Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: Mary and the truth of the Eucharist

# Quote

**”My flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.”** (John 6:55)

## Mariology and the Eucharist

«My flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink». With these words from John 6, Jesus intensifies his discourse on the Bread of Life to such a degree that many of his disciples abandon him: «This saying is hard; who can listen to it?» (John 6:60). Here lies the densest, most unbearable, and most glorious core of the Fourth Gospel: the Son of God offers his flesh as food and his blood as drink. Mariology finds in this Eucharistic mystery its deepest foundation: the flesh that Jesus offers is the flesh he received from Mary.

## I. The Word «Truly»: Eucaristic Realism and Incarnation

John 6:55 uses the adverb *alethōs*, «truly», twice: Jesus’ flesh is truly eaten, his blood is truly drunk. This *truly* is a denial of Docetism: the Son of God does not have a mere apparent or symbolic flesh, he has real, human flesh that can be eaten as real food. The force of this affirmation becomes clear only in light of the historical context of the controversy with Docetism, which denied the reality of Jesus’ flesh.

The *truly* of the Eucharist directly refers to the *truly* of Incarnation. The flesh that Jesus offers as food is the same flesh he assumed within Mary: human flesh, with all its dimensions of fragility, history, and temporality. The Eucharist is not the presence of a generic divinity, but the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, with his particular history, his concrete and unique humanity.

The Fathers of the Church explored this connection deeply. Ignatius of Antioch, resisting Docetism, insisted that the Eucharist is «the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh that suffered for our sins and that the Father, in his goodness, raised». This resurrected flesh is the same that was born of Mary, glorified but not dehumanized. Resurrection does not abolish Jesus’ humanity: it transfigures it, elevates it, but maintains it as a permanent mediator of encounter with God.

The connection between Incarnation and Eucharist is one of the major themes in patristic and medieval Eucharistic theology. Thomas Aquinas, in *Summa Theologiae* III q.73-83, developed the idea that the Eucharist is the culmination of Incarnation: the Son of God not only assumes humanity in Mary but makes his humanity the permanent food of the Church. Incarnation is the premise of the Eucharist; the Eucharist is the dynamic continuation of Incarnation.

## II. The Flesh of Mary: Foundation of the Eucharistic Flesh

**The Mariological Theology and the Direct Connection Between Mary’s Flesh and the Eucharistic Flesh of Jesus**

Mariology has early on intuited that there is a direct connection between Mary’s flesh and Christ’s eucharistic flesh. The most direct Latin expression is attributed to Pseudo-Augustine, but the intuition permeates the entire tradition: “flesh of Christ, flesh of Mary,” Christ’s flesh is Mary’s flesh. God’s Son did not bring His flesh from heaven; He received it from Mary through the action of the Holy Spirit.

St. Peter Damian, in the 11th century, exclaimed: “What we eat on the altar is what was born of Mary, what grew up in Nazareth, what was crucified on Calvary.” This identity is not merely biological but theological, soteriological, and eucharistic. The flesh that Jesus received from Mary is the same He offers to the Church as food—not a generic flesh, but one with history, with a face, with a Mother.

Eadmer of Canterbury, a disciple of Anselm, deepened this intuition in the context of debates about the Immaculate Conception: if Christ’s eucharistic flesh comes from Mary, then her sanctity has direct implications for the sanctity of the Eucharist. The Mother who provided the flesh to the Son could not be less pure than what was required by the dignity of the mystery she generated. This led to the argument of convenience for the Immaculate Conception: the Son who becomes food for the Church deserved a Mother whose flesh was immaculate.

Liturgy expressed this connection in the feast of Mary, Mother of God (January 1st), and in ancient votive Masses dedicated to Mary, where contemplation of the Mother led to contemplation of the Eucharistic Son. Advent, which prepares for the coming of the Son, is the par excellence Marian season, and the Eucharist is the “permanent presence of Advent,” the mystery in which the Son continues to “come” into the world through His flesh.

**III. “Whoever eats my flesh remains in me”: The Eucharistic Communion and the Marian Model**

John 6:56: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” The theme of “remaining” (menein) is central in the Fourth Gospel and appears here in an eucharistic context. The Eucharist is the sacrament of permanence: whoever receives it enters into a real and lasting communion with Christ, which persists beyond the sacramental moment and progressively configures the believer to the Lord.

Mary, who for nine months bore the Son in her womb, is the most perfect image of this Eucharistic communion. She was the first “tabernacle,” the first to “receive” the Body of Christ in the most literal sense. The Fathers explored this analogy with great fertility: Mary’s womb is the most sacred “temple” where the Word “dwelt,” eskēnōsen, fully and uniquely (John 1:14).

Medieval Eucharistic mysticism, particularly that of Saint Bonaventure, Saint Gertrude of Helfta, and Blessed Angela of Foligno, developed a contemplation of Mary as a model of Eucharistic communion. Receiving the Eucharist is, in a sense, repeating Mary’s “fiat”: opening her heart to the Son’s arrival, making herself “place” where he dwells. Communing in the Eucharist is not a passive act but an active reception, a renewed “yes” to the Son who comes.

The expression Anima Christi, the ancient Eucharistic prayer, asks to be “absorbed” into Christ’s Body: “In hora mortis meae voca me, et iube me venire ad te” (“At the hour of my death call me and command me to come to you”). This desire to “remain” in Christ until the end is precisely what Mary accomplished exemplarily: she who always lived in communion with the Son, who never turned away from him nor on the Cross nor at the Cenacle, is the model of the Christian who “eats the flesh” of Christ and “remains” in him.

IV. The Eucharist and the Hope of Resurrection: Mary’s Assumption and Glorified Flesh

John 6:54: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” The Eucharist is not just food for the present but the seed of future resurrection. Christ’s glorified flesh, received sacramentally, transforms the believer’s body from within, orienting it toward definitive glorification.

Mary’s Assumption, in this perspective, is the anticipatory fulfillment of the Eucharistic promise. She who bore in her body the Son’s flesh, flesh that would become Eucharistic, was herself translated in body and soul to glory. Mary’s body, which was the first “tabernacle” of the Eucharist in a broad sense, was the first to participate in the glorification promised to all believers through the Eucharist.

The theology of the Assumption and the theology of the Eucharist are thus deeply convergent: both affirm the dignity of human flesh as a destination for transfiguration and glory. Both resist spiritualism that devalues the body. Both rest on the real Incarnation of the Son of God. The flesh Jesus took from Mary, which he offers in the Eucharist, which he glorified at his Resurrection and Assumption, is always the same flesh, not a symbol but a reality.

Contemplating the Eucharist naturally leads to Marian contemplation: gazing upon the Host and remembering the source of that flesh. Remembering Mary when celebrating the Eucharist is not a sentimental devotion, but a theological necessity: the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist is the flesh He received from Mary, and contemplating it without recalling the Mother is forgetting an essential dimension of the mystery of Incarnation.

**”My dear, truly is the food,”** the flesh that Jesus offers is the flesh He received from Mary. Contemplating the Eucharist is contempling the mystery of Incarnation within the Virgin’s womb.

### References

– St. Thomas Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae* III q.73-83.
– Pius XII, *Munificentissimus Deus*, n. 14 (1950).
– John Paul II, *Ecclesia de Eucharistia*, cap. VI: “In the School of Mary, the Eucharistic Woman” (2003).
– Ignatius of Antioch, *Ad Smyrnaeos* 7.
– Eadmer of Canterbury, *De Excellentia Virginis Mariae*.