The Blessed Sacrament and The Blessed Virgin Mary – Part II
Mediation 3: The Eucharistic Sacrifice is identical with the Sacrifice of the Cross.
1. The Holy Eucharist is a true sacrifice, therefore reparation of our faults; we discern this:
-from the prophecy of Malachias: From the rising to the going down of the sun, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrificed and offered to my name a clean oblation (Mal. 1: 11);
-from the words of institution: This is my Body, which is given for you (Luke xxii: 19); For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins (Matt. xxvi: 28);
-from the teaching of the Apostle Paul, who in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (x: 15, 22) opposes the Holy Eucharist to the Jewish and Pagan Sacrifices.
The Catholic tradition is a luminous confirmation of this truth.
2. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is identical with the Sacrifice of the Cross; there is the same Priest, the same Victim, the same object; there are the same fruits; the merits gained by Jesus dying on the Cross are distributed to souls by Jesus sacrificed in the Eucharist; the manner alone is different, bloody on the Cross, unbloody in the Sacrament of the Altar.
Holy Mary is our Co-Redemptress.
We have redemption through his blood (Ephesians i: 7) that is, principally through the passion and death of Jesus Christ: The Blessed Virgin is associated with Jesus in the great work of the human Redemption and by reason of this and above all, in His Sacrifice and death. In fact:
1. Mary is the new Eve, the consoling Aurora, that foretells the Sun of Justice immediately after the fall of our first Parents: I will place enmities between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel (Gen. iii: 15).The very uncertainty of the Latin text "Ipsum ", " Ipsa ", tends to demonstrate the intimate union, in the victorious battle against the powers of Hell, existing between the Son and the Mother, who constitute one moral person.
The Apostle of the Gentiles in his letter to the Romans (v: 14), and in the first letter to the Corinthians (xv: 22, 45) when he calls Adam" a figure of him who was to come" and Jesus Christ "the last Adam" makes clear allusion to the new Eve, whose name we seek as it were between the lines, while we read the two Epistles.
2. The Archangel Gabriel, in the Annunciation describes Him who is to be born of Mary in Messianic terms. The Blessed Virgin, then, with the words Ecce Ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke i: 38) accepts the charge of becoming the mother of the patient Messias foretold by the Prophets and especially by Isaiah (lxii: 13; lxiii: 12); in consequence she participates in the passion and death of Jesus, becoming the Queen of Martyrs".
3. The Prophet Simeon, upon the day of the Purification connects most closely the sorrows of Mary with the Passion of the Redeemer: A sign which shall be contradicted... and thy own soul a sword shall pierce" (Luke ii: 34).
4. The Blessed Virgin acts in the sacrifice of the Cross: remotely by administering the matter of the sacrifice itself, by nourishing and guarding it; proximately by offering together with Christ, the High Priest, the very same host; she also in addition shares the same pains, dying within her heart, while Jesus is dying crucified:
Stabat Mater dolorosa
Juxta Crucem lacrymosa
Dum pendebat Filius.
5. Likewise in Heaven, according to John's vision in ecstasy, while the "divine Lamb" is "as one dead" (Apoc. v: 6), Mary, surrounded by the sun, with the moon at her feet, girded with twelve stars, continues to experience mystically the sorrows of giving birth, by her active cooperation in the salvation of souls: AND BEING WITH CHILD, SHE CRIED TRAVAILING IN BIRTH, AND WAS IN PAIN TO BE DELIVERED (Apoc. xii: 2).
Now, with the Sacrifice of the Cross being perpetuated in the Holy Eucharist, we must admit that Mary continues in the Sacrifice of the Altar the office she accomplished with Jesus, through the redemption of men, on Calvary.
As we ask pardon, dear brethren, of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, we ought ask pardon too of Mary: Parce, Domine, parce, Domina, populo tuo! Mercy, O Lord, mercy Lady, for our sins!
Mediation 4: The Eucharist is for everyone the font and source of every gift.
The Eucharist, as a Sacrament which contains the very Author of grace, is for everyone the font and source of every gift: . . . omnium fons et caput bonorum est potissimum Augusta Eucharistia. The Sacrament of Sacraments, and end of all the Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist is nothing else, according to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, than the application of the Passion of the Lord to us.
Mary Most Holy is the Mediatrix and Dispensatrix of every Grace.
The work of the Redemption and of our salvation results, so to speak, from two acts or two stages, the acquisition of graces and their distribution: Mary, as Co-redemptress, had a share in the first; it follows that she was to have a share in the second.
It is evident that Jesus Christ is the principal Mediator, perfect, sufficient, absolutely necessary, and by His own merits; but this does not exclude the participation of Mary, in so far as dispositive, as Theologians express it, and ministerialiter, dependent on Christ, she concurs with Him to aid us to reach Heaven.
In her office as Mother of God, she is intimately joined with Jesus Christ, the Redeemer: she can do everything;
In her capacity of Mother of Men, in the Beatific Vision, she knows all our necessities; And with that immense charity with which she is endowed, she wants to help us in everything.
For this reason, in the writings of the Fathers and the Theologians, she has taken the name of Aqueduct of grace and of Link of that mystic Body whose head is the Saviour, from whom there flow into the members, through the Blessed Virgin as channel, all the fruits of the Redemption.
It is therefore proper to exclaim: Of His fullness, THROUGH MARY, we have all received (cfr. John i: 16). And this supernatural law may be said to be revealed in concrete manner in the Holy Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles:
1. John the Baptist is sanctified, before his birth, by means of Mary (Luke i: 15, 41, 44).
2. At Cana of Galilee Jesus hastens the hour of His mercies through the intercession of Mary; and in virtue of that miracle, the first disciples believed in Him: This first of Miracles wrought Jesus in Cana of Galilee: and He manifested His glory and His disciples believed in Him (John ii: 11).
3. John the Evangelist, after having fled in the Garden of Olives with the other Apostles: All leaving Him, fled (Matt. xxvi: 56), regains courage and perseveres in following Jesus midst the insults of Calvary, because he was accompanied by Mary: When Jesus therefore saw His mother and the disciple standing whom He loved, He said to the Mother: Woman, bebold thy Son. Then He said to the disciple: Behold thy Mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own (John xix: 26).
4. The Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, which marks the inauguration of holy Church, takes place while the Apostles and the Disciples are persevering with one mind in prayer with Mary the Mother of Jesus (Act i: 14).
In these facts, there is the beginning of every grace through the mediation of the Blessed Virgin, both in the spiritual and in the material order; through Mary are granted the three principal graces of the work of salvation; vocation, justification, perseverance. Now God who never changes what He has willed to do, after decreeing that we should have everything through Mary (Qui bona omnia nos habere voluit per Mariam), certainly requires the intervention of the Virgin Mary that graces come to our souls from the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
Blessed Virgin, dispensatrix of grace, in the first place of the divine Eucharist, source of every gift, monstra te esse Matrem by making us ever less unworthy of being sharers of the Priesthood of Jesus, Thy Son. Assist us in the celebration of holy Mass, in the distribution of Holy Communion, and make our devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament all that you desire.
