The month of Mary is the month of blessings and graces, for all graces come to us through Mary, as Saint Bernard and all the saints assure us. It is a feast of thirty days in honor of the Mother of God, and it will prepare us for the succeeding lovely month of the Blessed Sacrament.
I. Because we make profession of especially honoring the Holy Eucharist, it does not follow that we should have less devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Far from it! He would be guilty of blasphemy who would say: "As for me, the Blessed Sacrament suffices. I have no need of Mary." Where shall we find Jesus on earth if not in Mary's arms. Did she not give us the Eucharist? Was it not her consent to the Incarnation of the Word in her pure womb that inaugurated the great mystery of reparation to God and union with us, which Jesus accomplished by His mortal life, and that He continues in the Eucharist?
Without Mary, we shall not find Jesus, for she possesses Him in her heart. There He takes His delight, and they who wish to know His inmost virtues, His sacred and privileged love, must seek them in the heart of Mary. They who love that good Mother will find Jesus in her pure heart.
We must never separate Jesus from Mary. We can go to Him only through her. I even maintain that the more we love the Eucharist, the more we ought to love Mary. We love all that our friend loves. Now, is there a creature better loved by God, a mother more tenderly thought of by her son, than was Mary by Jesus?
Oh yes, Our Lord would be very much pained if we, the servants of His Eucharistic Life, did not greatly honor Mary, since she is His Mother. He owes every thing to her in the order of His Incarnation, His human nature. It is by the flesh that she gave Him that He has so glorified His Father, that He has saved us, and that He continues to nourish and save the world by the Blessed Sacrament.
He wishes us to honor her so much the more now as, during His mortal life, He seems to have neglected it Himself. He truly honored His Mother very much in private; but in public He left her in the shade, since He had, before all, to assert and support His dignity as God.
But at the present day, Our Lord wishes us in some way to indemnify the Blessed Virgin for all that He did not do for her exteriorly; and we are bound (there is here question of salvation) to honor her as the Mother of God and our own Mother.
II. But since, as adorers, we are more especially devoted to the service of the Eucharist, it is in this quality that we owe particular devotedness to Mary. Religious of the Most Blessed Sacrament, servants of the Blessed Sacrament, associates of the Blessed Sacrament, we are by our state adorers of the Eucharist. This is our beautiful title blessed by Pius IX. Adorers what does that mean? It means that we are attached to the Adorable Person of Our Lord living in the Eucharist. But if we belong to the Son, we belong to the Mother, also; we adore the Son, we ought to honor the Mother, also; and we are obliged, in order to persevere in the grace of our vocation and participate in it fully, to render to the Blessed Virgin very special honor under the title: Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament.
This devotion is not spread, nor is it explicitly defined as yet in the Church. Since devotion to Mary follows the worship of Jesus, it also follows its various phases and developments.
When we honor Our Lord on the Cross, we pray to Our Lady of Seven Dolors. When we honor His life submissive and retired at Nazareth, it is Our Lady of the Hidden Life that we take for model. The Blessed Virgin follows all the conditions of her Son.
We have never yet saluted Our Lady by this beautiful title: Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. But the devotion to the Eucharist is spreading. Never was it greater or more general than in our time. It is taking hew increase everywhere. It is the grace that the Immaculate Conception has brought to the world. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is not new, but there is, without doubt, a great and new manifestation of the Holy Eucharist. The hidden God comes forth from His tabernacle. He is everywhere exposed by day and by night. The Eucharist is to be the source of salvation for this opening century. The worship of the Eucharist will be the glory, the grandeur of this age.
Devotion to Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament will grow with the worship of the Eucharist. I have not found this devotion treated in any work. I have never heard it spoken of except in the revelations of Mother Mary of Jesus, where I read something of Mary's Communion, and in the Acts of the Apostles where we see Mary in the Cenacle.
III. What did the Blessed Virgin do in the Cenacle? She adored. She was the Mother and the Queen of adorers. She was, in a word, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Our occupation during this month will be, to honor her under this beautiful title, to meditate on what she did, to inquire how Our Lord received her adoration. We shall discover the perfect union of those two hearts, that of Jesus and that of Mary, lost in one love, and one single life. Piety must raise the mysterious veil that hides the adoring life of Mary.
