Theology and Charity

Clearly, one can readily admit that a distance often does exist between the daily exercise of theology and its ideal mode of realization.  Furthermore, separations can even occur that contradict the practices of a holy way of life, those which should inform the exercise of theology.  One can practice theology with a dead faith.  I ought to remark, however, that this objection does not touch on theology as such, but only on the theologian.  We thus pass from the de jure realm to what is de facto.  The latter might justify all kinds of reservations, but it remains that, de jure, “theology is a pious science” [cf M-D Chenu OP].  Although the loss of charity does not bring about the dissolution of the theological habitus, nevertheless it constitutes a state as violent as that of a dead faith.  The diminished habitus that we designate by this name still allows a person to adhere to supernatural truths, but the absence of charity radically deprives the theologian of his or her ability to cling to these truths in a life-giving manner. The same is true of theology itself: it is literally drained from the inside by the loss of charity. Without charity, theology cannot bring its task to completion, because charity alone gives it the dynamism to reach its end. Accordingly, it is not simply under the title of finis operantis that the love of charity has its place in theology; indeed, charity has this place in virtue of the finis operis.

J-P Torrell, Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas,
(Washington, D.C.:  Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 28-29.

The Epiklesis of our Lives

"Eucharistic Dove"--a tabernacle or artophorion
in the form of a dove representing the Holy Spirit,
common during the early and high Middle Ages.

What is the Epiklesis?

One of the happier revisions to the Sacred Liturgy by the Consilium was the inclusion of an explicit epiklesis in the Anaphora (= Eucharistic Prayer, after the Preface).  From the Greek noun ἐπίκλησις, 'invocation,' the epiklesis (sometimes spelled epiclesis) is the invocation of the Holy Spirit to transform the Holy Gifts into the Body and Blood of Christ.

In Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV, they are easy to spot.  In the first place, when the priest-celebrant extends his hands over the chalice and paten, it is there that he will call on the Holy Spirit, and this is specifically called the Consecratory epiklesis.  For example, the Church prays in Eucharistic Prayer II:

Make holy, therefore, these Gifts, we pray, by sending down Your Holy Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a second, Communion epiklesis, whereby we ask the Holy Spirit to unite the Church by this Eucharistic Celebration (since growth in charity and ecclesial unity is the res tantum--the "thing itself" or the goal--of the Sacrament).  It takes place after the Institution Narrative and immediately after the Anamnesis (whereby we articulate the sequence of the Paschal Mystery).  An example from Eucharistic Prayer IV goes like this: 

Look, O Lord, upon the Sacrifice You Yourself have provided for Your Church, and grant in Your loving kindness to all who partake of this one Bread and one Chalice that, gathered into one body by the Holy Spirit, they may truly become a living sacrifice in Christ to the praise of Your glory.

In Eucharistic Prayer I--the Roman Canon--the epiklesis is a little less apparent, but by no means absent.  In the first place, all prayer is an invocation.  In the Older Rite, there is a kind of epiklesis during the Offertory (whose removal by the Consilium was ill-conceived):

Come, O Sanctifier, almighty eternal God:  Bless this oblation prepared for Your holy Name.

This "Sanctifier," obviously, is the Holy Spirit.  But, near the beginning of the Roman Canon, the priest-celebrant will make the sign(s) of the cross over the Holy Gifts, saying:

...that you accept and bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices...

There is a continuation of the epiklesis in the Roman Canon just prior to the Institution Narrative where the priest extends his hands over the Holy Gifts at the Quam oblationem tu (though, in the Older Rite, the hands are extended at the Hanc igitur):

Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In any case, the importance of the epiklesis lies in the fact that, like Christ "who was conceived by the Holy Spirit" (Apostles' and Nicæne-Constantinopolitan Creed), the same Holy Spirit brings about the Presence of Christ upon the altar.  It is no less true that the Institution Narrative is the "form" of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, but it would be careless theology to isolate it from the whole Anaphora.

