CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY

Our Lady and
Eucharistic Devotion

by Jerome J. Hastrick, D.D.

Our Lady was not at the Last Supper. I suppose, one of the reasons for her absence is so we would not confuse her with the Apostles, that we might not think she was ordained. However, the Blessed Mother had a very real role at the Sacrifice of Calvary - the first Holy Mass.

She was the first among believers. It is the office of the priest to consecrate Our Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist upon the altar. The faithful join with the priest in offering our Eucharistic Lord to His heavenly Father. Our Lady freely offered her Son to His heavenly Father. She had done this already at the Annunciation by accepting the burdens of her Divine maternity by giving her "fiat." And she continued throughout her life to freely accept the sufferings that came to her because she was the Mother of the Redeemer: Simeon's prophecy, the flight into Egypt with the Child and St. Joseph, seeing Our Lord attacked by the Pharisees and Sadducees during His public life.

The Body and Blood of Christ that we receive in Holy Communion and offer to the heavenly Father is the Body taken from the Blessed Mother. So she had an intimate part in the Sacrifice that was begun at the Last Supper but ended on Calvary. She was there at the foot of the Cross uniting her sufferings to those of her Divine Son.

In 1917 when Our Lady came to Fatima to admonish the world to repent of its sins - it was a much different world than it is today. At that time there was strong family life. Divorce was almost unheard of. No respectable paper would have announced the remarriage of a divorced person. Artificial birth control was not approved of. Abortion was unthinkable. Yes, there were burlesque shows in the large cities that were shocking, but nothing in comparison to the pornographic pictures available everywhere throughout the world today. The crime rate in 1917 was nothing compared to what it is today.

Our Lady of Fatima asks us to pray, especially the Rosary, to wear the Brown Scapular of Mt. Carmel, to repent of our sins, to perform sacrifices, and to make reparation. Only God knows what evil we have brought upon ourselves through unrepented sins. We must return to prayer, and to pray in earnest. We must go to confession, we must return to the regular practice of sacramental Penance. We must learn the Faith and teach it with integrity and hand it down to our children along with the many Catholic customs that so many have forgotten and put aside. And we must make reparation to our Lord, especially to the Eucharistic Heart of Christ.

Let us open our churches and go find Him there. Let us initiate and revive the practice of Solemn Benedictions, Forty Hour Devotions, All Night Vigils, and Perpetual Adoration.

We need to bring back devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. There has been a tremendous loss of devotion. When we had Our Lord, our churches were different from all the Protestant churches. Now many of them are no different. They are locked all week. Catholics only go there Sunday and largely to hear a prayer, a service of the Word, and little attention is paid to the Real Presence. In fact, it is doubtful as to how many Catholics believe in Our Lord's Real Presence. Why is this? In part, because the Tabernacle has been moved from the main altar, from a place of prominence in the church.

I hope that you good people will do what you can to spread the word that our Faith is centered on the Eucharist. We are not a book religion; we are a Person religion. We believe that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ left this world and ascended into Heaven, yet remained on this earth and will continue to be with us here in the Most Blessed Sacrament until the end of time. This is what our Faith is all about.

I never realized quite so much the tremendous absence of Our Lord in other Christian churches as I did one time when visiting the Upper Room in Gethsemene on the Mount of Olives in the Holy Land. I was there with a group of pilgrims and we had to wait outside the room because a Protestant minister was doing something that he was not allowed to do. He was holding a service there. He had brought along his bread and his wine and was having "the Lord's Supper." In the course of his talk he said: "Now isn't this wonderful we can be here on the very spot where Jesus was and ate the Last Supper. And that we can hope to experience again in eternity that we will eat with the Lord." In other words, Protestants do not have our Lord here now on earth. They believe that He is not here. They have to wait until they die to be with Him in eternity. I thought of what a wonderful thing it was that our Lord left us Himself and He left us Himself in our churches.

Let us pray to Our Lady, who appeared at Fatima a year after the Angel came to the three little children, spoke to them about the Most Holy Eucharist, and gave them Holy Communion. Let us realize that the greatest honor that we can pay to the Virgin Mary is to bring Our Lord back to the world, so to speak. She suffered so much to give Him to us and we will have to suffer to keep Him in the world of today.

The late Most. Rev. Jerome J. Hastrick was the Bishop of Gallup, New Mexico.