Tag Archives: St. John the Evangelist

Preparation for Holy Communion

Eucharist, Mary, Sacraments, , , , ,

As mentioned in a previous post, the Church has long understood Sacramental Grace as operating in two dimensions.  On the objective plane we say that the Sacraments contain grace ex opere operato.  What this means is that grace is made available by the Sacrament regardless of either the faith of the recipient or the minister.  It is created “from the work performed.”  This does not mean however that the recipient of the Sacrament is a recipient of grace or even all the grace that is available.  That is because there is also a subjective plane by which the grace received is proportional to the disposition of the receiver.  In no other Sacrament is this distinction more important than in the Eucharist, not only because It contains grace, but because it contains the Author of Grace Himself.  Therefore, there is an abundance of grace available to the receiver provided that he is properly disposed to receive it.

Obviously then, preparation to receive Holy Communion ought to be the primary focus for those who desire closer communion with Christ and through Him the Holy Trinity.  But for most of us, our preparation is sorely lacking either through ignorance, neglect, or distraction.  Thankfully St. Louis de Montfort has left the Church a surefire way to prepare to receive Holy Communion that is sure to increase the graces we receive.

Our Lady of the Eucharist

To grasp the simplicity of his method we must first remove any abstractions we might have related to Our Blessed Mother.  What is meant by this is that we all too often forget that she was a real person who lived out her Christian life in the Early Church.  When Our Lord left her in St. John’s care, He wasn’t just taking care of her physical well-being.  Nor was He abandoning her to someone else’s care.  Instead, He was leaving her in the care of one of the men whom He had empowered to make Him present to her.  In other words, Jesus left Mary with St. John so that she could receive Him in the Eucharist daily.

Once we realize that Our Lady received the Eucharist regularly, we can begin to let our imagination take to flight as to what her disposition was like when she received Him.  Her heart was found worthy for her womb to house the Son of God would have daily received Him into that same Immaculate Heart with a renewed and deeper love than at the Incarnation.  Her fiat would have echoed in her Amen.  Separated from His physical presence, she would have run to the Communion rail to taste that presence once again.  She would have offered herself yet again as the Sorrowful Mother at the foot of the Cross and renewed her commitment to be Mother of all the Elect just prior to receiving.  She would have overflowed with adoration and thanksgiving after her reception.  She would have longed to receive Him again when she wasn’t at Mass.  The love with which she received Him grew so much that upon receiving her Viaticum she was taken body and soul to Heaven.  She was and is always Our Lady of the Eucharist.

St. Louis de Montfort, Our Lady, and Holy Communion

Knowing that Our Lady’s disposition was perfect for receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist may inspire us to imitate her example, but that is not the reason why this reflection is necessary.  When Our Lord is received by one of her children, she flies to that child in order to adore His Eucharist presence.  As she draws closer to Jesus within the bosom of the believer, Jesus only draws closer to the believer.  Her act of adoration brings more glory to God than all earthly acts of adoration and He pours His pleasure of being in her presence out on this child of His Mother.

All of this may go on without our awareness or we might, following the advice of St. Louis de Montfort, actively and consciously participate in it.  The Saint says in The Secret of Mary that the best way to prepare for Holy Communion is to “implore that good Mother to lend you her heart, that you may receive her Son there with the same dispositions as her own.”  We pledge that if she will give us her heart, then we will place Jesus in it.  For those fortunate souls that who are consecrated to Jesus through Mary, the two of them during Holy Communion will lodge within our soul.  Our Lady will share with Our Lord all our needs and will glorify Him more than in our asking.  As St. Louis de Montfort puts it, “Let us allow the King and Queen to speak together. Let us not disturb their divine colloquies by our restless thoughts and unsettled desires. Let us entrust to them the care of our future and the choice of means.”

Devotion to the Mother of the Eucharist

Communion of Saints, Eucharist, Incarnation, Mary, , , , , , , , , ,

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.”