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It is not known exactly how many years the Virgin Mary lived after the ascension of her Son, Jesus, but she was active in the Church, as it is related in the Acts of the Apostles.
Jesus’ apostles began celebrating Mass shortly after his ascension and the Virgin Mary likely attended it.
For Mary, adoring Jesus in the Eucharist would have been a touching moment, feeling the real presence of her Son under the appearance of bread and wine.
St. Peter Julian Eymard wrote a series of meditations on the Virgin Mary, compiled in the book Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament.In it, he imagines what it would have been like for Mary to see Jesus in the Eucharist.
How much might be said of Mary s life of adoration in the Cenacle! Twenty-four years passed in that holy place in which Jesus instituted the Eucharist, in which He erected His first tabernacle! Mary was wholly employed in adoring and honoring Him in His Eucharistic life. She passed the greater part of her days and nights at the foot of that divine tabernacle, for there was her Jesus, her Son and her God.
What Eymard proposes is not based on any evidence, but he simply reflects on what it would have been like for Mary to adore the Eucharist, as she may have during those early years of the Church.
Mary s adoration was deep, interior, profound. It was the gift of her whole self. She offered herself entirely to the loving services of the Eucharist, for love lays down no conditions, no reservations. It no longer thinks of self, no longer lives for self. It is a stranger to itself, and it lives only for the God whom it loves. All in Mary turned toward the Blessed Sacrament as toward its centre and end. A current of grace and love was established between the Heart of Jesus in the Host and the heart of Mary adoring. They were two flames united into a single one. God was then perfectly adored by His creature!
When we approach Jesus in the Eucharist, may we cultivate the spirit of Mary within us and humble ourselves before our God, but most of all, before our Beloved.
And today we celebrate...