It would be conjecture to say how often or in what manner the Mother of God received the blessed sacrament. It is not hard to imagine that there must have been a flood of conflicting emotions that she would have experienced: grief at the loss she had suffered and that she could no longer hold her Son’s hand or kiss his face; joy that he was not lost to her; perhaps pride that in fact what he had already given her would now be available to the whole world through the transformation of something as simple as bread and wine.

What a curious and powerful experience it must have been for her, as the priest placed the body of Christ in her mouth, for her to realize that what she received was the very flesh that she had washed and cared for, the very flesh that had come from her body in the first place. When she received the body of Christ, what she received was her body as well, healed and glorified by the Incarnation. Surely, that had to be at least as awe-inspiring and shocking for her as the experience all those years earlier when the angel had announced God’s intention to her, and she had responded, “Be it done unto me according to thy will.”

If we are ever tempted to take the Holy Eucharist for granted, meditating on Mary’s relationship with the sacrament would be a fitting remedy. Her flesh is our flesh, after all. She is one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, as we are. When Christ took residence in her womb, he sanctified not just her flesh but all flesh. When we receive his body and blood in the blessed sacrament, we receive the fullness of him, but we also receive the fullest and truest of ourselves.

From Fr. Jonathan Mitchican in What Mary Received in the Eucharist