In Octave de l‘Assomption de la sainte
Vierge, Lyons 1687,
Nicolas of Dijon was provincial of the Capuchins in France and a
well-known preacher in his time.
Text quoted in French by Réné Laurentin (in Maria,
Ecclesia, Sacerdotium, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris 1952, p.
321) and translated into English by John Wijngaards.
“I call the Virgin our priest and our altar”, St.Epiphanius said,
“because she gave us the bread of life for the forgiveness of our
sins”.
‘
Has fable ever invented anything similar even in the most daring fiction ? It
has presented the picture of Saturn eating and devouring his own children; but
fable has never dared to go to the excess of suggesting that a mother,
overcome by love sacrificed her only Son to give him as food to strangers, that
is: to her adopted children. Yet this is what Mary has done and what she
continues to do everyday in the Eucharist! And as if it were not enough for
her, as a mark of her love for people, to have sacrificed him once on Calvary,
she gives them her own flesh to eat with that of her Son.’
Octave, ib. p. 592.
