The Communion of Mary: Pt. 1, Ch. 4

The Communion of Mary

Part 1, Chapter 4

In the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus Christ
principally had in mind Mary, His Mother.

In all His works, God, Who is the noblest, the wisest, and the most divine of agents, must propose Himself as the most sublime of all ends. Being the principle of all things, He must be the last end of them. But the Lord loves so much to blend our interests with His glory, that having done all things for it He does not disdain to look at our lowness and our poverty, and, although He is the end of His works, He considers us with a loving condescension as the subjects in whose favor He does them.

The day before His death, Jesus Christ wanted to work the greatest of the marvels of His love by instituting the adorable sacrament of His body and His blood, in order to serve us with a heavenly food and divine beverage. In this institution of the Eucharist, He therefore had to have in mind principally Mary, His Mother.

Santa Maria sopra Minerva (Rome)

Among the beings which have come out of the hands of God, Mary is the creature highest in dignity, the most elevated in grace, and the richest in merits. In the institution of the Eucharist, which has to be the food of the saints, Jesus Christ had, then, to envisage Mary His Mother, so that the holiest of His works is related to the noblest and holiest of creatures.

God loves all creatures. They are the work of His hands, they bear the features of His perfections, and they are the images of His excellence. His love, however, always accompanied with wisdom and light, loves His creatures all the more, because they become closer to Him and because they are more similar to Him. Therefore, Mary must be the most loved of creatures, because she comes nearer to God, and because she is the most living image of the Divinity.

God loves His Church; she is His Spouse! But He loves Mary even more. She is His Mother, says the learned theologian Suarez. Well, such is God’s conduct in the distribution of His favors, that He proportions His graces to His love; where His love is great His favors must be great and wonderful.

Mary being the most loved of creatures, it is with a just sentiment that St. Bernardine, one of her most devout servants, gives assurance that the Son of God came more to preserve Mary from all sin than to save the whole world. In the great work of the Redemption, Mary was first in the thought of God.

It is, then, without rashness that we say that among all the faithful Mary was present in the thought of Jesus Christ, her divine Son, when He instituted the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist. He was happy to give back to His Mother by the use of this sacrament this body which He had received from her.

Mary was, then, the principal object for whom Jesus Christ produced this great miracle of His love. Therefore, Suarez, one of the most learned interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, highly affirms that the first cause of the institution of the Eucharist is Mary, the Mother of God. That’s why St. Gregory of Nyssa calls the Eucharist the Mystery of the Virgin, Mary being the principal subject for whom the divine power did things so great, as she herself makes known when she exclaims: “My soul glorifies the Lord, because He has done great things in me.”

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