We shall begin by explaining the foundation for this devotion. But before doing so, we shall say something about an objection which constantly sounds in our ears, and which it is better to dispose of at once. Our readers will then be able to give undivided attention to our further remarks.
This objection, and it is merely captious, is based upon the uselessness of giving a new title to Mary, and upon the danger of introducing a new devotion. That the title is new, we freely acknowledge. But if it expresses something very real and very true, ought it to be rejected without examination only on account of its novelty?
The title is new. But how many titles, now very old, have had a beginning in the Church? When Saint Juliana made known the order that she had received from God for the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi, there was a general outcry: "It is an innovation, a useless, even a dangerous, innovation!" But in our own day, how sweet is that title to us! Its very name, Corpus Christi, awakens memories of joy and happiness, and it is hard for us to understand how obstacles could ever have been raised against its adoption.
There was a time when the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was long confined to the secrecy of cloisters and of hearts by that same objection: "It is new. The old suffices!"
And some few years ago, who had heard of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart? We all know the opposition that was made to this title, so true, so glorious to Mary and to Jesus, and so full of graces for the Church at large. But the Archbishop of Bourges, appointed by God Himself to judge of its doctrine, approved the new title and blessed it. Pius IX himself intervened, and permitted the glorious statue of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart to be crowned in his name. All remember the splendid ceremonies that attended the event, the number of Bishops present, the immense concourse of pilgrims. Sacred learning raised its voice in attestation of the solidity of the incipient devotion. The Bishop of Tulle, upon whose lips the most abstract theological questions becomes poetry, sang of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. The Bishop of Poitiers, whose name alone is an authority, proved that to unite Mary to the Heart of Jesus, was not to innovate, but to penetrate into the very essence of Christianity, and to show forth the invariable law of the economy of salvation, which always operates by means of Mary and Jesus. Summing up this thought in a burst of irresistible eloquence, he exclaims: "Have I not said enough to make you understand that Mary is inseparable from Jesus, and that the essential economy of Christianity is imperfectly known, that the divine order is troubled, if Mary is forgotten, if Mary is neglected, if Mary is excluded? When, then, on entering this splendid and beautiful church, you behold in the sanctuary the meek and loving Jesus, His Heart radiating the flames of His love, surmounted and crowned, as it were, by the sweet and virginal figure of Mary, His Mother if you are told that that is something new, a practice foreign to the pure Gospel, a devotion unknown to the primitive Church, the reply is easy. Is it not the pure Gospel? Is there anything more primitive than that which is written in the first chapter of Saint Matthew: Mary of whom was born Jesus? Is it not the pure Gospel? and is there any devotion more primitive than that recorded in the second chapter of the same evangelist: And going into the house, they found the Child with Mary, His Mother? Supporting my remarks on this text, I venture to say that a temple is for me a Christian and orthodox temple only inasmuch as Mary is shown to me therein with Jesus. My faith must have it thus, and my heart freely accords with my faith."
And Mary's new title is spread through out the world, and received by the faith of the Faithful, because in its novelty it expresses an adorable and very ancient reality.
When Père Eymard proposed the title, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, he tells us: "It is the new title of something very ancient." For since the existence of the Eucharist, the relations that bind Mary to her Son have also existed. Let us here remark that we were greatly encouraged in our design of spreading this devotion by the Bishop of Angers, and that this acknowledgment is a testimony of gratitude which we consider our duty to render publicly to the illustrious Prelate. In a petition in which he is supplicated to bless the title of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, we read the following words: "Deign, Your Lordship, to approve this new devotion to Mary." "No, no," exclaimed His Lordship, "strike that out! The devotion to Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament is not a new devotion, for at all times Mary has been honored in the Church as the Mother of the Eucharistic Christ."
This devotion is not substantially new. It is the title alone that has not yet been publicly decreed to Mary. The practice, namely, the frequent and general meditation on Mary's relations with the Eucharist, is new. But for that sole reason, is that which seems, at least, presented to us as a grace, to be rejected? We think not. Rome, we hope (for the question has been submitted to its infallible tribunal), will soon permit Mary to be publicly invoked under the title: Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Several Prelates have already approved it, and the Bishop of Angers, in order to prove his faith and ardent love for the Mother and her Eucharistic Son, has graciously granted forty days Indulgence to all the Faithful of his diocese who devoutly recite the invocation: "Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Mother and Model of adorers, pray for us who have recourse to thee."
When the novelty presents itself with such support, it is but a new manifestation of the love of Our Lord, a new grace, a new help that He offers us. Every age has its own graces. When the Immaculate Conception was rejected as a fatal innovation, the learned Archbishop Gatharin responded: "Does the Immaculate Conception astonish you? But I do not think that what we shall discover of Mary's grandeur is limited to that. There are in her ineffable secrets known only to the blessed spirits, and which God will one day manifest to His Church, in order that every age may rejoice in the manifestation of some new mystery, some new glory of the Blessed Virgin."
The Lord holds in reserve helps of which we know not. A new devotion toward the Blessed Virgin is a torrent of graces flowing over the whole world. "He," says Father Faber, "who can find a point of view from which our dearest Mother would appear to him greater than ever, has found a new means of sanctification, for he has acquired a new power to love God."
