Day 30 – Mary, the Eucharist and the Incarnation
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke:
And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?” And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. (Luke 1:34-35)
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the chalice after supper, saying, “This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:19-20)
From Pope Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia #55:
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.
As a result, 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.
“Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1:45). Mary 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?
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What must Mary have felt as she heard from the mouth of Peter, John, James and the other Apostles the words spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my body which is given for you” (Lk 22:19)? The body given up for us and made present under sacramental signs was the same body which she had conceived in her womb! For Mary, receiving the Eucharist must have somehow meant welcoming once more into her womb that heart which had beat in unison with hers and reliving what she had experienced at the foot of the Cross.
Reflection:
Every Mass brings us to the womb of Mary, where Christ first became present in His Body and Blood. Every Tabernacle is a copy of that first Tabernacle, which is Mary’s womb, where Christ spent the first nine months of His life. If we want to be close to Jesus in His Body and Blood, even to hide ourselves away in the Tabernacle with Him, then we can do that by consecrating ourselves to Mary, by hiding away in her womb. Jesus remains there in all His hiddenness and littleness, in that first Tabernacle. Are we too big too fit, too full of ourselves, too busy with the things of the world? Or can we let ourselves be hidden in love to find the Hidden Love who remains wrapped in love? Can we allow ourselves to be confined to God’s will, which is nothing other than the womb, than the heart of Mary, who was always freely confined to God’s will? Mary teaches us to make a home in ourselves for Jesus, a Tabernacle, a womb in our hearts for Him to remain always. We do that by uttering with her our Yes to God’s will…Fiat.
Litany of the Powerlessness of Jesus
Litany of Christ Living in the Womb of Mary
Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas before Holy Communion
Prayer of Entrustment to the Womb of Mary