A Marian Spirituality of the Eucharist

The purpose of the Holy Eucharist is to transform us into Jesus Christ, so that we may become more and more like him whom we adore.

In his Apostolic Letter of October 7, 2004 inaugurating the Year of the Eucharist, Mane Nobiscum Domine (Stay With Us Lord), our late, beloved Holy Father, John Paul II, speaks of the need for a “Eucharistic spirituality” inspired and guided by the Blessed Virgin Mary.1 In saying this he refers back to his Encyclical on the Holy Eucharist of Holy Thursday, April 17, 2003, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (The Church of the Eucharist). There he calls Mary the “Woman of the Eucharist,” and says that we are called to learn about the Eucharistic mystery at the “school of Mary,” as the Blessed Virgin is our teacher in contemplating the face of Christ. Also, we are to look to Our Lady as a model and imitate her interior dispositions, which reveal her profound relationship with this holy mystery.2 In the following pages I will set forth some basic theological principles for a Marian Eucharistic spirituality, and offer practical advice on how to adopt a Eucharistic spirituality with Mary as our teacher and our model.

Marian Spirituality of the Eucharist

The purpose of the Holy Eucharist is to transform us into Jesus Christ, so that we may become more and more like him whom we adore.

By Dwight P. Campbell

The fundamental reason why the Blessed Virgin Mary has a unique relationship with the Holy Eucharist and why she is closer than anyone to Jesus in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, is that she is the Mother of the God-man, Our Savior. In regard to the Eucharistic Mystery, Mary’s motherhood is manifested in two events which forever unite her with her Son in a singular manner: the Annunciation, at which time she conceived Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit; and the Sacrifice on Calvary, when Jesus died on the Cross with his sorrowful Mother at his feet. Both events bear special scrutiny, for they not only offer a solid foundation for Mary’s relationship with our Eucharistic Lord; they also reveal her as a model for us to imitate in our relationship with this great sacramental mystery.

The Annunciation and Mary’s Relationship with the Eucharist

At the Annunciation, when Mary uttered her “Fiat” (“Let it be done to me . . .”), the Incarnation took place: the Eternal Word, the Son of God, while remaining God, became man in the Virgin’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. At this time, a deep, ineffable union took place between Mother and Son: Jesus took his flesh and blood from Mary, and the blood from her Immaculate Heart formed the Sacred Heart of the Redeemer. He who before only had a Father, now had a Mother as well. Pope John Paul relates the faith of Our Lady at the Annunciation to the Eucharistic Mystery and to our reception of the Lord’s Body and Blood:

In a certain sense Mary lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of God’s Word. The Eucharist, while commemorating the passion and resurrection, is also in continuity with the Incarnation. At the Annunciation, Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of His body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s body and blood.3

How beautiful! The Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.) proclaimed Mary, “Theotokos”: literally, “God-bearer.” When we receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the Eucharist, we become Theotokoi: God-bearers. We become, for those few minutes while the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood remains within us, images of the Blessed Virgin, the pre-eminent God-bearer, who bore Jesus for nine months in her womb. After receiving Christ’s Body and Blood, as we kneel down in our pews and make our personal thanksgiving, we can pray the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the Annunciation of the Incarnation, and ponder how we – like Mary after having given her “Yes” to God – now have Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, whom all the universe cannot contain, enclosed within us.

John Paul offers another profound insight when he relates Mary’s faith at the Annunciation to our faith when we receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament:

. . . there is a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord. Mary was asked to believe that the One whom she conceived “through the Holy Spirit” was “the Son of God” (Lk. 1:30-35). In continuity with the Virgin’s faith, in the Eucharistic mystery we are asked to believe that the same Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, becomes present in his full humanity and divinity under the signs of bread and wine.4

