We have been considering the Mystical Body, in so far, as it means Christ living in the Church. We now consider it, as it means the Christian living in Christ.
23.1
The supernatural life - of faith, hope and charity, the moral virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit - is the vital operation of Christ Our Lord in us, His members. St. Thomas says, grace was given to Christ, not for Himself, but as Head of the Church so it might flow from Him to His members. The life of God flows through the Head to the Body. It really is the life of God, up to the level of our capacity to receive it. It does not make the finite infinite, but it is hard to find any limit, short of what it can do; if we will let it.
This life is ours only if we will take it. In the Mystical Body we are still men with free will. Even in the Body, our will remains free. It is solicited by grace, but not stormed by grace. The problem of our development, lies not in the destruction of our human will, but in its free union with the Will of God. This free union is not a simple matter, but a goal to be strived for with great effort. By our rebirth in Baptism, we are cells in Christ's Body and in His life stream. To what degree that stream flows into us, and makes us supernaturally alive, depends on our will. If we will to open our being wholly, then the life flows into it and vivifies it wholly. If we will to open our being, not wholly, but reserving any small element not given to God, the life will still flow into us. In this case, whatever we have kept as our own, will remain as our own, un-vivified. We shall be alive but not wholly alive. We could also set our will firmly against God's, by the free choice of serious sin, to the destruction of the love, which is the life secret. Doing so, we close our being to the life flow. We are still in the Body, but as dead cells, living with our natural life, but super-naturally not alive. Remaining in this life on earth, it is possible for the dead cell to be reopened and made alive. This is obtained by true sorrow for sin and the Sacrament of Penance, as it is always possible for a living cell to grow in life. The essential thing is our growing, first into likeness of Christ, and away from all the unlike; then in likeness, in being and in power. The cell must become the image of the Head. St. Paul says: "My little children, I am in travail over you afresh, until I can see Christ's image formed in you." (Galatians 4:19)
We sometimes feel that the saints are overdoing their anguish at their own imperfections, due to our more imperfect being, and are less agonized. The saint compares himself not with us, but with Christ for he is consumed, as we all should be, with desire to be remade in His perfect image. Christ works on us, giving us His gifts of Truth and Life, through the men whom He has appointed to special functions in the Body. (see Eph. 4:11-16)
The Body is not simply composed of a Head and a mass of human cells, all alike and functioning alike. Like any body, it is an organism, a structure with different parts functioning differently for the perfection of the whole. Popes, Bishops, Priests and laymen must each become the image of Christ. There is not some greater likeness of Christ reserved to Popes, and a lesser likeness kept for the laity. In the life processes of the Body, different members have different functions, as Christ uses them in different ways. This Body has an order, a proportion and a complexity of elements working together. We see this in considering the Sacraments; the principal means by which the energizing of the Holy Spirit flows to us from Christ. The blood in our bodies does not surge on us, but flows silently to every part through arteries and veins. Sanctifying grace, also, does not come on the Mystical Body like a cloud-burst, but flows through a multiplicity of channels made by God. In the individual soul and the Mystical Body, the Kingdom of God is like a leaven working secretly. Holiness is not best served by chaos.
We see that the Blessed Eucharist differs vitally from the others. By Baptism we enter into the life of the Body; the life of the Body enters into us. We become alive supernaturally. A living thing needs food, and without it, will almost certainly perish. All life must be fed by food of a like nature. Our bodily life is fed by bodies, of animal or vegetable. Our mental life is fed by the minds of those who instruct us. This new life of sanctifying grace is Christ Himself living in us. The only food that could feed a life, which is Christ, must itself be Christ. What we receive in the Eucharist is Christ. Our Lord can say: He who eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, lives continually in Me, and I in him. As I live because of the Father, the living Father who has sent Me, so he who eats Me will live, in his turn, because of Me. (John 6:57-58)
In receiving Christ Our Lord, we are in the profoundest sense one with Him, and this is a great thing. We are also one with all, in all ages, who by receiving Him have become likewise one with Him. The Blessed Eucharist serves the growth of each member of the Body in holiness. It serves also the unity of the Body as a whole, drawing the whole more profoundly into oneness with Christ. “The one bread makes us one body, though we are many in number.” (1 Cor. 10:.7)
There is a sense in which the Eucharist is the life-principle of the Church, even more than of the individual soul.
23.2
The channels of grace are the great means of union between God and us; and from man's end, the great means of union is prayer. In its broadest sense prayer is the direction of life to God. In its special sense, it is the converse of the soul with God, the intellect concentrated on God, speaking to Him and silently receptive to His response, and the will being given wholly to Him in love. We know from the experience of the mystics how far this converse can go. Aided by graces from God, the prayer of contemplation can bring the soul into an awareness of God as immediately present. Not face to face by the intellect, as the souls in Heaven see Him, but felt, touched, savored in a direct contact of love. Some of the saints have told us, that in this contact, they have had an awareness of the Triune Godhead.
