When St. Luke wrote his account of the human origins of Our Lord, he wanted to make an important connection to Our Lady as the Ark of the New Covenant. Likewise, St. John saw the need to make this connection more explicit in the Book of Revelation when he describes seeing the Ark of the Covenant in heaven and then describing it in terms that could only apply to Our Lady (c.f. Rev 11:19-12:5). It was during Our Lady’s fiat at the Annunciation that she embraced her vocation as the true Ark of Covenant. The Bread of Life, the True Bread Come Down from Heaven, was baked within her womb. Her womb then became the first tabernacle as she embraced her title as Mother of the Eucharist.
Our Lady is Mother of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who took His body and blood from her, created a soul for Himself and united it to His divinity in her womb. In this way, the title is not surprising. For that same Divine Person in an analogous way repeats the act on the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Each time Christ takes flesh on the altar, an echo of Our Lady’s fiat is heard as the Church gives birth to Our Lord in His Eucharistic presence.
Mary, Model of the Communicant
Mary’s Annunciation then is the model for all of us in receiving the Eucharist. With her Amen, Our Lord took flesh in her womb. In so doing, she received an abundance of sanctifying grace. Because she was perfectly disposed she received not just a spiritual but a physical participation in the divine life of the Trinity. The difference is not just one of degree however. According to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ gives Himself so that we might live by Him, but in Mary He not only did this but also deemed to live by her and receive life from her.
We ought to imitate her disposition as Christ seeks to unite His flesh with ours. We ought to conceive in our hearts the “Son of God the most high” (Lk 1:32). The Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) is the template of after Communion thanksgivings.
Mary, the Perfect Communicant
Our Lady is more than just a model Communicant through the Annunciation. She is the perfect communicant because she received Our Lord most perfectly in the Eucharist. We can often abstract Mary’s life so much that we forget that she lived as a Christian just as we did. After the Ascension, she lived with a priest and would have received the Eucharist regularly from the hands of St. John. It is her reception of the Eucharist, first prepared for by her fiat at the Annunciation, that was perfected in Ephesus with St. John. It is this we must study and seek the grace to imitate.
Not all receptions of the Eucharist are the same. The Eucharist contains ex opere operato sanctifying grace. In fact, because it contains the source of all grace, Christ Himself, it contains enough grace through a single reception to perfectly sanctify the communicant. What stops this from happening is the personal disposition of the recipient. The more fervently one hungers for the Eucharist, the greater the infusion of Divine life through sanctifying grace.
Having actually participated in the sacrifice on Calvary, she knew more than anyone what was being offered, even if in an unbloody manner, on the Altar. Having made the oblation with Christ, she could continually make that same oblation in a spirit of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and thanksgiving (the 4 principal purposes of the Mass according to Pope St. Pius X). Furthermore, as Venerable Mary Agreda tells it in Mystical City of God, after being told by Our Lord about His enduring presence in the Eucharist,
“she burned with the desire of seeing this Sacrament instituted, and if She had not been sustained by the power of the Almighty, the force of her affection would have bereft Her of natural life…Even from that time on She wished to prepare Herself for its reception, and asked Her Son to be allowed to receive Him in the holy Sacrament as soon as it should be instituted. She said to Him: ‘Supreme Lord and life of my soul, shall I, who am such an insignificant worm and the most despicable among men, be allowed to receive Thee? Shall I be so fortunate as to bear Thee once more within my body and soul? Shall my heart be thy dwelling and tabernacle, where Thou shalt take thy rest and shall I thus delight in thy close embrace and Thou, my Beloved, in mine?’ The divine Master answered: ‘My beloved Mother, many times shalt thou receive Me in the holy Sacrament, and after my Death and Ascension into heaven that shall be thy consolation; for I shall choose thy most sincere and loving heart as my most delightful and pleasant resting place.’”
In short, the Eucharistic Presence of Our Lord would have been one of those things “she held in her heart”, especially because she knew what a great consolation it would be. You can imagine how difficult it would be for Our Lady having spent every day save three with Our Lord for 30 years, having seen Him often during His three years of public ministry, to no longer have Him present with her. With that in mind her hunger to receive Him the Eucharist must have exceeded all the saints throughout history combined.
Likewise when Our Lord “earnestly desired” to give the Church the Eucharistic sacrifice, He was expressing a great desire to unite Himself to each one of us individually, but none so much as His Mother. He knew that the Eucharist would not only sustain her, but would unite Him to her in a deeper and deeper way with each fervent reception.
This is why Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says that “Each of Mary’s Communions surpassed the preceding one in fervor and, producing in her a great increase of charity, disposed her to receive her next Communion with still greater fruit. Mary’s soul moved ever more swiftly Godwards the nearer she approached to God; that was her law of spiritual gravitation. She was, as it were, a mirror which reflected back on Jesus the light and warmth which she received from Him; concentrated them also, so as to direct them towards souls” (Mother of the Savior and the Interior Life). It is this same habit, the habit of receiving Our Lord with greater love and devotion at each Mass, that we must strive after. Let us sit at the foot of Our Mother Mary and ask that she obtain for each one of us this most important grace. As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange put it, “In everything she was the perfect model of Eucharistic devotion. If we turn to her she will teach us how to adore and to make reparation; she will teach us what should be our desire of the Blessed Eucharist. From here we can learn how to pray at Holy Mass for the great intentions of the Church. and how to thank God for the graces without number He has bestowed on us and on mankind.”