Pondering Mary’s life as continual adoration

As the mother of Jesus, Mary was one of the first to gaze upon the face of her divine Son. At the Annunciation, Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and responded to the Archangel Gabriel with her yes to God’s call to bear his Son into the world. In her Magnificat, Mary sang praise for the divine love and mercy that was reconciling humanity to friendship with God. At Jesus’ birth, Mary joined the chorus of angels in glorifying God for the wonder of the Incarnation. With Joseph, and in the company of the shepherds and the three wise men, Mary revered the Word-made-Flesh in silent adoration before his sacred presence. Throughout his public ministry, Mary witnessed Jesus’ love for the poor and his signs, miracles, and healings as the unveiling of God’s reign on earth. At Calvary, Mary shared uniquely, as his mother, in her son’s suffering and death on the cross. After the Resurrection and the Ascension, Mary waited in joyful hope for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Mary “lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist” because she bore in her own body the body of Christ, which she brought into the world (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, par. 55). Mary is, as Pope John Paul II noted, a “‘woman of the Eucharist’ in her whole life” (par. 53). It is this unique relationship of Mary to the Eucharist, to the Church, and to the faithful that the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres evokes in his striking masterpiece, The Virgin Adoring the Host. In his ethereal vision, Ingres imagines Mary praying before the sacred Host in the presence of two saints. The work reminds us that Mary intercedes always for us, and it invites us to join Mary as she contemplates the Eucharistic presence of Jesus, her divine Son.

When we accept God’s invitation to the sacred feast of the Eucharist, we follow in the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the “woman of the Eucharist.” She is the “first tabernacle of the New Covenant,” and her yes to the Archangel Gabriel echoes in our amen as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Offering to Jesus, the Bread of Life, our lives, our families, our work, and all of creation, we glimpse a foretaste of the eternal, heavenly banquet, the goal of our worship and life. To that future sacred feast, in the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the company of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the angels and saints, and the communion of the Church, we have also been invited.