We are astonished that the Acts of the Apostles say nothing of it, but are satisfied with leaving Mary in the Cenacle. Ah! it is because her whole life in the Cenacle was one of love and adoration.
Why speak again of love and adoration? How shall we express that reign of God in the soul and that life of the soul in God? It cannot be explained. Language has no words to express the delights of heaven, and it is the same with the life of Mary in the Cenacle. Saint Luke tells us only that she lived and prayed there. Prayer and the love of study formed the essence of her life. Let us suppose that all that is most powerful in love, all that is most holy and perfect in the virtues, and attribute it to Mary. But because Mary lived there in union with the Most Blessed Sacrament for more than twenty years, all her virtues took the Eucharistic character. They were nourished by Communion, adoration, and constant union with our Eucharistic Jesus. Mary's virtues acquired in the Cenacle their highest perfection, almost limitless, surpassed only by that of the virtues of Jesus Christ.
Let us ask Our Lord to reveal to us what passed between Him and His Mother in the Cenacle. He will tell us some of those wonders, not all, for we could not bear them, but a few, and they will fill us with joy.
O how happy we should be, could we make a month of Maria Adoratrix! Meditation is necessary for that, and much prayer. One must understand, also, the thanksgiving of Mary's love. I greatly desire this, but for such a work a longer preparation would be required.
IV. All the mysteries of Mary's life live again in the Cenacle. If we meditate on the birth of her Son in Bethlehem, let us continue the Gospel and be hold the Eucharistic birth of that same Son on the altar. Is our subject, "The Flight into Egypt?" Well, then, do we not see that Our Lord is still in the midst of strangers and barbarians in those cities and countries in which the churches are closed, and no one goes to visit Him? Think again on His hidden life at Nazareth. Do we not find Him ever more hidden in His Eucharistic life? Consider all the other mysteries of Mary's life as connected with the Eucharist, and reflect on the part that she took therein.
The essential point is to seek out and practice Our Lady's virtues. Let us take them in order, the lowest, the smallest. We know them. We shall afterward rise by degrees to her interior virtues, even to her love.
Then let us daily offer up some sacrifice. Let us foresee something that will cost. There are some that we know in advance; for instance, to such a thing, to see such a person. Offer this sacrifice. The Blessed Virgin will be satisfied. It will be one more flower for the crown that she wishes to offer to her Son in our name on His day, the beautiful feast of Corpus Christi.
If we foresee no special sacrifices, let us maintain ourselves in generous dispositions to accept all that the good God will send us. Let us be watchful to catch on the wing that bird from heaven. It is a messenger from God, bringing us a grace and a crown of thorns. We must welcome them. A sacrifice foreseen makes us reason, and reasoning diminishes its value. But those that we make generously, without premeditation and without deliberation, are of more value.
The good God wants to surprise us. He says to us: "Hold thyself in readiness!" And the faithful soul is disposed for all that the good God wills. Love loves to surprise. Let us never lose these sacrifices, and for that it suffices to be generous. A generous soul O how beautiful! God is glorified by it, and He says of her as of Job, with sentiments of joy and admiration: "Hast thou seen My servant Job?" The soul that loves, allows none of these sacrifices to pass. She has, so to say, her eye in the air. She feels that a cross is coming, and she prepares to receive it well.
Let us, then, honor the Blessed Virgin by a daily sacrifice. Let us go through her to Our Lord, take shelter behind her, hide under her mantle, clothe ourselves with her virtues, be, as it were, her shadow. Let us offer all her actions, all her merits, all her virtues to Our Lord. We have only to draw on Mary, and to say to Jesus: "I offer Thee the riches that my Mother has acquired for me," and Our Lord will be very much pleased with us.
Practice. Let us fulfill all our Eucharistic duties in union with Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Aspiration. Hail Mary, of whom was born our Eucharistic Jesus!
- from Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, by Saint Pierre-Julien Eymard