Truly, we who both worship and receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist must have greater faith than the Magi: they prostrated themselves in worship, seeing only the humanity of Jesus but believing in his divinity; we see neither the humanity nor the divinity of Jesus. In fact, the Eucharist defies our senses: for we see, touch and taste only the appearances, or accidents, of bread; but we believe, in faith, based on Christ’s words, that the substance of his Body and Blood is really, truly present. To quote from the great Eucharistic hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote: “Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur” — seeing, touching, tasting, all these senses fail; “sed auditu solo, tuto creditur” — it is only in hearing that the mystery is believed. We say “Amen” when receiving the Eucharist, because we believe in Jesus’ words: “This is my body . . .This is my blood.” And our Amen is like unto the “Fiat” of Mary at hearing the angel’s announcement that she would conceive not by the seed of man, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In holding up Mary as a model for our belief in the substantial Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, Pope John Paul also offers Elizabeth’s words to her cousin at the Visitation: “Blessed is she who believed” (Luke 1:45). “Mary,” he says,

also anticipated, in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Church’s Eucharistic faith. When at the Visitation, she bore in her womb the Word made flesh, she became in some way a “tabernacle” — the first “tabernacle” in history — in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating his light as it were through the eyes and the voice of Mary. And 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?5

And we could add: are not we, like Mary, “living tabernacles” after we receive the Living Bread from Heaven? The saints tell us that during that brief time when the Sacred Host is within us, our Guardian Angels fall down in worship before us!

The foregoing demonstrates that Mary’s unique relationship with the Eucharist begins at the Annunciation when she becomes the Mother of God, and that her “Fiat” in faith to the angel is a model for us to imitate each time we receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord in Holy Communion.

Another point to consider is the following syllogism: if the Eucharist is truly Jesus Christ in the fullness of his divine and human natures, and Mary is the Mother of Jesus, then we can truly call Mary, “Mother of the Eucharist.” Granted, John Paul called her the “Woman of the Eucharist,” and it would seem that this title connotes Our Lady as a model for adoration and different forms of devotion toward Our Eucharistic Lord. But in light of the fact that the greatest privilege and function of Our Lady is her motherhood, is it not fitting to express Mary’s relationship with her Son in this great Sacrament under the title, “Mother of the Eucharist”?

The Eucharist and Mary’s Motherhood in Light of Calvary

Mary’s unique relationship with the Eucharist also flows from her presence on Calvary, when she united the suffering in her Heart with her Son’s suffering. This was a fulfillment of Simeon’s prophecy at the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple: that her Heart would be pierced by a sword of sorrow (cf. Luke 2:35).6 In fact, on Calvary the suffering in Mary’s Heart was united with the suffering in the Heart of her Son, the latter of which was symbolized by the piercing of Christ’s side and Heart with the soldier’s lance,7 with the blood and water flowing forth (John 19:34), showing that Jesus gave of Himself totally in order to merit for us the grace for our salvation. In regard to Mary’s activity on Calvary, Pope John Paul speaks of her “co-suffering” with Jesus, in love,8 which makes her a unique co-redeemer, or Co-Redemptrix, with Jesus.9

Moreover, John Paul insists that in light of Simeon’s prophecy that her Heart would be pierced by a sword of sorrow, Mary “throughout her life at Christ’s side and not only on Calvary, made her own the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist.” In what he calls her “daily preparation for Calvary,” the late Holy Father said that

Mary experienced a kind of ‘anticipated Eucharist’ – one might say a ‘spiritual communion’ – of desire and of oblation, which would culminate in her union with her Son in his Passion, and then find expression after Easter by her partaking in the Eucharist which the Apostles celebrated as the memorial of that Passion.”10

The Eucharist celebrated in the Sacrifice of the Mass is the “sacramental re-presentation”11 of Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross in an unbloody manner under the form of bread and wine; it is the application of the fruits of Christ’s Redemption, of the grace which He merited for us by His Suffering, Death and Resurrection; and it is the “sacrificial memorial”12 of His saving action. In his encyclical, Pope John Paul stresses this last aspect of the Eucharistic Mystery to explain in mystical fashion Mary’s presence at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and how we must allow the Blessed Virgin to accompany us at the Eucharistic celebration, in order to learn at her “school.” After quoting Jesus’ words, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), we read this remarkable passage from the former Vicar of Christ:

