Prayer formulated by H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti on 29th October 2006
Feast of the Mother of the Eucharist
To you God One and Triune, One in nature, Triune in persons, Equal in divinity, goes first of all our praise and our love. Before You, adoring and reverent, we bow down proclaiming Your universal fatherhood, praising Your love that reached crucifixion and death and exalting your works throughout the centuries of the Church history.
Today, allow us, Lord, our Father, to address the one You loved and thought since eternity: Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. Today we celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of the public apparitions of the Mother of the Eucharist. In these thirteen years, different realities have changed in the world and in the Church. Your mother, our mother has come and continues to come silently in this place against which, unfortunately, the wickedness and oppositions of men are still raging. However, in the world, out of Italy and especially out of Rome, the triumph of the Mother of the Eucharist has been affirmed: many congregations have arisen named after Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, churches dedicated to her have been built and prayer groups of the Mother of the Eucharist have multiplied. In every part of the world, even where there is now strong opposition to Christianity, as in the lands inhabited by Muslims, Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, is known and loved. Our Mother has reserved for herself the task of bringing her children, Your children my God, to salvation and eternal happiness. We thank her because first of all she had so much patience with us, she corrected us with her maternal calls in the moments of our weakness and encouraged us in moments of trial that never seemed to have an end.
The Bishop and the Seer would have collapsed, without her maternal help, under the blows inflicted with cruelty and continuity by the men of the world, but above all by those of the Church: her presence among us was strong in a particular way.
Mary, today we want to celebrate you in the most solemn way, you have always said that you are a queen without a crown, you are queen because God has placed in your hands His omnipotence dispensing your children with graces and help, with miracles and interventions. Today, in our hearts, we have a long list of graces to ask you. Everyone of us is asking you in the silence of our heart, is asking you something and you know how to recognize the pleas and requests of the one and the other and, as you have taught us, we always conclude with the sentence: "Anyway be done the will of God".
Mother, I, Bishop ordained by God, particularly entrust the Church to you, your Son founded it, for it He suffered, died, shed His blood that is your blood, but today it is encrusted with so many realities that do not reflect its nature. Do remove these encrustations, give back to the Church its youthful, serene, poor and humble face. The Church must be poor, must make the choice of poverty. The Church must address with greater care and attention the poor even, as you said, by selling its treasures, its valuables and its riches: the more the Church is poor the more it is rich, that is to say that the more it is humanly weak the more it is spiritually strong.
"I will be with you" said Christ your Son and he kept his word, but it seems that men, occasionally or frequently, want to put Him in a corner, replacing Him and taking His place; so they sin like Lucifer, against You, my God.
Give all pastors humility and simplicity of heart, pure feelings: deep love, sincere faith and unshakable hope. Yes, I entrust the Church to Your hands. You know, my Lord, I do nothing but repeat what You want: I entrust the Church to You, may it be renewed and triumphant over evil, make it free from all weight, bond and human dependence. It must shine with grace and love together with all its children. My Lord, how many have you already brought and how many will soon reach the Heaven! What a consolation, what a joy You have given us today by revealing to us some realities and by opening your heart to certain secrets and allowing us, as Padre Pio said, to read Your mysterious book.
Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, thanks for everything, please continues to be close to us. We need you, we want to feel your love, your affection and enjoy your protection. We want to be your children and enclose our reality in one adjective: Marian Eucharistic children.
To praise and glory of the Trinity for the renewal of the Church, for the salvation of the world, for our holiness. For Christ our Lord. Amen.