly school where one learns to love
Jesus in the Eucharist; the school is the cenacle of the Heart of
Mary; the subject, the Eucharist; and the teacher, Mary.”
In
the School of the Heart of Mary
The Blessed Mother loved Jesus like
no other human heart has or ever could. She is perfectly and
totally united to the heart, life, mysteries and mission of Her Son.
The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are one…from the moment of the
Annunciation. In Mary’s womb the Heart of Jesus was fashioned
beneath Her own heart and began to beat in unison with it. There,
in that first tabernacle of the Real Presence, began “the admirable
alliance of the Two Hearts,” an alliance that will never end (John
Paul II, Angelus Message, Sept. 15, 1985). It is the
covenant of love and collaboration between the Two Hearts that found
its maximum expression at the moment of the sacrifice of the Cross.
This bond of love is a dynamic union of redemptive mission and
sanctifying action, which the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic
Constitution Lumen Gentium referred to as the “indissoluble
tie” between the Son and Mother (no.53).
To enter in the School of Mary is “to
put ourselves in living communion with Jesus . . . through the heart
of his Mother” (John Paul II, RVM, 2). The Heart of Mary is
the greatest school to learn about the mysteries of Christ. Who
better than Her can teach us about Jesus? St. Luke tells us
repeatedly that the Virgin Mary kept all things in Her heart, even
saying that She did it carefully. She pondered lovingly and
carefully all things about Christ. The Blessed Mother is not only a
careful guardian and custodian of the Body of Her Son, but also of
His words, His life and mysteries. As the Second Vatican Council
teaches, Mary unites and re-echoes in Her own person the chief
teachings of the faith (Lumen Gentium, 65).
The Immaculate Heart is the school of
love for Christ. It is a school not only meant to feed our
intellects but most of all, it is meant to teach us to contemplate
with our hearts, to ponder with love, and to reflect upon carefully
the Heart of Jesus, so that we can be formed and transformed into
living images this Heart. How blessed we are to have such a teacher
and model! St. John Bosco was given his first prophetic dream when
he was nine years old. He tells us that Jesus appeared to him in
his dream and told him that He {Jesus} would give him the wisest of
teachers who would teach him true knowledge. After this, the
Virgin Mary appeared and took him by the hand (F.A. Forbes, St.
John Bosco, ch.1). From that moment on, St. John Bosco had the
Blessed Mother as his teacher, and he allowed Her to guide him into
the mysteries and designs of the will of God.
When we place ourselves in Mary’s
Heart, we are intimately united to the Heart of Her Son. In the
words of Saint Louis de Montfort, the Blessed Mother “is the
safest, easiest, shortest, and most perfect way of approaching
Jesus” (True Devotion to Mary, ch.1, no. 55). He goes on to
say that She is the best way of attaining union with Jesus (ibid).
“To Jesus through Mary” was his motto. In Her Heart we learn to
contemplate the mystery of love of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
John Paul II told us that “ . . . the Christian people sit at the
school of Mary, and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of
Christ and experience the depths of his love” (RVM, 1).
The Blessed Mother teaches us the art
of love which is contemplation. To contemplate is to look with the
heart, to look with love. We can only understand the mysteries of
love of the Heart of Christ, if we contemplate them with love in our
hearts. Only the love of Christ can be the true desire of our
contemplation, and only if we contemplate with love can we discover
the greatness of His love. This is the reason why we need to
contemplate with the Heart of Mary: to read, understand and
penetrate the mysteries of Jesus with the love of Her Heart. She is
our model and our teacher of contemplation, of looking upon the
Heart that has loved us to the extreme of being pierced, broken and
given on the Cross and in the Eucharist.
St. John the apostle was the first
student in the School of the Heart of Mary. He learned to
contemplate the mysteries of love of the Heart of Christ while being
with the Blessed Mother at the foot of the Cross, fulfilling the
prophecy of Zechariah 12:10: “They shall look on Him whom they have
pierced.” But this contemplation is not only limited to seeing, but
it also allows the actualization of the mysteries contemplated,
since the Blessed Mother not only teaches us, but, with Her maternal
mediation, obtains for us in abundance the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
She obtains for us the graces of the mysteries we contemplate.
