How Mary Opens the Gates to Christ

How is our Blessed Mother connected to the Eucharist? Sr. Mary Grace, Sr. Ann Immaculée, and Sr. Marie Veritas reflect on the significance of the Eucharist, emphasizing Mary's role in unlocking the gates to Jesus so that we can receive him more profoundly. The Sisters remind us that God wants to give us the same radical, obedient, and trustful openness in our hearts to him that Mary had throughout her life.

“The mass is the great act of contemplation. Mary herself is the great contemplative.”- Cardinal O’Connor

Quotes

• “The mass is the great act of contemplation. Mary herself is the great contemplative. I try to stress very strongly that the Christ in Bethlehem is the Christ of Galilee, the Christ of the crucifixion, and the Christ of the resurrection is the Christ of the Eucharist; it is the same Christ. It is the same Mary that gave us the Christ child of Bethlehem, who gives us the Eucharistic Christ and the holy sacrifice of the mass. We almost blithely use the words in the Hail Mary. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. We could well afford to use these words at the moment of Holy Communion. This is the fruit of the womb of Mary that we are receiving. That's the Eucharistic Christ, the same Christ that was born in Bethlehem, the fruit of the womb of Mary.”- Cardinal O’Connor
  
  
• “The Eucharistic Christ not simply radiates divine light to the world, but pulls the world together. This is the unifying role of the Eucharist, the body torn from the cross, the body united in the resurrection in this Christ that we see before us. Christ is pulling the world together.”- Cardinal O’Connor
  
  
• After we have received the body and blood of Christ, we're even more chaste temples. Are we preoccupied, he asks, in our attendance at the mass? Are we caught up in a thousand different cares? Are we distracted by the noise around us? Because as He humanized Himself for us, He wants to divinize us in the sacrament of the Eucharist.- Cardinal O’Connor
  

Challenges of the Week

• Pray one rosary this week and imagine the Eucharist in each mystery of Christ’s life.
• Make an act of faith next time you’re in the presence of the Eucharist
• Meditate on this poem written by Sr. Veritas:
  • “ Everything is beautiful because you are there, you are there, O traveling word bearer, who contain in your depths the rush and spill of a thousand galaxies prostrate, brimmed with every lily curve and sparrow trill and frozen field furrow.
    
    A genuflection of all good things to the source of all good things. All worship is home in you, O Mother Maiden, Brown faced and small, who step lightly upon the road.
    
    The stones receive the tread of their mother and cry out for joy under the weight of their maker. The great lonely sky nestles against your breast, pale aching blue pressed against worn linen, to drink of your embrace, oh mother maiden.
    
    All things find their home in you, oh tabernacle of life. Generations of bird call and centuries of trembling grasses and all the fragile memory of ocean foam flock to your breath. The rustle of your skirt, the bend of your heart, as you step lightly upon the road, all are drawn to you. Lean and gather beneath your heart, safe in your tender transparency, O kind eyed child queen.
    
    Traveling word bearer. Oh, mother maiden Maria.”