The Holy Spirit and the Eucharistic Body of Christ
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord C
February 2nd, 2025
The last three Sundays, we have concentrated on the profound connection between the Holy Spirit and the Church. We explained how the Church proceeds from God per modum amoris, reflecting the divine procession of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is closely related to the Body of Christ as the Temple of the New Covenant, in which the most profound constituent of the Christian liturgy has happened and does happen. Furthermore, we know that the Body of Christ refers to the physical body of the Incarnated Lord and His mystical Body, the Church.
Today, we are to meditate on another sense of the Body of Christ and its connection to the Holy Spirit. The Giver of Life is profoundly connected to the eucharistic Body of the Lord. It must be said that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity has a special connection with all the sacraments and the liturgy of the Church. We could say that the Giver of Life is the efficient cause of the liturgy. The Catechism affirms:
“Seated at the right hand of the Father” and pouring out the Holy Spirit on his Body which is the Church, Christ now acts through the sacraments he instituted to communicate his grace. The sacraments are perceptible signs (words and actions) accessible to our human nature. By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, they make present the grace that they signify efficaciously. (CCC 1084)
Christ’s work in the liturgy is sacramental: because his mystery of salvation is made present there by the power of his Holy Spirit; because his Body, which is the Church, is like a sacrament (sign and instrument) in which the Holy Spirit dispenses the mystery of salvation; and because through her liturgical actions the pilgrim Church already participates, as by a foretaste, in the heavenly liturgy. (CCC 1111)
Considering the Christian liturgy in light of the Blessed Trinity, the processions and missions of the Son and the Spirit, and their effects on the Church’s life and actions, we are thus enabled to elaborate a profound theological consideration of the liturgy.
Human knowledge deepens reality scientifically when it can explain it through its causes with certitude. The idea of causes is ampler than we are used to thinking in modern times. Understanding reality does not consist only in the answer to the question about who the author of something is, but also about what something is, what something is made of, and for what purpose it is made. Traditionally, we summarize these questions by talking about the formal (whatness), material (what something is made of, the subject or the subject matter of something), efficient (who and by what instrumental means), and final (purpose or goal) causes.
Applying these distinctions, we say that the Christian liturgy’s formal cause is the actual exercise of Christ’s priesthood by the members of His Mystical Body. Its material cause is the compound of all the liturgical celebrations. The final cause is the glorification of God and the sanctification of souls. The efficient cause is the divine power, the virtue, or the efficacy of the Holy Spirit. As we said before, the divine power is the power of the Blessed Trinity. Nevertheless, giving life to the Church is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, as we explained before.
This beautiful doctrine is in the Rite of the Eucharist in the epiclesis prayer. It invokes the Holy Spirit so that He transforms the bread and wine into the Eucharistic Body of Christ. For instance, the second Eucharistic prayer says before the words of consecration: “You are indeed holy, O Lord, the fount of all holiness. Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Moreover, we invoke the Holy Spirit again to ask for the fruit of the Eucharist, which is nothing less than the unity of the Church: “Humbly we pray that, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.” Hence, the Holy Spirit is profoundly connected to Christ’s physical, mystical, and eucharistic body.
Finally, the graces received make the members of the Body of Christ living temples of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to truly participate through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in Our Lord’s glorification of the Father. We are made one with Christ, and hence, living temples of God where worship in spirit and truth can occur.
Let us thank the Holy Spirit for His marvelous work in the Church and in our souls and ask Him for the grace of being faithful to the graces we receive from Him so that we can be adopted children of the Father in Christ who honor and glorify Him wholeheartedly.
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