May – Month of Mary
Part
II: Mary guides the faithful to the
Eucharist
In his poem for May, Rosa Mystica, Gerard Manley Hopkins
develops this image in such a way that he finds that its real point of reference,
as Mary’s unswervingly ever was, is Christ:
Is Mary the rose then? Mary the tree?
But the blossom, the blossom there - who can it be? -
Who can her rose be? It could be but One:
Christ Jesus our Lord, her God and her son.
In the gardens of God, in the daylight divine,
Show me thy son, mother, mother of mine.
The last line here may
be regarded as alluding to a petition expressed in that lovely hymn Ave Maris Stella from the 8th
or 9th century: “Show thyself a mother” (‘Mostra te esse matrem’). As
the true Mother of all the living, since the same hymn reverses the archangel
Gabriel’s greeting “Ave” to “Eve”, Mary’s delight is to introduce humankind to
her divine Son, whose presence in the Eucharistic continuation of the
Incarnation graciously reveals and unites us as members of his Mystical Body.
The image of the rose
suggests yet another line of reflection from that in the first part of these considerations
for this month of Mary. The significance of this most beautiful flower as a
symbol of human intelligence is intuited by contemplatively gazing out on the
infinite, beyond our prosaic perceived horizons. The Italian poet Giacomo
Leopardi (1798-1837) fixed his gaze in such a direction, as he looked across a
hedge near Loreto. In an instant of quasi-mystical intuition, he discerned the
unique significance of the human vocation as consisting in looking towards the
infinite. This significance, permeated by its transcendent dimension, is nothing
other than a certain nostalgia for God. Nothing can ultimately distract the
human spirit from this sense, which is experienced along the whole human itinerary
of living, in which each one of us is called to be, in the French Jewish convert
to Christianity Léon Bloy’s memorable expression, “a pilgrim of the eternal,” rather
than becoming immersed and drowned in the ephemeral flotsam and jetsam of materialism.
Mary in her virginal
seeking to fulfill God’s will on earth as it is in heaven shows us, as a
Mother, how to discern the beauty of creation. She kindly leads us to Christ,
who taught us not to escape our responsibility to cultivate this world, but to
remain in it while not becoming corrupted by its tawdry false values. This does
not mean being starry-eyed dreamers. Rather, we have the task of caring for
creation, which is an urgent contemporary concern today, as constantly emphasized
by Pope Francis. In his Encyclical Letter, Laudato
Sì (24 May 2015, Solemnity of Pentecost), taking his inspiration from his
namesake’s joy-filled praise of God for his work of restoring creation to its
real significance, he points to Mary’s divine Son Jesus who “lived in full
harmony with creation” (paragraph 98). At the end of this truly challenging letter
to all people today, Pope Francis states:
Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, now cares with maternal affection
and pain for this wounded world. Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of
Jesus, so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the
creatures of this world laid waste by human power… Hence, we can ask her to
enable us to look at this world with eyes of wisdom (paragraph 241).
In a short but significant journey
Pope Francis follows his three predecessors in making a pilgrimage to the
Marian shrine of Fatima, to mark the centenary of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s six
appearances in successive months beginning on the 13th
of May 1917 to three shepherd children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco,
the latter two he is adding to the list of saints.
Addressing German pilgrims the Wednesday prior to this pilgrimage, the Holy Father
said “let us entrust ourselves to Mary, Mother of hope, who invites us to turn
our gaze towards salvation, towards a new world and a new humanity.”
The 13th of May is also doubly
significant for members of two Congregations of the Blessed Sacrament and all
lay associates of this religious family, founded by St Peter-Julian Eymard, “that
eminent apostle of the Eucharist”. For this day is when Eymard, who had spent
seventeen years in the Society of Mary, had in 1856 the joy of realising, as he
said, that “Mary led him to the Eucharist.” These words recall what St John
Paul II would point out: “Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist” (Encyclical
Letter, Redemptoris Mater [25 March
1987, Solemnity of the Annunciation], paragraph n.44). On this same day Eymard’s
Congregations of the Blessed Sacrament likewise celebrate the Feast of Our Lady
of the Blessed Sacrament. While this title, which according to the tradition in
the Blessed Sacrament Congregation was used by their founder, he also honoured
Mary by another title: Our Lady or Queen
of the Cenacle, which more profoundly and richly celebrates her prayerful presence
together with the disciples and the women at the beginning of the Church at the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts of the Apostles, 1:14). It was in that same
Upper Room or Cenacle where Jesus gave us himself in the Eucharistic mystery. St
Peter-Julian Eymard, inspired by Mary’s attitude of prayerful recollection of
the Word made Eucharist, came to realise the importance of acquiring the deepest
meaning of the “interior cenacle” in us as fostered by adoration and also, especially,
by receiving Communion, the grace of which impels us to serve all God’s
children and the least of his creatures in love.
Image
above:
Stained-glass window in the General House of the
Blessed Sacrament Congregation, Rome.
See also my reflections
in Second Spring, May 2017: “All is
Grace A Spiritual Reflection” –
Online:
https://www.secondspring.co.uk/2017/05/07/all-is-grace/
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