Michael F. Hull
Devotion to the Holy Eucharist and devotion to Our Lady are so closely bound as to be inseparable. As Mother and Son are united in an “indissoluble tie” (Lumen gentium, no. 53), so too devotion to Mother and Son are tightly linked. This is expressed most beautifully by the medieval religious poem “Ave Verum,” immortalized as a motet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791.
In his encyclical letter Ecclesia
de Eucharistia, the late Pope John Paul II devotes the sixth and final
chapter to Mary, which he entitles “At the School of Mary: ‘Woman of the
Eucharist.’” Therein, the pope points out significant parallels in the lives of
Jesus and Mary. For example, Jesus’ words at the Last Supper—“Do this in
remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19)—echo Mary’s words at the Wedding at
During the public ministry of the
Lord, Mary is rarely in the foreground. Except for the Wedding at
Throughout the history of the Church, the saints have understood this truth. Two examples will suffice. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose expressed the hope that all of his people would inculcate the spirit of Mary as a means to glorify God: “May the heart of Mary be in each Christian to proclaim the greatness of the Lord; may her spirit be in everyone to exult in God.” Similarly, fourteen hundred years later St. John Bosco had a vision of two pillars anchoring the bark of Peter in the midst of a stormy sea: the pillar of the Eucharist and the pillar of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The larger pillar, that of the Eucharist, had the words “Salvation of Believers” and the smaller, that of Mary, “Help of Christians.”
Mary is, indeed, the help of Christians, leading them to Jesus and the Eucharist. Devotion to Our Lady is always together with devotion to Our Lord, especially in the Eucharist, as the Church sings: “Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine….”