'Eucharistic Doves'

This is why, in the early and high Middle Ages, the early form of the 'tabernacle' was the so-called Eucharistic dove, a pyx containing the reserved Sacrament, hanging from the ceiling above or near the altar.  We are blessed in the Archdiocese of Edmonton to have such a Eucharistic dove in the lady chapel of St Joseph Seminary.  This dove-motif, taken obviously from the gospel narrative of Jesus' baptism (cf Lk 3:22), is intended to highlight the Pneumatological reality of the Eucharist.  It should be remembered, too, that it was in the Upper Room where the Lord Jesus celebrated the Last Supper that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church on that first Pentecost Sunday morning (Acts 2:2).  More to the point, St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Lord Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Confirmation "not by bestowing, but by promising it" (S.th., 3a, q. 72, art. 1, ad 1), and goes on to cite John 16:7, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth:  It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you."

But this was the second time during the whole Farewell Discourse (Jn 14-17) that Jesus promised Pentecost; the first time was in the Upper Room (Jn 14:15-31), before leaving for Gethsemane (Jn 14:31).  In other words, Jesus promised that 'baptism in the Holy Spirit'  foretold by John the Baptist (cf Mt 3:11-12) shortly after the first Mass and in the Upper Room where he would be outpoured.  (This is why, in the Dominican Rite, the Sermo Domini is chanted after the repose of the Blessed Sacrament, bridging the gospel of Maundy Thursday to that of Good Friday--to remind us, among other things, that even if the Resurrection is 'right around the corner,' we have still got Pentecost to look towards.)

The Offertory of Ourselves

The Eucharist is not simply an 'amulet' to be hoarded, but the very paradigm of the Christian life.  When the Holy Gifts of bread and wine are placed upon the altar, the Church invites us to offer, alongside them, our own lives.  Hence, in the Older Rite, when the priest is preparing the chalice, he prays:

O God, who, in creating human nature, did wonderfully dignify it, and still more wonderfully restore it, grant that, by the Mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divine nature, who vouchsafed to be made partaker of our human nature, even Jesus Christ our Lord...

The purpose of the Eucharist is be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt 1:4) or, in a word coined by St Gregory the Theologian, "divinized" (cf θέωσις), just as the bread and wine are "divinized" to become the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, just as the Church prays that the Holy Spirit would effect the transformation of the Holy Gifts into Christ's Presence, so too does she pray that the Holy Spirit continue to transform Christians more and more into Christ Himself.  It is easy to partake of Eucharistic Communion; the challenge is to make way for that grace whereby we "become what we eat" (St Augustine).

We can draw a further lesson from the bread and wine used for the Eucharist:  As inanimate objects, bread and wine have no will of their own; its existence is passive and has no choice but to receive the transformation effected by the Holy Spirit to become really, truly, and substantially Christ present.

You and I, on the other hand, possess a will:  We can either resist the Holy Spirit's transformation or we can yield to it.  St Thomas Aquinas teaches that infused virtue has a twofold defect--one on the part of the virtue itself (and this is remedied by the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit), and one on the part of the agent's consent to being virtuous.  By repeated acts of conscious, intentional, and deliberate self-offering, the Holy Spirit is able to mold us more and more into Christ.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the entire purpose of his Seven Gifts is to effect, in our wills, docility and amenability to his promptings and movements.  St Thomas thus makes a special connexion between the Eucharist and the Seven Gifts:

But the priest greets the people seven times, namely, five times, by turning round to the people, and twice without turning round, namely, when he says, "The Lord be with you" before the "Preface," and again when he says, "May the peace of the Lord be ever with you": and this is to denote the sevenfold grace of the Holy Ghost (S.th., 3a, q. 83, art. 5, ad 6).

Making our Lives an Epiklesis

The Church is experiencing a difficult moment in her history.  If I had to pinpoint the source of her ills, it would be simply this:  Refusal to surrender to the Holy Spirit.  Since the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, then seeking any other source of empowerment is a betrayal of "being Church."  What is needed for reform is not another meeting, another programme, another bureaucratic process.  What is needed, rather, is a lifelong epiklesis of daily surrender to the Holy Spirit, of "eucharistizing" our lives.

