In a beautiful work by St. Peter Julian Eymard entitled Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, the great Apostle of the Holy Eucharist speaks about the hidden (interior) life of the Saints, and in particular, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He emphasizes that all the virtues, graces, and privileges received by the Virgin Mary can be seen most perfectly in her interior life of prayer and recollection. This is what St. Peter Julian writes:
Mary adorned with all gifts, enriched with all virtues, perfect in all her graces, appeared to the world under a most ordinary exterior. There was nothing brilliant in her actions, her virtues were not striking, her life was passed in silence and obscurity, and the Gospel narrative says nothing of it. This was because Mary was to be the model of the life hidden in God with Jesus Christ, which we ought to honour and faithfully copy in our conduct. I wish to show that the law of holiness which God follows in our souls, is the same that He followed in Mary.
The Church sings of Mary: "All the glory of the King's daughter is within." Such is the character of Mary's sanctity. Nothing exterior, nothing known, all to God alone and known to Him alone. And yet Mary was the holiest, the most perfect of creatures. More beloved of God than any other creature, the Blessed Virgin received from His goodness graces that are the richest and the best, and gifts that are the most excellent.
The question that needs to be asked is this: From where did the Virgin Mary receive such extraordinary graces in order to have such a deep interior life with God? Most Catholics would reply, "From her Immaculate Conception." And in a very real sense, this is of course true. Being conceived without Original Sin is what gave Our Lady the ability to respond to the exceptional graces that she had received from God. Her Divine Maternity, as well, was the source of infinite graces for her. She was conceived immaculate (without sin) in order to be a worthy Tabernacle (that is, a dwelling place) for Our Lord when He would finally come into this world and become incarnate. Her Immaculate Conception was, therefore, an extraordinary grace given to her in view of her Divine Maternity. God the Father created for His incarnate Son a Mother who would be worthy of conceiving Him, carrying Him for nine months in her unstained womb, and finally giving birth to Him into this world.
After Jesus suffered and died, and left this world to be reunited with His Eternal Father in Heaven, Our Lady would continue living a very deep union with her Son, but in a different way. After Christ's Ascension into Heaven, He was no longer physically present to Our Lady. So how did she enter into communion with her Son from that moment on? Well, the above quotation from St. Peter Julian Eymard's The Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament seems to provide us with a clue: it was through her interior life of silence and prayer. It was through the obscurity of an outwardly plain life but an inwardly rich life of continual conversation with God that the Blessed Virgin was able to maintain with her Son the same level of intimacy that she had with Him when He was physically present in this world. Mary no longer bore the Son of God in her womb; but never was He absent from her soul.
There is, in this world, one place where we can encounter the true presence of Jesus Christ in a more profound way than anywhere else. That place is within the Most Blessed Sacrament. Christ is present in the Tabernacles of our Catholic Churches just as truly as He was present in the holy womb of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. We could say, in a certain manner of speaking, that the presence of Christ in Our Lady's womb for nine months was the perfect model and exemplar of His presence in the Tabernacles of our Catholic Churches throughout the world over these last 2000 years. And in both cases (for Mary, in her Most Pure Womb; and for us, in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar), it is the true and real Presence of Jesus that is the source and origin of the entire interior life: the life of the soul!
It is from the Blessed Sacrament that we can draw in the most perfect way all the graces needed to live a life of deep interiority and recollection, a life of intimate union with Christ. Sacramental communion with Our Lord when we approach the sacred communion rail at Mass is the place where this occurs in the most powerful way. And after Holy Communion, the next most perfect way of communing intimately with Christ is when we spend time with Him before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration.
Eucharistic Adoration is truly the place where we strengthen our interior life. There, in the silence of the Blessed Sacrament, we learn to speak to God in our heart. Though Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God, He speaks the language of love. And the language of Divine Love is always the language of silence. Our Lady knew this truth and lived it each and every day of her life. And it was the Real Presence of Jesus (physically when He walked on this earth, and sacramentally in the Blessed Sacrament after His Ascension into Heaven) that was the source and origin of her entire life of communion with God in her soul. For us, it is before the Blessed Sacrament, more than anywhere else, that we strengthen our interior life and the grace within our soul.