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May 14, 2023This weekend, we celebrate Mother’s Day and we remember last week’s First Holy Communion received by six of our youth pictured above. Can you just imagine what it may have been like for Our Dear Blessed Mother to have received the Eucharist for the first time? St. John Paul the II helps us to reflect on this moment in his writing Ecclesia de Eucharistia (The Church draws her life from the Eucharist ). St. Pope John Paul II stated in his Encyclical in 2003, “for nine months, Mary had the Body and Blood of Jesus within her. At Mass, we receive the sacramental Body and Blood of Our Lord. . . . At the Annunciation, Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of His Body and Blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s Body and Blood.”
Our beloved Pope continued in his writing, “what must Mary have felt as she heard from the mouth of Peter, John, James and the other Apostles the words spoken at the Last Supper: ‘This is My Body which is given for you’ (Luke 22:19)? The body given up for us and made present under sacramental signs was the same body which she had conceived in her womb!” Then St. John Paul II tries to capture this beautiful event for us by stating . . . “For Mary, receiving the Eucharist must have somehow meant welcoming once more into her womb that heart which had beat in unison with hers.”
Like our dear Mother Mary, we are able to take Him into our very bodies, let us welcome Him into our minds, hearts and souls as we have the opportunity to bring His Real Presence into our very being like the Blessed Virgin Mary and then take Him to the world in all we do. As you leave the Basilica after this special Mother’s Day Mass or another, let us gaze on one of the most beautiful images in our Munich-style windows and as we leave — Our Lady receiving her Son, Our Lord, in the Eucharist for the first time by the hands of St. John. Let us promise to imitate the first great disciple of Our Lord, His Dear Mother, Our Mother, and be transformed by His presence within us. Take Him to the needy, the vulnerable, to those who hunger for His presence in their lives – let us become what we receive and let us feed others with the Bread of Life found dwelling within us.