Model of Contemplation
In his apostolic Letter on the
Rosary, the Holy Father has given us a beautiful chapter on
contemplating Christ with Mary. He begins by inviting us to have
the Blessed Mother as our model of contemplation since “the
contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a
unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb
that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which
points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever
devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as
faithfully as Mary” (RVM, 10).
The
Annunciation
The eyes of Her heart were already
turned toward Him at the Annunciation, when She conceived Him by the
power of the Holy Spirit. She contemplated the miracle of His
Incarnation, the miracle that took place inside of Her womb, through
Her assent to the will of the Father. God-made-man in Her womb, the
first tabernacle of human history! The infinite power of God was
enclosed inside of Her. What a profound and Eucharistic
contemplation…what a model for us!
God who became man and dwelt in the
virginal and maternal womb of Mary is with us today, enclosed in a
tabernacle. He allows Himself to be received by us so that we can
contain Him inside of us, in our hearts and in our bodies. Is not
the fiat of the Virgin Mary the same Amen we are to
say when we receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord?
In the nine months that followed, She
experienced in Her whole being the tenderness of His presence. Can
we imagine Mary’s contemplation of Jesus, the Savior of the World,
the Messiah for whom the people waited for centuries? …And the world
did not know He was already among us. What a Eucharistic
contemplation and what a model for us! The world today seeks God in
many different forms, and many have not realized that He is among
us, truly and really present in the Holy Eucharist.
He was hidden to many eyes, but fully
known and understood by Her Heart, the new Ark of the Covenant that
contained the greatest mystery in human history – the Word made
flesh. Can we imagine the care, the love, the constant
contemplation of the Blessed Mother towards the fruit of Her womb,
Jesus? Can we imagine that contemplation? How many times a day
must the Blessed Mother have bent Her head to look upon Her child in
Her womb. She teaches us the meaning of humility, adoration, and
reverence before the Lord.
The
Visitation
She carried the presence of Christ,
hidden inside of Her. She, the first tabernacle, was so full of His
presence that, through Her, Elizabeth and John the Baptist
immediately received the effects and fruits of Christ’s salvific
presence.
In the Visitation, She anticipated
the Church’s Eucharistic faith and mission. She, Mother and
excellent member of the Church, became in the Visitation, a model of
the Eucharistic mission of the Church. This mission is to give us
Christ, His presence – although not visible to our human senses, but
powerfully, really, truly, and substantially present in the
Eucharist – to be the life and sanctification of the Church and the
world.
The
Birth of Jesus
When Our Lady gave birth to Jesus in
Bethlehem, Her eyes gazed tenderly on the face of Her Son, as She
held Him and laid Him in a manger (cf. Lk 2:7). Can we try to
imagine Her adoration and contemplation of the greatest mystery of
love? Her motherly heart was filled with love for the Child Jesus,
Her Son and Her Lord. He was so fragile and tender . . . what a
contemplation of the humility of God!
The Virgin Mary, who sung in Her
Magnificat, ‘He has looked upon the humility of His handmaid’ (Lk
1:48) could now sing, ‘I look upon the humility of my God.’ What a
Eucharistic contemplation; what a model for us! She looked at God
who became a child. We look at Him hidden under the species of
bread and wine. What a profound humility which could only be
understood by the humility of the heart of Mary. “ . . . Is not the
enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn
Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love
which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic
communion?” (EE, 55).
Is not the contemplation of the child
in Her hands the one that is to inspire priests as they hold the
Eucharist in their hands? St. John Mary Vianney had a powerful
experience one Christmas. He suddenly realized when he held the
Eucharist, that “I am holding in my hands the same Jesus that Our
Blessed Lady held in her pure hands in the stable of Bethlehem.”
In Bethlehem, She was the first one
to adore Him, and from Her, the shepherds and wise men learned to
adore Him, as we read in Mathew 2:11: “ . . .on entering the house
they saw the child with Mary, his mother. They prostrated
themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and
offered him gifts.” Likewise, the Church “has feared no
‘extravagance,’ devoting the best of her resources to expressing her
wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist”
(EE, 48). In a sense, the Eucharist is a perennial
Christmas, the sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation.
