By Most Rev Dr George Antonysamy
Archbishop of Madras – Mylapore
On 30th May 1862, St John Bosco narrated a dream to the boys under his care. In the dream, he said he saw two pillars: a smaller column with a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on top, and a second, larger pillar with a Eucharistic Host on top. The Church, symbolized by a ship, was anchored in between these two pillars.
This dream certainly evokes the Old Testament imagery of the Pillar of Cloud and the Pillar of Fire that God had provided to His chosen people during their exodus from Egypt towards the Promised Land. As the book of Exodus testifies, “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people”. (Exodus 13:21-22) These two pillars were concrete signs of God’s accompanying presence with the people in their redemptive journey. They were concrete expressions of God’s care for His loved ones.
As members of the Catholic Church, as citizens of India, we are also in such a journey. Our exodus is from sin, slavery and darkness towards the promised land of peace, togetherness and liberation. Pope Francis says, “What counts (in our exodus) is to be permeated by the love of Christ, to let oneself be led by the Holy Spirit and to graft one’s own life onto the tree of life, which is the Lord’s Cross”. In this desert journey, God continues to accompany us. We are led by his presence. And as it was revealed to St John Bosco in his dream, God continues to reveal His accompanying presence through the pillar of the Eucharist and the pillar of our Blessed Mother.
The pillar with the host on its top signifies the guiding light of God’s sacramental presence in the Eucharist. As the pillar of light guided the people of Israel in the nights of their journey, the grace of the Holy Eucharist guides us in the darkness of our inner selves, the difficulties of our family journey, the discouragements in our pilgrimage of discipleship. Pope St John Paul rightly called named the Institution of the Holy Eucharist as the final mystery of light. For light reveals and makes known, and in the celebration of the Eucharist, not only do we come to know the accompanying presence of Christ present in the sacrament, but we also come to experience the communion of the Father and the Holy Spirit. This communion enlightens our understanding of who we are as members of the Body of Christ and what our vocation as Christians calls us to.
Though both the pillars of the Old Testament refer to God, John Bosco sees, in his dream, the example of Mother Mary as a pillar of cloud, an example of right devotion. During a general audience in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted the fact God gives us a great cloud of witnesses as a sign of his presence and as a model for our path and Mother Mary is the best of these models. Therefore, the pillar of the Blessed Mother can be understood as a prefiguration of the right response of a disciple to the Eucharistic presence.
Mother Mary became the world’s first ever Eucharistic Tabernacle by opening her heart to God’s word and to God’s incarnation. The Tabernacle in the wilderness was God’s dwelling place on the earth among His people. When Israel entered the Promised Land, the cloud became the Shekinah on the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple. Thus, the pillar of our Blessed Mother reminds us of every disciple’s fundamental vocation to open one’s hearts to the Eucharistic presence, to anticipate in our sacramental life today, the shekinah of our redemption. And this we achieve, by faithfully following our pillar of cloud by day: Mother Mary.
My brothers and sisters, I wish and pray that during this Archdiocesan Eucharistic Synod, we experience God’s accompanying presence in the Holy Eucharist. May we experience the communion of the Holy Trinity in the pillar of Eucharistic light. May the pillar of the cloud, Mother Mary help us in responding appropriately to the Eucharistic presence: by opening our hearts and lives to become tabernacles of God’s presence for our family and our society.