Mary and the Eucharist in the Light of the Writings of St. Louis de Montfort

Mary and the Eucharist in the Light of the Writings of St. Louis de Montfort

 

The title of this article is, . . .

. . . “Mary and the Eucharist in the Light of the Writings of St. Louis de Montfort.”  Let me preface my brief and all too incomplete study by saying that if we were to assess the contribution that St. Louis de Montfort made to the theology and spirituality of the Eucharist by the relatively little he wrote on the subject, we might be inclined to think that his legacy to us in this matter is minimal, if anything at all, compared to what he left us on True Devotion to Mary.

But upon closer inspection, as I hope to point out in this paper, we will find that St. Louis de Montfort did leave us a spiritual treasure not only on the Eucharist as a Sacrifice or a Sacramental Presence, but he has left us a method of how to receive Christ in the Eucharist, in union with Mary. It will be my privilege to explore this subject with you, in the hope of giving you a broader perspective on the complete doctrine and spirituality of our Saint who is known mostly for his writings on True Devotion to the Mother of God.

Montfort’s Writings are Christocentric

Before speaking of Mary and the Eucharist in the Writings of St. Louis de Montfort, it may be well to point out at the very outset, that our Saint’s writings are Christocentric, that is to say, centered on Christ and not on Mary. Secondly, if we view the Eucharist from the point of view of a sacrifice, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we must remember that “the Mass is entirely relative to the Cross and Mary entirely relative to Christ” (Laurentin, Our Lady and the Mass, Intro. P. 10).

Montfort himself put it beautifully when he wrote: Mary is altogether relative to God; and indeed I might well call her the relation to God. She only exists with reference to God. She is the echo of God who says nothing, repeats nothing but God” (T.D. #205). And thirdly, that the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist is the same body – although now in His resurrected state – which Mary brought forth at Bethlehem. Therefore, anything and everything that can be said about the relationship between Mary and the Eucharist must ultimately find its justification in Mary’s divine Maternity.

To understand the relationship between Mary and the Eucharist . . .

. . . in the doctrine and spirituality of St. Louis de Montfort, we have to recall that our Saint was heir to what has become known as the French School of Spirituality. This school of spirituality traces its origin to the writings of Cardinal de Berulle, the founder of the Oratory in France. He, in turn, was succeeded by such names as Father de Condren, Bourgoing, St. Francis de Sales, St. John Eudes and Monsieur Olier, founder of St. Sulpice, to name but a few.

The French School of Spirituality Stresses The Mystery of the Incarnation and . . .

The central theme of this school of doctrine and spirituality was the great stress laid on the mystery of the Incarnation and the life of Christ in us and Mary’s role in this two-fold mystery. This doctrine is beautifully summed up in Monsieur Olier’s famous prayer: “O Jesus, living in Mary, come and live in Thy servants, in the spirit of Thy holiness, in the fullness of Thy might, in the truth of Thy virtues, in the perfection of Thy ways, in the Communion of Thy mysteries, subdue every hostile power in Thy spirit, for the glory of the Father. Amen.”

This same relationship between Mary and the Incarnate Word living in us, was also well summed up by Vatican Il, in Nos. 61 and 62 of the Constitution on the Church. I quote: “The Blessed Virgin was eternally predestined, in conjunction with the incarnation of the divine Word, to be the Mother of God . . . She conceived, brought forth and nourished Christ. She presented Him to the Father in the temple, and was united with Him in suffering as He died on the Cross. In an utterly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the Saviour’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls.

. . .  the Life of Christ in Us . . .

For this reason, she is a mother to us in the order of grace. This maternity in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the Cross. This maternity will last without interruption until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. For, taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving role, but by her manifold acts of intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal salvation. ”

. . . and Mary’s Role

The “gifts of eternal salvation” refer, above all, to the gift of her divine Son, Jesus, Who comes into our souls through grace, but also and in a very unique way through the Sacramental Presence in the Eucharist. For St. Louis de Montfort, as for the Church as a whole, Jesus in the Eucharist is as much the Son of Mary as He was at Bethlehem or on Calvary.

It may well be at this point to attempt to describe the theological or doctrinal atmosphere that prevailed in Montfort’s time.

Namely in the second half of the seventeenth century when our Saint was completing his theological studies. It has been compared to a “foggy” day, when the sun is vaguely seen through the dank, cold, over-hanging mist; a time when the faith had lost all its splendor, its heat, its life. (A. L’houmeau, Vie Spirituelle å l’école du Bx. L.M. Grignion de Montfort, p. 18). This is what Jansenism has done to the Church: it had cast a shadow on the very central mystery of the Incarnation, a dogma around which revolve all the other mysteries of our faith. From Apostolic times, through the Fathers of the Church and the scholastic theologians, this dogma had been the source of rich consequences for Mary’s Spiritual Maternity, her role and prerogatives, limited only by her condition as a creature.

God Could Not Make a Mother . . .

This Marian theology can be summed up in the well known axiom that, “God could not make a Mother greater than the Mother of God” (L’houmeau, pp. 18-19). And, of course, with Mary there was the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, of which she is also the Mother. In probing this mystery, which is but an extension of the Incarnation, theology had shed much light on the nature and the life of the Church.

But Jansenism had put a damper on all this, and although its adherents professed to believe in the Incarnation, they had reduced this dogma strictly to the fact of a God-Man redeeming mankind, stripping it of all its rich consequences. As a contemporary, Cardinal Pie, wrote, they no longer wished “Christianity to be the religion of the Son of Mary;” and if they accepted the Son of God, born of a woman, it was by honoring the Son, but by rejecting the Mother of whom He was born. Thus, they questioned Mary’s Immaculate Conception and her Assumption; narrowing down her prerogatives and discrediting devotion to her. Logical in their error they ended by attacking the divine institution of the Church and the powers of its Chief Shepherd, the Holy Father in Rome.