The
Presentation
Our Lady contemplated with all of Her
heart the mystery of suffering which was so profoundly connected
with the mystery of the redemptive love of Jesus. The salvific
mission of Her Son would take place in the midst of suffering.
“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sing of contradiction (and you yourself a sword shall
pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke
2:34). The tragedy of Her Son’s crucifixion was thus foretold, and
also the sufferings of Her heart. In Her daily preparation for
Calvary, Mary experienced a kind of “anticipated Eucharist” – one
might say a “spiritual communion” – of desire and of oblation. This
would culminate in Her union with Her Son in His passion - the
piercing of both Hearts. Can we contemplate the Eucharist, this
sign of contradiction, which is so rejected by many, and not also
unite ourselves with the sufferings of His heart, which seeks to be
loved even though very few respond to Him?
During the whole life of Christ,
Mary’s gaze, filled with adoration and amazement, would never leave
Him. This is the kind of ‘Eucharistic amazement’ which the Holy
Father has spoken of in his encyclical letter and which he would
like to rekindle in our hearts (EE, 6).
Our
Blessed Mother’s Gaze
At
the Temple
Here, Her gaze was a questioning one
when She asked in the Temple, “Son, why have you done this to us?” (Lk
2:48). She contemplated the actions of Her Son, trying to
understand in Her Heart their wisdom and their full meaning.
At Cana
Her gaze was always a penetrating
gaze, as in Cana, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to
the point of perceiving His hidden feelings and anticipating His
decisions. She indicated to Jesus that the wine had run out. He
replied to Her that ‘his hour’ had not yet come. To this, She
prompted Him with maternal urgency, saying to the servants, “Do
whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). “In this way she shows she has
more insight than anyone into the profound intentions of Jesus. She
knows Him ‘heart to heart,’ for from the outset she has cherished
and pondered on his every act and his every word” (John Paul II,
Angelus Message, Sept 21, 2003).
“Do whatever He tells you . . .” (Jn
2:5). What a Eucharistic connection! In the Last Supper, Jesus
would say, “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19). It seems to me
that, already in Cana, the Virgin Mary was preparing us for the
Eucharist, teaching us to have the right internal disposition of
faith to receive such a gift. The Holy Father said in his
encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, that “Mary seems to say
to us, ‘do not waver; trust in the words of my Son. If he was able
to change water into wine, he can also turn bread and wine into his
body and blood… ” (no. 54).
At
the Cross
Here Her gaze was a look of sorrow.
Her contemplation was that of a Mother who is offering Her Son for
the salvation of the world, the look of a maternal heart that, out
of love, becomes one with the sacrifice of Her Son. The Second
Vatican Council says that She “faithfully persevered in her union
with her Son unto the cross, where she stood, in keeping with the
divine plan…uniting herself with a maternal heart with His
sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this Victim
which she herself had brought forth” (Lumen Gentium, 58).
Arnold of Chartres, a disciple of St. Bernard, states, “There
were really two altars on Calvary. One was in Mary’s heart, the
other in Christ’s body. He sacrificed his flesh, Mary her soul”
(Arnold of Chartres, De Septum verbis Domini in cruce,3: PL
189, 1694. This is a text quoted by John Paul II in his catechesis
on Marian Coredemption on October 25, 1995).
So intimate and permanent was the
bond of love between Jesus and Mary, from whose Immaculate body
Christ came, that we can proclaim with St. Augustine that the flesh
of Jesus is the flesh of Mary and that their hearts are one (cf.
Sermon 174, 7). It reminds me of the movie The Passion of the
Christ, when the Blessed Mother, approaching Jesus at the foot
of the Cross, told Him, “Flesh of my flesh, Heart of my Heart!”
“In the Eucharist, the Church is
completely united to Christ and his sacrifice, and makes her own the
spirit of Mary” (EE, 58). What better way to participate in
the Eucharistic sacrifice than in the school of the heart of Mary?
What better way to contemplate in Holy Mass the sacrificial
memorial, in which the sacrifice of the Cross is perpetuated, than
with the eyes and Heart of Mary, the Mother who stood at the foot of
the Cross?