The Eucharist is the re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Calvary.  But, as the sacred author of Hebrews tells us, Christ's self-sacrifice was not a matter of gumption and gall, but of an offering empowered by the Holy Spirit:

...how much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb 9:14).

May it be for us, too. 

Pentecost and the Eucharist

Holy Spirit dove-motif under Bernini's baldachin in the Vatican Basilica

It is no accident that the Last Supper, the Resurrection-appearances, and Pentecost all took place in the Upper Room.  The Upper Room was, in fact, the very first 'house of the Church.'  This 'triangulation' of the Eucharist, the Risen Lord, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are sine qua non constituting the Church:  As the "Body of Christ" (Eph 4:12; cf 1 Cor 10:16-17) we "proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes" (1 Cor 11:26) this One of whom St Paul said "No-one can say 'Jesus is Lord!' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3).

In every Eucharistic celebration, we are really in the Upper Room with the Risen Christ, whose Presence is mediated by the Holy Spirit.

On Ember Wednesday of the Pentecost Octave in the usus antiquior, the liturgy seeks to highlight exactly this.  On that day, we read John 6:44-52, a portion of the Bread of Life discourse--

[In those days, Jesus said to the crowds]:  No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the Last Day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Every one who has heard and learned from the Father come to Me.  Not that any oen has seen the Father except Him who is from God; He has seen the Father.  Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.  I am the Bread of Life.  Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.  I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this Bread, he will live for ever; and the Bread that I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh."

The Pentecost Octave, therefore, looks toward the Solemnity of Corpus Christi which is the tail-end of the Easter-Pentecost cycle; more to the point, the older form of the Sacred Liturgy seeks to highlight the absolutely necessary connexion between Pentecost and the Eucharist, since they were instituted at the same location.

The reason for this connexion is not difficult to see.  In the Nicæno-Constantinopolitan Creed, we profess faith in Christ «Qui incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto» because the Lord Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Virgin of Nazareth (Lk 1:35).  Likewise, the Holy Gifts of bread and wine are transformed by the same Holy Spirit to become the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Hence, in the Older Rite, the following was prayed at the Offertory, which is my absolute favourite prayer in the entire Mass--

Veni, sanctificátor omnípotens ætérne Deus: et bénedic hoc sacrifícium, tuo sancto nómini præparátum.

Come, O Sanctifier, almighty eternal God:  Bless this oblation prepared for Your holy Name.

If liturgists complain that the Roman Canon lacks an epiklesis, it is because they forget that this prayer, the Veni, Sanctificator, effectively turns the entire Anaphora to an invocation to the Holy Spirit, since it is only by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that we can say "Abba!  Father" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6; cf Eph 2:18).  For this reason alone are we able to begin to pray--

 Te ígitur, clementíssime Pater, per Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum, Dóminum nostrum, súpplices rogámus, ac pétimus...

Therefore we ask You, this most clement Father, through Jesus Christ Your Son our Lord, we ask You, we petition you... 

(More's the pity that this prayer did not survive the liturgical revisions of 1964-1970.  But, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI, it was restored to the Church's normal liturgical life.)

Only the Holy Spirit enables us to be adopted as children of our heavenly Father and empowers to call him "Abba, Father" in the liturgy, this same Holy Spirit who will transform the Holy Gifts.

By remembering the connexion between Pentecost and the Eucharist, we are able to situate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi within its proper theological and liturgical context.  If the Orthodox theologian Nikos Nissiotis criticizes Catholics of 'Christmonism,' it is because we Romans have, in our deformed piety, isolated the Eucharist from its 'Pentecostal nexus.'