In the “memorial” of Calvary [i.e., the Mass] all that Christ accomplished by his Passion and his Death is present. Consequently all that Christ did with regard to his Mother for our sake is also present. To her he gave the beloved disciple and, in him, each of us: “Behold, your Son!” To each of us he also says: “Behold your mother!” (cf. Jn.19:26-27).

Experiencing the memorial of Christ’s death in the Eucharist also means continually receiving this gift. It means accepting – like John – the one who is given to us anew as our Mother. It also means taking on a commitment to be conformed to Christ, putting ourselves at the school of his Mother and allowing her to accompany us. Mary is present, with the Church and as the Mother of the Church, at each of our celebrations of the Eucharist. If the Church and the Eucharist are inseparably united, the same ought to be said of Mary and the Eucharist. This is one reason why, since ancient times, the commemoration of Mary has always been part of the Eucharistic celebrations of the Churches of East and West.13 (Emphasis added.)

The Blessed Virgin was present on Calvary; she is present at each Mass. At Mass, we must invite Mary to be present with us, and strive to imitate her in uniting ourselves to Christ’s Sacrifice made present on the altar. We must learn from her, at her “school,” by studying her interior dispositions, especially those she exhibited at the foot of the Cross: her heroic faith and her spirit of self-oblation in accepting the Father’s will that her Son suffer a horrible death in order to merit our salvation. Pope John Paul makes essentially the same point in the final section of chapter six when he says: “In the Eucharist the Church [and by inference each one of us, who are members thereof] is completely united with Christ and his sacrifice, and makes her own the spirit of Mary.”14

Mary: Our Exemplar and Teacher in the Eucharistic Mystery

We must learn to “make our own” the spirit of Mary. John Paul says that Our Lady’s Magnificat provides a “Eucharistic key” in understanding the “true Eucharistic attitude” the Church and its members must have in approaching this great Mystery. When Mary exclaims, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47), she praises God not only “through” Jesus, but also “in” Jesus and “with” Jesus,15 because the pre-born Christ Child is dwelling within her womb. We must learn to imitate this attitude so that we can “rejoice in God my Savior” whenever we receive Christ’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion.

According to the late Holy Father, Mary’s Magnificat also reflects the eschatological tension of the Eucharist. Every time the Son of God comes again to us in the “poverty” of the sacramental signs of bread and wine, the seeds of that new history wherein the mighty are “put down from their thrones” and “those of low degree are exalted” (cf. Lk. 1:52), take root in the world. Mary sings of the “new heavens” and the “new earth” which find in the Eucharist their anticipation and in some sense their program and plan.16

This statement must be understood in the context of what John Paul, earlier in the encyclical, calls the “eschatological thrust” which marks the celebration of the Eucharist:

The Eucharist is a straining toward the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn. 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory.” . . . Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth . . . in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world (cf. Jn. 6:54). . . . With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. . . . The eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven. . . . [it] leads to the expectation of “new heavens” and a “new earth” (Rev. 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today.17

The Eucharist is the Eschaton realized in the here and now through the Risen, Glorified Christ, the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 21:6; 22:13), who is made present sacramentally and who dwells in our midst.18 Moreover, Mary is the Eschatological Icon of the Church.19 Her presence at Mass is the image or reflection of what the Church, the Spouse of Christ, will be in its perfected state in glory when it will worship the Lamb in spirit and in truth in the Kingdom of Heaven. In this regard, Our Lady is a model for us to imitate. Here again, we can turn to her Magnificat, which Pope John Paul says “expresses Mary’s spirituality.” He insists that “there is nothing greater than this spirituality for helping us to experience the mystery of the Eucharist. The Eucharist has been given to us so that our life, like that of Mary, may become completely a Magnificat!”20 Yes, at Mass, and especially in receiving Holy Communion, we must adopt a “Eucharistic attitude” like that of the Blessed Virgin and rejoice in God, Our Savior, who comes to us in the substance of his Body and Blood.

