The Christian allegory “the Body of Christ”6 denotes both the Eucharist, the sacramental body of Christ, and the Church, the ecclesial body of Christ. The relationship between the sacramental and the ecclesial body, for de Lubac, is intelligible only in the context of the Eucharist. Though St. Paul used the natural imagery of the human body (1 Cor 12:12; 26-7; 10:17; Rom 12:5; Eph 1:23; 4:12; 5:30; Col 1:18), de Lubac moved further to explain the mystery of the Church. For Paul, de Lubac believes, “Christ and the Church are just one great mystery,” which is a mystery of union.7 De Lubac says that the phrase, “the body of Christ” is very often used by the Fathers of the Church in line with Paul for whom it means the Church.8 For them, it is the ‘whole body of Christ,’ the ‘universal body,’ or the ‘full body’ of Christ.9 However, this meaning was diminished in the second millennium. Even the authoritative
spokesmen of the Church contributed to this loss. The encyclical Mystici Corporis, in which the
5 Henri de Lubac, De Lubac: A Theologian Speaks (Los Angels, CA: Twin Circle Publishing Co., 1985), Introduction.
6 Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. E. M. Macierowski, 2 vols., vol. 2, Retrieval and Renewal: Ressourcement in Catholic Thought (Grand Rapids: MI/Edinburgh: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company/T & T Clark, 2000). This work is a scholarly study on the four senses of Scripture. It also mentions the relationship between Christ and Church in the allegorical language used in Scriptures. Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the
Church in the Middle Ages, 75. De Lubac in this scholarly work establishes that “the body of Christ” denoted the
Church in the early centuries, and the works in the first millennium show that the “mystical body,” denoted the Eucharist. However, these two concepts were transposed gradually into today’s understanding, beginning after the mid-twelfth century. See also The Splendor of the Church, 156. Cf. McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church:
Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, Chapter 4, "The Eucharist Makes the Church," 75-97.
7 Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, 2, 92. De Lubac says, “The Church is in truth the ‘body’ of Christ; she is his ‘flesh’; she forms with him but ‘one single person’: ‘Christ and the Church is [sic] one person.’ Now, ‘if two in one flesh,’ asks Saint Augustine, ‘why not two in one voice?’ And consequently, ‘whether it be head or members that speaks, the one Christ is speaking.’ Then inclusion is mutual: ‘So let Christ speak, since the Church speaks in Christ, and Christ speaks in the Church; and the body in the head, and the head in the body.’”
8 Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, 4. 9 Ibid.
phrase mystici corporis is meant to denote the Church, is the best example of this shift.10 De Lubac argues that the Fathers of the Church used this phrase for the sacramental body following the Pauline analogy, but in today’s context, it is used for the ecclesial body, which is
inappropriate in terms of the Pauline analogy.11
Referring to Master Simon, de Lubac says that there are two bodies in the sacrament of the altar: the true body of Christ present in the sacrament and that which it signifies, the
Church.12 The sacramental body is more than the flesh and blood of Christ; “they are spirit and life, because the true Logos and the true Godhead are contained within them. Since nothing mortal remains in them any longer, they have become bearers of all grace and all the truth of the Word incarnate.”13
Until the middle of the eleventh century, the expression “the sacrament (the mystery) of the body of the Lord” was frequently used in the Church to denote the Eucharist,14 and the mystical body was more or less equivalent to the sacramental body. During this period, the ecclesial body was always used with certain adjectives (e.g. one body, universal body, body of the Church, body of the people, body of Christians, whole body, spiritual body). In this way, it was differentiated from the sacramental body. However, at a later stage the adjective “mystical” was separated from the sacramental body and joined to ‘body’ that designated the Church.15 De
10 See Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, Encyclical Letter (Rome: June 29, 1943).
11 Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, 129. Richard R. Gaillardetz and Catherine E. Clifford, Keys to the Council:
Unlocking the Teaching of Vatican II (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 70-1.
12 Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, 250. 13 Ibid., 77.
14 Ibid., 80. The Splendor of the Church, 131. St. Paul and the Fathers of the Church used it in the context of the Eucharist. By the “Mystical Body,” they meant corpus in mysetrio, the body mystically signified (Eucharist) and realized by the Eucharist (Church).
Lubac’s critique is that the idea of the “Mystical body of the Church,” or of the Church as forming “a mystical Body,” is inadequate and it comes from a misunderstanding.
De Lubac says that Christ’s own sacrifice and our communicating in his sacrifice is the twofold dynamism implicit in celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist (Corpus mysticum), and thus, “corpus mysticum is ‘the body engaged in a mystical action, [the] ritual echo indefinitely multiplied in space and time of the single Action from which it takes its meaning.’”16 The mystical action communicates the partakers the sacrifice of Calvary and makes them the body of Christ. During the scholastic period a distinction began to be made between three elements essential to the integrity of the sacrament, and applied to the Eucharist: sacramentum tantum, the outward sign of the Eucharist as the species of bread and wine; the res tantum, the fruit of the sacrament of Eucharist as the unity of the Church (corpus Christi mysticum); and sacramentum
et res, which is contained under the sign is the body of Christ born of Mary (corpus Christi verum).17 This great scholastic formulation, which is structurally Augustinian according to de Lubac, was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in its essentials.18 De Lubac says that the doctrine of the relationship between the physical body of Christ and his Mystical Body was gradually forgotten. Later, without any essential change in the doctrine, the two attributes mysticum and
verum came to be transposed.19 Thus, the expression “mystical body”
16 McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, 77. Presenting the understanding of the early fathers, de Lubac says that their emphasis was not the explanation of the “real presence” instead of an action and of sacrifice.
17 Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, 96-7; McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church:
Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, 78.
18 Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, 98; McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church:
Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, 77-8.
19 Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, 100. The mystical body, which was the Eucharistic body in the early Church, became the true (verum) body during the middle ages, and the ecclesial body, which is the fruit of the Eucharist, became the mystical body. See also The Splendor of the Church, 127.
passed from the Eucharist to the Church: and once again there was, in an analogues sense, a mystery of the
body. The mystical body was the mystery that described this ecclesial body by means of the sacrament, and
in its radical meaning, it could strictly speaking be described as being ‘contained’ in the Eucharist. Then, from the mystery of the body it developed into being a body in [the] mystery; from the signification itself to the thing signified.20
Church as the mystical body of Christ is signified by means of the sacrament of
Eucharist: “Mystical is a contraction of mystically signified, mystically designated,”21 and thus, “Ecclesial realism safeguards Eucharistic realism and the later confirms the former.”22 According to de Lubac, it was the individualistic Eucharistic piety that caused the move away from the traditional understanding of the relationship between two.23 However, the terminological change, i.e., corpus which is understood as verum – first Church and then the Eucharist, has altered the doctrine’s center of gravity, and the Eucharist, historically, ‘the mystery to understand’ became ‘the mystery to believe.’24 He argues that if the “Mystical Body” is exclusively used to denote the Church, it is erroneous, for it “would no longer bring us the realization that those who form this ‘body of the Church’ are really the ‘members of Christ.’”25 Then, there is no meaning for his “living body,” which is animated by the Holy Spirit,26 and it will result in the fading away of the realism and specifying quality of the Christian mystery.27