The Communion of Mary, Pt. 1, Ch. 13

The Communion of Mary

Part 1, Chapter 13

Penance and mortification, the second disposition
of Mary for Holy Communion.

Since the Incarnate Word took a soul capable of interior sadness, and a body capable of exterior penances, He contemplates in His Father both His justice and His holiness. He offers to the justice of His Father a sacrifice of atoning penance for sins He has not committed, but for which He has assumed the responsibility as a victim of sin. He presents to the holiness of His Father a sacrifice of penance and tears which protest that God is so holy, that everything must annihilate and sacrifice itself for His glory.

Jesus Christ, therefore, is established the head of both kinds of penitents, some guilty, the others innocent. He pours out the spirit of atoning penance to the guilty penitents, and the spirit of sanctifying penance to the innocent penitents.

Duomo (Spoleto)

Mary bore these two states of penance. Expiatrix of sin which she has not committed, she cooperated with her divine Son in the redemption of the world, not by the wounds of her body and the blood of her veins, but by the outpouring of tears from her heart pierced by a sword of sorrow: That is the sacrifice which she offered on Calvary with her Son to the Justice of the heavenly Father.

As one innocent of all sin, she also offered to the holiness and divine purity the sacrifice of penance, praise and honor. It is this penance which disposed her for Holy Communion in a special way.

It would be a great mistake to believe that the life of Mary passed by in the material pleasures and delights of this life. Destined to become the Mother of Jesus Christ, the great Penitent of the world, from her early childhood, the Holy Spirit had lit in her heart the fire which was to consume the heart of her Son, this perfect victim of penance. That’s why, from the age of three years, she leaves her paternal house, and said goodbye to her father and mother, in order to withdraw into the temple of the Lord in order to lead an austere and penitent life. Fasting, watching and praying, such was the life of Mary in the temple, said St. Ambrose.

Thus, our little Princess, although innocent and immaculate, disposed herself for the Mystery of the Incarnation, as it pleased her to reveal to St. Elizabeth of Hungary: “Know, my beloved daughter, that except for the grace of the divine maternity which I couldn’t merit, all the other graces which I have received have been the fruit of my works and mortifications.”

But since Jesus Christ dwelt in her womb, where He is the head of penitents, He wanted Mary His Mother to have the primacy everywhere. As she is the first of the just to whom He communicates His grace and the first of the virgins in whom He imprints His purity, He wanted Her to be the first of innocent penitents, by pouring out into her soul the fullness of His spirit of penance.

Mary is therefore a penitent as soon as she’s Mother of God; one same Mystery gives birth to her penitence and her maternity, by making her enter into the participation of the grandeurs and of the penitence of her Son.

I find three altars where the Blessed Virgin shares in the identity of penance with her Son: the Crèche, Calvary, and the Eucharist.

The crèche. At the moment in which Jesus made His crib the first altar where He offers to His Father His first sacrifice of penance by the extreme poverty of the stable where He is born, and by the rigors of the winter He experiences there, exposed as He is to all of the ravages of the air, barely covered with a few swaddling cloths, Mary His Mother is there prostrate before the crib where her Son and her God rests, and unites herself in spirit to the abasements, tears, poverty, prayer, all the virtues, and all the sentiments of this august victim; thus, she offers to God, in the stable of Bethlehem, her first sacrifice of penance.

The second altar of Mary’s penance is Calvary. She was there at the foot of the Cross, when her Jesus, His head crowned with thorns, and His feet and hands transpierced, took His last breath. Standing, motionless, mute with sadness, she contemplated this holy victim, and mingled her tears with the streams of blood which ran from of all wounds of her Son; thus, her soul was plunged into an ocean of sadness.

Finally, the last altar of Mary’s penance was the Eucharist. The penitent life of Jesus and Mary is perpetuated in the sacrament of the Eucharist. On our altars as on Calvary are the same sorrowful events. As the Heart of Mary was then grieved with sadness at the sight of the crimes of men; as her maternal heart was broken in seeing the desertion of her beloved Son, in this august Mystery, on the part of those who should be more sincerely committed to Him. She saw being renewed on our altars, on the part of heretics and the impious, the same disgraces which Jesus her Son had suffered on the mount of Calvary on the part of the Jews; finally, she saw the body of her Son crucified again on the altar by abominable desecrations. Then she cried out with the prophet Jeremiah: “The Lord has filled my soul with bitterness; He has inebriated me with gall and wormwood” (cf. Lam. 3:15).

This is the way Mary, alone innocent and without stain, offered a twofold sacrifice to the divine Justice and to His Holiness; this is the way She disposed her soul for Communion. Let us learn, from her example, to offer the sacrifice of a contrite and penitent heart to the infinite Holiness of God, and to His divine Justice, before participating in the table of the Lord.

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