“ Ave verum Corpus natum de Maria Virgine!”
“ Hail, true Body born of the Virgin Mary! ”
On the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, our greatful thanks is raised to the Father, Who has given us the Divine Word, the living Bread come down from heaven, and our thanks is joyfully raised to the Virgin, Who offered the Lord his innocent Flesh and precious Blood which we receive at the altar. “Ave verum Corpus”: true Body, truely conceived through the work of the Holy Spirit, borne in the womb with ineffable love (Preface II of Advent), born for us of the Virgin Mary: “Natum de Maria Virgine”.
That divine Body and Blood, which after the consecration is present on the altar, is offered to the Father, and becomes Communion of love for everyone, by consolidating us in the unity of the Spirit in order to found the Church, preserves its maternal origin from Mary. She prepared the Body and Blood before offering them to the Word as a gift from the whole human family that he might be clothed in them in becoming our Redeemer, High Priest and Victim.
At the root of the Eucharist, therefore, there is the virginal and maternal life of Mary, her overflowing experience of God, her journey of faith and love, which through the work of the Holy Spirit made her flesh a temple and her heart an altar: because she conceived not according to nature, but through faith, with a free and a conscious act: an act of obedience. And if the Body that we eat and the Blood that we drink is the inestimable gift of the Risen Lord to us travellers, it still has in itself, as fragrant Bread, the taste and aroma of the Virgin Mother.
“Vere passum, immolatum in Cruce pro homine”. That Body truely suffered and was immolated on the Cross for man.
Born of the Virgin to be a pure, holy and immaculate oblation. Christ offered on the Cross the one perfect Sacrifice which every Mass in an unbloody manner, renews and makes present. In that one Sacrifice, Mary, the first redeemed, the Mother of the Church, had and active part. She stood near the Crucified, suffering deeply with her Firstborn; with a motherly heart she associated herself with his Sacrifice; with love she consented to his immolation (cf. “Lumen Gentium”, 58; “Marialis Cultus”, 20): she offered him and she offered herself to the Father. Every Eucharist is a memorial of that Sacrifice and that Passover that restored life to the world; every Mass puts us in intimate communion with her, the Mother, whose sacrifice “becomes present” just as the Sacrifice of her Son “becomes present” at the words of consecration of the bread and wine pronounced by the priest (cf. Discourse at the Celebration of the Word, 2 June 1983, n° 2).

“L’ Osservatore Romano”, N. 24 (788) - 13 June 1983, page 2,
Weekly edition in English.

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