St. Pio of Pietrelcina understood
this very profoundly, as we can see in a conversation with Padre
D'Apolito: “‘What great care Our Lady took to accompany me to the
altar this morning!’ ... Padre D'Apolito asked him: ‘Was the Madonna
present at your Mass?’ He answered: ‘Yes, she placed herself to the
side.’ ‘Has she attended your Mass only once or she is always
present?’ Padre Pio responded, ‘How can the Mother of Jesus, present
at the foot of the Cross on Calvary, who offered Her Son as Victim
for the salvation of souls, be absent at the Mystical Calvary of the
altar?’”
She, united with Christ, was dying of
sorrow in Her heart. At the same time, She was giving birth…opening
Her Heart to the new maternity announced by Christ on the Cross.
That is why also, at Calvary, Her gaze was one of a woman giving
birth, for Mary not only shared the passion and death of Her Son,
but She also received new children given to Her in the beloved
disciple: “Behold, your Son!” (Jn 19:26). In suffering, She became
the mother of the Mystical Body, the Church.
On
the Morning of Easter
According to many Fathers of the
Church, Doctors of the Church, Saints, and the Holy Father John Paul
II, without a doubt Jesus appeared first to His Mother in all His
risen beauty. How did She contemplate Him? “Hers would be a gaze,”
says John Paul II, “radiant with the joy of the Resurrection” (RVM,
10).
None of the Apostles could have seen
the beauty of Jesus as Mary saw it. Since spiritual vision is
always proportionate to purity of the heart, the Immaculate gaze of
the Virgin Mary penetrated even to His interior glory. She must
have seen Him in all the radiant splendor of His divinity. She saw
His pierced side, the wounds of His body that She had so tenderly
kissed at the descent from the Cross; but now they were radiant.
She had looked at Him pierced and wounded, but now She sees Him
glorified.
What a contemplation! How can we
imagine the way She must have gazed at the Heart of Her Son, which
only three days earlier was pierced by a lance, but was now beating
again – palpitating – full of life and ardent with love. Her
contemplation of Jesus Crucified and Resurrected made Her understand
more perfectly that suffering and glory, death and life, are
intimately connected. What a Eucharistic contemplation; what a
model for us!
On
Pentecost
And on the day of Pentecost, Her
contemplation was a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit (Acts 1:14). “…Mary, by Her prayers, was imploring the gift
of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed Her in the Annunciation”
(LG, 59).
Having already had a unique
experience of the effectiveness of such a gift, the Blessed Virgin
was fully aware of the importance of the coming of the Holy Spirit
to the Apostles (Jn 14:16), and She helped them to be well-disposed
for the coming of the Paraclete, as She was in Nazareth.
Mary’s prayer and contemplation
fostered the coming of the Spirit, imploring His action in the
hearts of the disciples and in the world. Just as in the
Incarnation the Spirit had formed the physical Body of Christ in Her
virginal womb, now in the Upper Room the same Spirit came down to
give life to the Mystical Body.
Pentecost is a fruit of the Blessed
Virgin’s incessant prayer, which was accepted by the Holy Spirit
with special favor because it was an expression of Her motherly love
for the Lord’s disciples. St. Louis de Montfort says, “The Holy
Ghost, finding his dear spouse, as it were, reproduced, in souls,
shall come in with abundance, and fill them to overflowing with His
gifts . . .” (True Devotion to Mary, no. 217).
She owes Her divine motherhood to the
powerful intervention of the Holy Spirit. It was appropriate that a
new outpouring should be repeated and reinforced since, at the foot
of the Cross, Mary was entrusted with a new motherhood, which
concerned Jesus’ disciples. It was precisely this mission that
demanded a renewed gift of the Spirit. The Blessed Virgin,
therefore, needed it for the fruitfulness of Her spiritual
motherhood.
What a model of Eucharistic
intercession! We are to be in the Cenacle of Her Immaculate Heart,
united in prayer with Her, imploring the gift of the Holy Spirit
upon the whole Church and ourselves, in order to be empowered by His
gifts – gifts that will allow us be holy witnesses of love and
ardent apostles for the New Evangelization in this Third Millennium.
