A reader named Rey asks:

Dr. Marshall, regarding the Body and Blood of our Lord, is it correct to say that in a way that when we receive the Eucharist that we receive the body and blood of Jesus and Mary, considering that Jesus (as second person) assumed human nature through Mary? In other words, just as Eve’s body was taken from Adam, in the same way, the Second Adam (Jesus) was taken from the body and blood of Mary being His mother? Thus, when we receive communion, it is also in a way receiving the body and blood of Mary through her Son?

My reply:

No, it would be heretical to state that we receive the Body of Mary in the Holy Eucharist. We do not receive the Body of Mary in the Eucharist. This should be entirely rejected.

The Body of Christ is genetically different than the body of Mary and is vivified by a distinct soul in Christ that is not the soul of Mary. A human body relies on the form of the distinct soul animating it. Moreover, the substantial form and matter of Christ’s human body is not that of the Blessed Virgin Mary – even though the Body of Christ is derived from the body of Mary.

This also creates a corporeal regress. If we were to claim that we receive Mary’s body in the Eucharist (because she is his mother), then we could then say that when we eat the Eucharist we are eating the body of Saint Anne (Mary’s mother) and the body of King David and the body of Ruth, et al. – since they are genetic ancestors of Christ. All of this is heretical.

The Body of Christ is the Body of Christ. We don’t receive simply a body in the Eucharist, we receive a Person in the Eucharist – the Divine Second Person of the Trinity along with the human nature that He assumed in the womb of Mary: His body, blood, and soul.

It is, however, perfectly orthodox to say that Mary participated in the Incarnation and that she provided a human body to Christ. We can also state as orthodox the scientific fact that the blood of a mother mixes with the blood of her baby. So we can say that the Precious Blood Christ mixed with the blood of Mary in utero, providing yet another profound sanctification in her beyond that of her sublime Immaculate Conception.

But we should not say that we receive the blood of Mary or the body of Mary in the Eucharist.

ad Jesum per Mariam cum Petro,
Dr. Taylor Marshall

PS: There was an ancient heretical sect in pre-Islamic Arabia that celebrated a liturgical rite in which they claimed to be eating the Body of Mary in a quasi-Eucharist. They were called Collyridians. (Click here to learn more about Marian Heresies.) This may be why Muhammad and the Quran wrongly asserts that Christians believe that Mary is the Third Person of the Trinity. See Quran 5:73-75 and Quran 5:116.