What! If the knowledge of Mary's relations with the Eucharist makes us love the Most Blessed Sacrament with a more devoted love; if the example of Mary's life of adoratrix in the Cenacle makes us fulfill with more piety, reverence, and love our duties toward His august Person present among us, who will complain of this new devotion? Who will not, on the contrary, recognize in this manifestation of one of her grandeurs, the merciful intervention of the Queen of Heaven, who wishes herself to serve as a model and encouragement in the service of her adorable son, thus to concur in the spread of His Eucharistic reign and His coming into hearts?
An act of love! That means heaven merited, glory redoubled. If this blessed title can multiply our acts of love, it shall have borne sufficient fruit for us to recognize in it the fruitful tree planted by the Lord in the garden of the Church.
Lastly, it may be objected that the Scriptures, the Fathers, say enough about the Blessed Virgin, and that we must be satisfied with what we already know of her. Is not Mary already sufficiently well known?
Ah, no! Mary is not sufficiently known. Who can plume himself upon having sounded all the depth, measured all the extent of that word which is the foundation of Mary's greatness, and with which the Holy Ghost, who certainly knew how to express it, is pleased to praise Mary: "Mary, the Mother of God, the Mother of Jesus"?
Ah! let all the Doctors search, let all prayerful souls contemplate, let all generations investigate Mary's greatness, and we shall even then just touch the outer limits of her grandeur, the fringe of the mantle of glory of the Mother of God. Eternity will not be too long, the divine light too brilliant, to manifest to us even with some little perfection that master piece of God's power.
These thoughts are not our own. They are Saint Bernard's, who exclaims: "O Mary, glorious City of the Most High! Very glorious things have already been said of thee. But there is still much to praise in thee, and hitherto all praise accorded thee is but childish stammering: Adhuc locus est time laudi, adhuc in tuis laudibus omnis lingua balbutit."
It is because we know Mary to be an ocean of grandeur that we have confidence, and that we piously believe in this new title, this new phase of her power in the economy of salvation, which she seems to manifest to us.
In the Preface to his Treatise on the Blessed Virgin, forestalling the objection which might be adduced from the silence of the Gospel respecting the Mother of God, about whom he was going to write, Suarez, the positive theologian par excellence, utters some words so appropriate to our subject, that we should esteem ourselves worthy of reproach if we failed to cite them: "It is not without a particular design of the Holy Ghost that many of Mary's mysteries and privileges have not been recorded in the Scriptures, nor handed down by tradition. God wished thereby to give to those that were to come after, a greater reason to study and meditate those mysteries, to speak and write, moreover, of things connected with the Blessed Virgin which, until then, they did not possess of her, deducing them by reasoning from principles received."
When the author of this work explained its principal features to the Bishop of Angers, His Lordship addressed to him the following words, which he made the rule of his conduct: "Seek in the Apostolic Fathers the witnesses of the devotion of the early Church toward the Most Blessed Sacrament, and proceed by induction to study Mary, who was the most docile, the most perfect member of the Church at the same time that she was its Mother."
We shall now enumerate Mary's titles bearing upon the Blessed Sacrament, supported upon theology and ecclesiastical history. Without desiring to force the belief of the reader, we wish to show that our own is reasonable, and that the motives that support it suffice to establish a probable opinion. This being so, we shall borrow the words of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, praying that the reader may be inspired by their spirit while perusing this little work: "When an opinion is in some way honorable to the Blessed Virgin, and there is some foundation for it, provided it is not otherwise repugnant to Faith, to the Decrees of the Church, nor to truth, not to hold it, and even to contradict it for the reason that the contrary opinion may also be true, is to show little devotion to the Mother of God. I do not wish to be of the number of those that have so little devotion, nor do I want my reader to belong to them. I would prefer to be among those that believe fully and firmly all that, without error, we may believe of Mary's grandeur, according to the thoughts of the Abbe Rupert, who, among the homages most agreeable to the Mother of God, counts that of firm belief in all that enhances her glory: Ejus magnolia firmiter credere."
It was this thought of glorifying Mary that led Père Eymard to give her the new title of honor, "the most glorious title," as he says, "of the Queen of Saints, for it is that which brings her nearest to Our Lord, the Principle of all her greatness." By it our devotion to Mary becomes an integral part of our devotion to Jesus.
Let us here gladly repeat the beautiful saying of a young priest who, after edifying the Seminary of Saint Sulpice for several years, died in the odor of sanctity at the foot of the Blessed Sacrament: "There is but one title in my estimation, which equals the title of Mother of God, and that is, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament."
In this title we approach Mary not from one mystery alone, or from one virtue of her Son, but from His Divine Person, the living and glorious substance of all mysteries, of all virtues. And if it is true, as Faith teaches, that the Eucharist is the centre of all religion, that it is the Man-God with all His greatness and all His glory, Jesus in the highest effort of His love, to approach Mary from the Eucharist, is to glorify her as much as she can be glorified, which is to say, in one word, that it is to glorify her whole life, with all her greatness and all her glory.
We hope that, if we prove the reality of Mary's relations with Jesus in the Eucharist, the strength of the bonds that attach her to the Blessed Sacrament, the immense share that she has in that Mystery of love, we shall be pardoned our apparently new devotion, and that our readers will confidently and lovingly honor Mary under her beautiful title, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Still further to strengthen our position, let us quote here the words of Blessed Albertus Magnus: "If the reader, deigning to cast his eyes on this little work, is somewhat troubled at the novelty of the subject that it treats, as may perhaps happen, I beg him not hastily to accuse me of rashness, but rather to pardon the simplicity of my devotion."
- from Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, by Saint Pierre-Julien Eymard