Loving Jesus in the Eucharist
In the celebration of the Eucharist
at the beginning of the Church, “she understood better than any
human or angelic creature the immensity of the gift of the
Eucharist.” (St. Peter Julian Eymard, taken from Venerable Pierre
Julien Eymard by Reverend Edmond Tenaillon, S.S.S, 1914, p.67).
Can we imagine the contemplation of
the Blessed Virgin Mary when the Eucharistic Jesus was elevated
before Her eyes? What must the Blessed Mother have felt as She
heard from the mouth of John, Peter, James and the other Apostles
the words spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my body . . . this is
my Blood” (cf. Lk 22:19-20)? The body given up for us and made
present under sacramental signs was the same body which She had
conceived in Her womb! She could say that it was also her body and
blood since She gave them to the Word who became man.
In the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother
was receiving Her Son! Can we try to understand the love and
adoration of the Heart of Mary for Her Eucharistic Son? The Son She
had for nine months in Her womb…the son She held in Her arms as a
child…the Son She saw on the Cross offering Himself…the dead Son She
held in Her arms and later contemplated resurrected and radiant…and
now, Her Son in the profound humility of the Eucharist. How She
must have kept Her heart and eyes fixed on Him!!! What a
Eucharistic contemplation. “Teach us, O Mary, the life of
adoration,” was a constant prayer in the heart of St. Peter Eymard (Our
Lady of the Blessed Sacrament ). Her adoration is literally
perpetual, in keeping with the ‘indissoluble bond’ uniting Her now
and forever with the heart of Her Son. According to St. Peter
Eymard, it is Mary who led the apostles to understand, care for,
guard and appreciate the gift of the Eucharistic presence of Christ.
How many times the apostles must have said to the Blessed Mother,
as Saint Louis de Montfort many times said when receiving the
Eucharist, “It was you, Virgin Mary, who gave us this body and
blood, which raises our status so high that it is beyond the reach
of the angels. May you be blessed throughout the world for giving us
such a great gift” (Hymns, 134:11).
At the school of Mary, says John Paul
II, the apostles learned to have an intimate, profound and constant
relationship with the Eucharistic Lord. She must have taught them
to be custodians of the greatest treasure of the Church: the
Eucharist. As the Second Vatican Council said, “In the Most Blessed
Eucharist is contained the entire spiritual wealth of the Church,
namely Christ Himself” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 5). From
Mary, the primitive Church must have learned to have such an ardent
love for the Eucharist that they were willing to die to protect it.
We see in so many of the martyrs, as in the life of the young boy
St. Tarcisius who preferred to die before giving a consecrated host
to the pagans.
Inspired by the love of the Virgin
Mary for Her Eucharistic Son, Blessed Maria Candida of the Eucharist
said, “I want to be like Mary... to be Mary for Jesus, to take the
place of His Mother. When I receive Jesus in communion Mary is
always present. I want to receive Jesus from her hands, she must
make me one with Him. I cannot separate Mary from Jesus…I ask my
Jesus to be a guardian of all the tabernacles of the world, until
the end of time” (The Eucharist).
Blessed Francisco Marto was so moved
by the messages of the Blessed Mother and the Angel that, realizing
he had but a short time to live, he did not have any desire to go to
school, but told his sister and cousin to go ahead; he then would
remain in church where he could make reparation to the Eucharistic
Heart and accompany Him who is usually so alone. He did not want
Him to be alone, and he was so penetrated with the love for “the
hidden God,” that he often spent many hours on his knees in silent
adoration before the tabernacle (Gerald Francis, Our Lady and the
Eucharist). He used to say that he wanted to make God happy
(John Paul II, Homily, May 13, 2000).
Conclusion
May the love of Mary for Her Son in
the Eucharist and Her constant and faithful contemplation of the
mysteries of love of the Heart of Jesus be the model for us to
acquire ‘a Eucharistic centered life.’ May we live this year of the
Eucharist in the Heart of Mary since, “from the very first moment,
the Church ‘looked at’ Mary through Jesus, just as she ‘looked at’
Jesus through Mary. For the Church of that time and of every time
Mary is a singular witness” (MR, 26). She is a model of love
for the Eucharist and of contemplation of the mysteries of His Heart
because “the mysteries of Christ are also in some sense the
mysteries of his mother…for she lives from him and through him” (RVM,
24).
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