During the XI Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2005 (what luminous times!), one of the prelates of the Eastern Church gave an intervention in which he reminded us of the specifically Pentecostal dimension of the Eucharist, citing St Ephraim the Syrian:

The Seraph did not touch the coal with his fingers. / It touched only the mouth of Isaiah. / [The Seraph] did not hold it, and [Isaiah] did not eat it. / But to us our Lord has given both. (Hymns on Faith, X.10)

The idea here is that the Eucharistic elements are glowing with the fire of the Holy Spirit such that it is not only Christ whom we receive in Holy Communion, but also the Paraclete, since Christ means Anointed One, "anointed with the invisible oil of the Holy Spirit," as St Thomas Aquinas often said.  In the Eucharist, then, the Holy Spirit who effected the Incarnation and perpetuates it, as it were, in the Eucharist, comes to us.  I would even go so far as to say that, in the Eucharist, we are gifted with an increase of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Hence, among the prayers of preparation before Communion in the Byzantine Liturgy composed by St Basil the Great--the same author of On the Holy Spirit--

Grant me, until my last breath, to receive the bread and the wine which are Your Body and Blood, and thereby to receive fellowship with the Holy Spirit as a provision for the journey to eternal life, and an acceptable answer at your dread Judgment-Seat.

This is why, during the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, hot, near-boiling water called the Zeon is poured crosswise by the priest into the Eucharistic chalice, saying--

The fervour of faith, full of the Holy Spirit.

What saves the Eucharist from being an 'amulet' is that it is up to us to be intentionally and deliberately open and receptive to the graces that accompany Holy Communion.  These graces are not 'automatic'; St Thomas Aquinas tells us that virtue has a twofold defect:  On the part of the virtue itself (and the Seven Gifts serves to perfect the virtues and bring them to fullness) and on the part of the believer herself (by our apathy or resistance); too often we resist the graces of the Eucharist or simply let them pass us by.  Hence the words apply even in receiving the Sacred Body and Precious Blood:  "Do not extinguish the Spirit!" (1 Thess 5:19).

In scholastic theology, the most important "part" of any Sacrament is the res tantum, the 'thing itself.'  For the Eucharist, the res tantum is twofold:  Growth in charity and the unity of the Church.  In other words, we are transformed to love even more (cf Rom 5:5), thereby strengthening the communion of believers.  Neither can be done apart from the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit.  Thus, in purposefully receiving the Lord's Body and Blood, we are transformed--

And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from glory to glory; and this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18).

Returning to the connexion between the Pentecost Octave and the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, St Thomas Aquinas explicitly explains their connexion in the First Nocturn, Third Reading which he composed (but removed from the Office of Readings by the Consilium)--

Hence, so that the faithful may solemnly honor again the institution of such a great Sacrament by a complete office of celebration, the Roman Pope Urban IV, influenced by the devotion of this Sacrament, piously decreed commemoration of the aforementioned institution on feria five after the octave of Pentecost, to be celebrated by all the faithful, so that we, who use this Sacrament throughout the year for salvation, may honor again, at that time especially, its institution, by which the Holy Spirit taught the hearts of the disciples to understand fully the mysteries of this Sacrament.  For at the same time this sacrament began to be frequented by the faithful. It is indeed read in the Acts of the Apostles that "they were persevering in the apostolic doctrine by sharing in the breaking of bread, and by prayers" (Acts 2:42), immediately after the departure of the Holy Spirit (Opuscula IV:  Officium Corpus Christi).

In other words, St Thomas here explains that the experience of Pentecost enlightens us precisely about the Sacrament of the Altar.  This is why Ember Wednesday of the Pentecost Octave aims to prepare us for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.  In fact, nine days are counted between Ember Wednesday of Pentecost and Corpus Christi Thursday, a kind of novena mirroring that of the one between the day after Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday.

Let us, then, remember to meet not only Christ in the Eucharist, but the Holy Spirit who Eucharistizes.

Christ, the Anointed One, is never separate from the Anointing One, the Holy Spirit.

The Eucharist is never separated from Pentecost.

This entry is dedicated to my dear friend and confere,
Sr Ermyrita Palacasero OP