St. Louis Marie de Montfort, at the end his classic work, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin — which Pope John Paul calls an authentic guide to Marian spirituality21— instructs us to call upon Mary to assist us when we receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord at Mass. He recommends the following practices — before, during and after Communion — to make the reception of Our Eucharistic Lord more fruitful. Before Communion:

Implore Mary to lend you her heart so that you may receive her Son with her dispositions. Remind her that her Son’s glory requires that he should not come into a heart so sullied and so fickle as your own . . . Tell her that if she will take up her abode in you to receive her Son — which she can do because of the sovereignty she has over all hearts — he will be received by her in a perfect manner without danger of being affronted or being forced to depart. . . . Beg her to lend you her heart, saying, “O Mary, I take you for my all; give me your heart.”22

During Holy Communion, St. Louis recommends addressing the words, “Lord, I am not worthy,” to each Person of the Blessed Trinity. Say to God the Father that “you are unworthy to receive his only-begotten Son, but that here is Mary, his handmaid, who acts for you and whose presence gives you a special confidence and hope in him.”23 Tell the Son that “you have no faith in your own merits, strength and preparedness, like Esau, but only in Mary, your Mother, just as Jacob had trust only in Rebecca his mother,” and that “although you are a great sinner you still presume to approach him, supported by his holy Mother and adorned with her merits and virtues.”24 Confess to the Holy Spirit that “you are not worthy to receive the masterpiece of his love because of your lukewarmness, wickedness, and resistance to his inspirations,” but that “nonetheless, you put all your confidence in Mary, his faithful spouse.”25

De Montfort urges the following practice after Holy Communion:

[C]lose your eyes and recollect yourself. Then usher Jesus into the heart of Mary; you are giving him to his Mother who will receive him with her great love and give him the place of honor, adore him profoundly, show him perfect love, embrace him intimately in spirit and in truth, and perform many offices for him of which we, in our ignorance, would know nothing.26

He also recommends that we “ask Jesus living in Mary that his kingdom may come upon earth through his holy Mother. Ask for divine wisdom, divine love, the forgiveness of your sins, or any other grace, but always through Mary and in Mary”; also, tell both Jesus and Mary: “you must increase in my soul and I must decrease.”27

St. Louis concludes his True Devotion with this sound advice: “the more you let Mary act in your Communion the more Jesus will be glorified. . . . For the just man lives everywhere by faith (Heb. 10:38; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11), but especially in Holy Communion, which is an action of faith.”28 His words complement those of Pope John Paul in his (last) Holy Thursday Letter to Priests, penned from Gemelli Hospital in Rome on March 13, 2005:

Who more than Mary can help us taste the greatness of the Eucharistic mystery? She more than anyone can teach us how to celebrate the sacred mysteries with due fervor, and to commune with her Son, hidden in the Eucharist. . . . This Easter, in the Year of the Eucharist, I gladly repeat to each of you the gentle and consoling words of Jesus: “Behold your Mother” (Jn. 19:27).29

Mary: Exemplar and Teacher of Eucharistic Adoration

Medieval writers call Mary the Teacher of the Apostles and Evangelists.30 St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811-1868), founder of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers and known as the “Saint of the Eucharist,”31 develops this idea and opines that one reason God left the Blessed Virgin on earth after the Ascension of Jesus was so that she could teach and form the Apostles and the members of the early Church how to worship and adore Our Lord in the Eucharist.32 Mary’s great faith in the Eucharistic Mystery was a model for the Apostles and the first Christians; they learned to worship and adore Our Lord in the Eucharist at the school of Mary.