. . . Greater than the Mother of God

When it came to the subject of Holy Communion, the Jansenists maintained that “for the proper reception of Holy Communion a certain perfection on the part of the dispositions of the recipient was a necessary prerequisite” [B. Matteucci; New Cath. Encyclopedia, McGraw Hill, “Jansenistic Piety: (Vol VII, p. 825)]. And thus, under the pretext that we are unworthy to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion – since He is God and we are sinners – they discouraged people from receiving frequent Holy Communion. [Looking back, now, we can see that some of these ideas came down to our own century. In 1905 and 1910, Pope St. Pius X had to come out with two decrees urging the faithful to frequent, even daily Communion, and to let the children receive once they had reached the age of reason, which he said was normally around seven years of age (Pius X: A Country Priest, by Igino Giordani, Bruce 1954, pp.93-97).]

 

It was in this somewhat cold spiritual climate of a Christianity . . .

 

. . . that was being stripped of its warmth and life-giving elements that St. Louis de Montfort was to appear upon the scene. To the rigid, legalistic approach to God of the Jansenists, he was to oppose the infinite mercy and love of God for sinners; to their cold, formalistic approach to Mary, he was to oppose a true and tender devotion to the Mother of God; and to their groundless opposition to frequent Communion, he answered by preaching frequent, even weekly Communion at times.

It Was Through the Most Holy Virgin Mary that Jesus Came into the World . . .

As I stated in the first part of this article, to understand the relationship between Mary and the Holy Eucharist, in the writings of St. Louis de Montfort, we must remember that our Saint built his doctrine, as well as his spirituality, around the theme of Jesus Living in Mary – a theme which began with the Incarnation of the Son of God in her womb; a theme which reveals God’s eternal plan for man’s salvation and Mary’s maternal role in that plan. And that role, Montfort expressed clearly in the first section of his book, True Devotion to Mary when he wrote: “It was through the most holy Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He has to reign in the world.”

In other words, Montfort sees Jesus coming into the world through Mary, the first time at Bethlehem; Jesus coming into the world of souls until the end of time, through Mary. Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Bethlehem, Jesus of Calvary, Jesus in the Eucharist, are all one and the same risen Christ who wants to be our way, our truth, our life – the very food of our souls. And Mary is the Mother of that Jesus, in all the mysteries of His life, death and resurrection, and Jesus is the Son of Mary. He is as much “the fruit of her womb” in the Eucharist, as He is on Calvary or at Bethlehem.

. . . and it is also Through Her that . . .

In God’s plan of our salvation and sanctification, Jesus and Mary are so intimately united, he tells us, that it would be “easier to separate the light from the sun, the heat from the fire, nay, it would be easier to separate Thee from all the Angels and the Saints” than to separate Thee from Mary (T.D. #63).

Now since the Eucharist, as I have implied, can only be understood in the light of the economy, or plan, of the Incarnation in which Mary was to provide the Body and Blood to be shed for us on the Cross, in the person of the Son of God, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it is only proper that we should inquire further into her role, if any, in the Eucharist which her Son bequeathed to us at the Last Supper and which He consummated in the sacrifice of the Cross. And this is precisely what St. Louis de Montfort set out to do, though not in a dry, speculative way – after the manner of the Jansenists – but in his customary warm and practical way.

In theology, the Eucharist can be viewed, broadly speaking, under three aspects: It may be viewed as a Sacrifice, the renewal on our altars in an unbloody manner of the Sacrifice of Calvary; it may be viewed as Communion, a meal, a Eucharistic Banquet, in which Christ becomes the food of our souls, according to his command: “Take ye and eat. This is my Body. Take ye and drink. This is my Blood.” Or it can be viewed as a Presence, a permanent Presence, a Sacramental Presence, by which Christ remains with us body, soul, humanity and divinity, under the appearance of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament of the Altar.

. . . He has to Reign in the World

Since St. Louis de Montfort was not a theologian by profession, one would search in vain in his writings for a theological treatise on Mary and the Eucharist. Montfort was a spiritual writer whose scriptural and theological insights continue to delight many a theological scholar. And indeed, it is truly amazing to see how this “hyper-active” missionary, who spent the better part of his brief priestly career of 16 years, walking from village to village preaching parish missions and feeding the poor each day, how he could have written so much.

Furthermore, how he could have summarized, in such a concise and popular manner, the most profound and the most important truths that theology and the Holy Fathers of the Church have to offer on Mary, the Mother of God, especially on devotion to her. On this latter subject, of course, we must admit his profound erudition, but even more importantly, what I would call his remarkable “theological sense,” a sense which he no doubt acquired from his Patristic
Studies but also from those insights which are the fruit of contemplation and which God bestows on His saints.

When Viewing the Eucharist as a Sacrifice

When viewing the Eucharist as a Sacrifice, St. Louis de Montfort saw Mary in her co-redemptive role, standing at the foot of the Cross, uniting herself and her sufferings to those of her divine Son for the salvation of mankind. Describing Christ’s mysterious and loving dependence on Mary, His Mother, he writes that Christ was dependent on Mary, “in His conception, in His birth, in His presentation in the Temple, in His hidden life of thirty years, and even in His death, where she was to be present in order that He might make with her but one same sacrifice and be immolated to the Eternal Father by her consent; just as Isaac of old was offered by Abraham’s consent to the will of God.

It is she who nourished Him, supported Him, brought Him up and then sacrificed Him for us” (T.D. #18).

 

(To be continued)