Even at the highest intensity, this movement of the individual soul to God is not the whole of prayer. Man is not an isolated unit, related only to God and to no other. All man is related to God, and to one another, so there must also be a social element in prayer. Men may pray alone, for each has his own private self; but also, must pray together. This is true, as men exist in the solidarity of the human race, but reaches a new depth in the unity of the Mystical Body. There is a prayer of the whole Body, which Christ, as the Head of the Body, makes His own and offers as His own. It would be an impoverishment of our life in the Body, to take no conscious willed part in it. The Christian's private prayer, the conversation, as himself with God, is essential. Still, the Christian remains in the Body, and prays from his place in the Body. Liturgical prayer, the prayer of the Body itself, is essential, too. God loves both, and the Christian grows by both.
The highest point, of the prayer of the Body, is the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass. We have seen that there were to be priests in Christ's Kingdom, and a Sacrifice. Considering what Our Lord did for men, while He was on earth, we find that He is still doing the same things through the Church. On earth He taught, forgave sins, vivified and gave men the Holy Spirit. He still does these through His Mystical Body. Underlying all these actions on earth, He came to offer Himself, as a sacrifice for the redemption of men, the precise meaning of the Mass.
In the action of the Mass, the priest consecrates bread and wine, so that they are changed into the body and blood of Christ. Christ Himself, slain once upon Calvary, now forever living, is on the altar. The bread and wine are changed into the Victim of our salvation. He, who was slain for us, the priest offers to the Father, for the application to men's souls: what His Passion and Death made available for us. The key is that the priest gives himself, to be used by Christ. Christ is the real offeror; the priest is only an instrument in His hands. He is acting through men. The Mass is seen rightly, if we realize that Christ is not only the Victim offered, but the priest who offers. In the Mass, as on Calvary, Christ is offering Himself to God for the sins of the world. The Mass is a representation of Calvary. There is no new slaying of Christ in the Mass, for death has no more dominion over Him. Christ did not slay Himself, but was slain by His enemies. This is the Christ, who was slain on Calvary, shown by the separate consecration of bread to become His body and wine to become His blood. The essence of the Mass is that Christ offers, to the Father, Himself who was slain for us on Calvary. (see Hebr.7:24-25 & Hebr.9:24)
In some way the marks of His victim state are still on Him, not diminishing His glory but adding to it. The Mass is the providing of Christ’s offering of Himself to earth, that He makes in Heaven simply by His presence there. Christ makes His offering in Heaven in His own sacred humanity, and makes His offering on earth through His Mystical Body. The priest is the organ of His Mystical Body; that He uses to consecrate and offer Himself. We are united with Christ in the act of offering, as really as the priest is. At the Our Father, the priest speaks to the congregation of the sacrifice he is offering as "my sacrifice and yours". After the Consecration we, Christ's holy people, are named as offering the pure, the consecrated and the spotless Victim. Because we are cells in the Body of Christ, we are associated with Him, not only as offeror, but as the Victim offered. St. Peter reminds us (l Peter 3:18): “Christ died once for our sins, so as to present us in God's sight".
This is a most marvelous elevation to a new power of the plain truth, that if we do not offer our own selves, God will not be moved by any other offering we may make.
23.3
The Church is the Body of Christ, called His Mystical Body, both to emphasize the extreme mysteriousness of this unique body-to-person relationship, and to distinguish this Body from His natural body. His natural body was received from His mother, for His human life in Palestine and His dying on the cross. In that same natural body, now glorified, He rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven,’ and is forever at the right hand of the Father. This is the same body which, we receive sacramentally in the Blessed Eucharist. The Mystical Body, His Church, may be thought of as the successor to His natural body, or to His human nature, as a whole. As in it, He continues to operate among men, as He did in His human nature. Think of the two, as successive instruments by which He works among men.
The Church is in its deepest reality, Christ Himself, still living and operating on earth. The Church is in the world, but we sometimes feel that a good deal of the world is in the Church. In a sense, the Real Presence of Christ in the Church is as difficult to believe, as is the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In one case we say "It looks like bread", in the other "It doesn't look like Christ". What looks like bread is the body of Christ. What looks like a human society is the Body of Christ. Light may be added from a further comparison between Our Lord's two lives on earth, His natural body and His Mystical Body. In each case, God chose to take to Himself and operate in a human body, and be faithful to the logic of His choice. His human nature was a real human nature; and He accepted its limitations. The body God took did not begin as mature, but in the helplessness of babyhood. Anyone looking at Christ, in His mother's arms, could only have said "It doesn't look like God". Following the strict logic of His choice, He bled when scourged, fell under the weight of a cross and died. He chose to have a body like ours with its deficiencies. He did not look like God, but He was God.
Just as there are limitations, deficiencies, and weaknesses with a material body, there are with a society of human beings, each with a free will. Among these we find a new element, the possibility of sin. Christ Our Lord did not force His natural body; and He does not force His Mystical Body. Each follows the laws of its being, and often serves to mask Christ, rather than reveal Him. He did not allow any perfection to His natural body, which would have robbed His sacrifice of its meaning. He also, does not confer on the members of His Mystical Body, an automatic perfection, that would rob their life on earth of its meaning. As His natural body was glorified, its defects ceased; and so, His Mystical Body, will be glorified and its members sinless.
In thinking about Christ Our Lord, we distinguish between the human nature and the divine, so also, we must distinguish between the human and the divine element in the Church. The divine being, that sphere where Christ Our Lord guarantees, all is done without defect, because He is doing it. The human being, that sphere where men may respond to what He offers them, that is, let Him operate wholly in them, partially, or not at all.