From Fiat to Amen
Posted On October 16, 2009
Two of the things for which Catholics are most known are devotion to Christ in the Eucharist and devotion to Mary. And in the last few years of his Pontificate, Pope John Paul II made it clear that the two devotions are inseparable.
In the midst of the Year of the Rosary (2002-2003), he issued an encyclical letter on the Eucharist: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. To many it came as a surprise, not only that he would present an encyclical on the Eucharist during the Year of the Rosary, but also that he would devote the entire final chapter to Mary under the title “At the School of Mary: ‘Woman of the Eucharist.’”
Reminding us that he had first used the phrase “at the school of Mary” in his earlier letter on the Rosary (Rosarium Virginis Mariae), he explains that Mary is “our teacher in contemplating Christ” in the Eucharist. She is “a woman of the Eucharist in her whole life,” he continues, and she “can guide us toward this most holy sacrament, because she herself has a profound relationship with it” (#53).
What is this “profound relationship?”
It begins, he explains, with her “interior disposition,” her “sheer abandonment to the word of God.” Emphasizing that the mystery of the Eucharist calls us all to this ‘sheer abandonment,” he points out that “there can be no one like Mary to act as our support and guide in acquiring this disposition” (#54).
How can we begin to learn from Mary?
To come to understand the Annunciation and Visitation from a Eucharistic perspective. There is “a profound analogy,” the pope writes, “between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body and blood of the Lord” (#55).
Mary, he says, was asked to believe that God Himself would take flesh in her, and by her Fiat she became “the first ‘tabernacle’ in history” (#55). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses it, “for the first time in the plan of salvation … the Father found the dwelling place where His Son and His Spirit could dwell among men” (#721).
As Mother Teresa loved to point out, the Annunciation was Mary’s First Communion. But she didn’t keep Christ for herself. She went “in haste” (Lk1:39) to take Him to her cousin Elizabeth. In this Visitation, Pope John Paul explains, she was a tabernacle, “in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed Himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating His light … through the eyes and the voice of Mary” (#55).
Each time you and I walk up to receive Communion, we, too, experience an annunciation and are called to visitation. The priest stands before us in place of the angel and announces to us: “The Body of Christ,” and through his words we, like Mary, are being asked to believe:
Do you believe that God Himself has taken flesh for you and wants to dwell in you? Are you willing to become a living tabernacle, bearing Christ to others, and allowing Him to radiate His light through you?
And we say, “Amen.” … “Fiat, Lord.” … “Let it be done to me according to your word.”