St. Peter calls Mary, “Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament” and “the Mother and Queen of adorers.” He says that in the Acts of the Apostles we find her in the Cenacle, and there her whole life was “one continuous act of love and adoration” of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.33 All Mary’s virtues bore “the Eucharistic stamp,” as they “were nourished by her Communions, by her adoration, and by her continual union with Jesus Eucharistic.”34 “All in Mary turned toward the Blessed Sacrament as toward its center and end.”35 At Mass, the Blessed Virgin “adored her very dear Son in His character of Victim immolated perpetually on our Altars, incessantly imploring grace and mercy for sinners, through the merits of His death. Mary adored the Savior on this new Calvary upon which His love crucified Him.”36

What Our Lady did for the first Christians, she continues to do for us. Her mission, says St. Peter, “is to form Jesus in us. This is the mission that He gave her on Calvary.”37 It was on Calvary that Jesus gave Mary to us as our Mother; and according to Eymard: “The Blessed Virgin became our Mother, in view of the Eucharist. To her is entrusted the task of . . . making us appreciate and desire that Heavenly Food; it is her mission to form us for adoration.”38 Eymard offers us the following sound advice, in order that we might allow Our Lady to form us as worthy adorers of her Son in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood:

Place yourself, then under Mary’s direction; think her thoughts, speak her words of love, imitate her manners, perform her actions, share her sufferings, and all in her will speak to you of Jesus, . . .

Honor in Mary, at the foot of the Tabernacle, all the mysteries of her life, for all these were stations, as it were, leading to the Cenacle. . . . In the Cenacle, this august Queen kneels as adoratrix and servant of the Most Blessed Sacrament; kneel at your Mother’s side and pray with her, and in so doing, you will continue her Eucharistic life on earth.39

When we come into the Presence of Christ to worship and adore him, we can petition Mary: “Blessed Virgin, place in my heart your spirit of worship and adoration, so that I may give more praise and glory to my Lord, my King and my God in this Most Blessed Sacrament.”

The Holy Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration

Pope John Paul, in his letter for the Year of the Eucharist, recommends the Holy Rosary as an aid when we spend time in adoration before Our Eucharistic Lord: “The Rosary is a particularly fitting introduction to contemplating Jesus in the Eucharist, a contemplation carried out with Mary as our companion and guide.”40 John Paul knew this so well, as he spent many hours of his life, with Rosary in hand, praying before the Blessed Sacrament. In his October, 2002 Apostolic Letter on the Holy Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, which inaugurated a “Year of the Rosary” — a prelude to the Year of the Holy Eucharist — he teaches: “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty of the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love.”41 If we pray the Rosary in the Presence of our Eucharistic Lord exposed on the altar, Mary is present with us, to pray with us and to guide us. Through and with her Immaculate Heart, we contemplate the Holy Face of Our Savior hidden under the Eucharistic species. “The Rosary,” says John Paul, “mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is ‘fully formed’ in us (Gal. 4:19).”42

The Eucharist: Transformation in Christ, through Mary

The purpose of the Holy Eucharist is to transform us into Jesus Christ, so that we may become more and more like him whom we adore; more and more like him whom we receive. This transformation into Christ, as the Pope’s words quoted above indicate, is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, with and through the Blessed Virgin Mary. Such is the constant teaching of the Church,43 and the common doctrine of the Saints. The Holy Spirit formed Jesus in Mary, and he continues to form Jesus in us, through Mary. In fact, Louis de Montfort44 and Peter Julian Eymard45 both insist that the more the Holy Spirit finds Our Lady and her spirit in our souls, the more freely and easily he will form Jesus in us. Knowing this, each time we receive Holy Communion, each time we enter into his Presence to worship and adore him, let us call upon Our Mother, Mary: “Blessed Virgin, place your spirit within me, and ask the Holy Spirit, whose spouse you are, to form your Son in me, so that I may think like Jesus, act like him, and love as he loves.”

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