Posted on: November 8th, 2012 Fleshing Out (& In) the Three-Fold Body of Christ
Every once and and while, when I am presiding at the altar during the service of Holy Eucharist, I will have a flash of insight into what’s really going on sacramentally, liturgically, ritually.
A couple of Sundays ago I was celebrating Rite I and I sort of had a conversation with a good friend echoing in my mind. We had been discussing the three-fold Body of Christ, or the Corpus Christi Triplex, which, for example, de Lubac discusses in his Catholicism.
My friend, who is transitioning from the Presbyterian pastorate to priesthood in the Episcopal Church (in New York City), was interrogating me about the relative importance of the mystical body (rightly understood, the consecrated bread) versus the true body (rightly understood, the gathered community of the baptized), and especially about the insistence by Radical Orthodoxy of the identification of the true body (corpus verum) with the gathered community of the baptized.
Serving at the altar that Sunday morning, it hit me: the bread (corpus mysticum) is subordinate to the people (corpus verum) simply because it is assimilated into the bodies, into the lives, of the people. The purpose of the bread is directed toward the people. The people are the fulfillment, the destination, the telos, of the bread. (I think that William Cavanaugh on Augustine probably originally planted this seed in my mind several years ago.)
It was a simple insight, but profound.
