{411} (cont’d)

2) Second point, what is the human body? The human body is an intrinsic and formal moment of the human reality; man “is” corporeal. This moment has, however, various sub-moments, among which, in my opinion, it is necessary to discern carefully. To simplify, I will call them moments also, instead of sub-moments.

{412} a) The body is a system of properties, each of which has a rigorously determined “position” with respect to the other properties. This structural positioning is, in my view, what constitutes organization. It is according to this moment, in my estimation, that the body is an organism.

b) By its organization, the body is a proper complex, a compago (Tr. joining together), all of whose parts are in solidarity with one another, and give the body its proper configuration. This moment of configuration is clearly distinct from the moment of organization; the body’s highly diversified organic functions maintain the same configuration, which is arrived at, so to speak, by very different ways.

c) In its organization and in its proper configuration the body determines the real and physical presence of man in reality. According to this moment, then, the body is a corporeity. That man is corporeal means that corporeity is the very radical principle of being here-and-now present in reality: the body is sôma. This is, as I see it, how “body” has been able to signify “I, myself”, it is I myself who is present “here”. Let us not, then, confuse body and organism. Body is corporeity, and as such, is the intrinsic and formal principle of actuality.

The body has, then, three moments, organization, configuration, and corporeity. They are essentially distinct. The somatic function cannot be identified with either the configurational or the organizational function. But each one of these moments in man is the foundation for the next. Man’s radical principle as corporeity, as sôma, establishes a configuration, and this configuration is what establishes an organization. If I may be permitted the expression, configuration and organization are modes of realizing corporeity.

In fact, these three moments or functions are not separable. {413} But this is so only in fact. To be a principle of actuality does not imply its being so “of its own” (Sp. de suyo) nor having configuration or organization. Let us say in passing that this moment of principle of actuality, with neither configuration nor organization, is what constitutes, from my perspective, the “glorified body”. The glorified body will be neither an organism nor a configuration; rather it will be, from my point of view, purely and simply a principle of actuality in God, and in the rest of those glorified. How? We do not know. Let us not lose ourselves in fantasies and imaginings. It is enough to have conceptualized it.

Evidently, the body as corporeity, that is, as principle of actuality, is not a principle of localization. Localization is always something derived from the pure state of being here-and-now present, from the principle of actuality. By reason of his organism and his configuration, man cannot be here-and-now occupying space in many places at once; but by his corporeity he can have actuality in many parts of reality at once without ceasing to be here-and-now in himself by doing so.

This granted we now approach the third point.

3) Third point, the mode of the real presence of Christ in the bread. Stated in the form of a thesis, Christ takes bread as the principle of his personal actuality here, and therefore, is really present in the bread. To explain this affirmation it will suffice to appeal to the concepts I have just expounded.

a) Christ is present in the bread as actuality and not as act. Christ is not localized in the bread as if He were something enclosed in it; rather, he is actualized in it. Stated more precisely, it is not a matter of substance and accidents (this would be “act”), but of actualization. This actualization is a moment of what is actualized itself, but without this implying any modification of its properties. Neither the properties of the bread nor those of Christ change due to the actual presence of Christ {414} in the bread. For this reason, the whole classical difficulty with how the body of Christ can be in so many consecrated hosts at once seems to me useless, it is not a matter of localization, but of actuality of presence.

b) Christ is here-and-now in the bread formally as actuality from his own personal reality. His actuality is thus a real and physical being present, but this actuality is not formally identical to the naked reality of Christ in and of himself. Just as in the person that makes itself present, its making itself present is not formally identical to its own naked reality. Christ is Christ even without the Eucharist.

c) In this actuality, Christ makes himself present in himself, from himself. The actuality is intrinsic to Christ. In other words, Christ is the intrinsic principle of his actuality. But because of the mode in which Christ chose to make himself present, this actuality is the bread; he takes the food-bread as the principle of His actuality. And thus, since the principle of actuality in man is the body, it is corporeity (and Christ is a man), it turns out that the food-bread, as the principle of Christ’s actuality, is the body of Christ. It is Christ himself. His body is his “I, myself”. Here we have the mode of the presence of Christ in the bread as real presence.

d) Christ takes the bread. The presence is a making himself present. Taking is to make oneself present. Therefore, to the actuality of Christ in the bread formally belongs its manner of being taken, his mode of making himself present, i.e., the state of soul (if I may so express it) that Christ had at the Last Supper. This state of soul was that of his passion and death, “This is the body, which will be given up for you” (1 Cor 11:24; Lk 22:19). This is the sense in which the real presence is an anámnesis, a repetition of the passion and death. And therefore, like the passion itself, it is for the remission of sins.

{415} e) While taking bread as the principle of Christ’s actuality, it turns out that the actuality itself is common to Christ and the food-bread; it is the food-bread which is assumed to be the principle of actuality, and it is Christ who is actual in the bread. Seen from the first aspect, Christ says, “this is my body”, i.e., “this (the bread here) (is) the body of Christ (is I myself)”. Seen from the second aspect, he says, “my body is this”, i.e., “my body (Christ himself), (is) this here”. This community of actuality is precisely the essence of the real presence.

f) Christ takes bread as the principle of his actuality, but it is bread as food, which he takes. Hence, “this is my body”, is a way of saying, “the food is Christ himself”; and “my body is this”, is the same as saying, “I myself am the food”. This is, as I said before, what constitutes transubstantivation. Therefore, now we see that the essence of trans-substantivation is this actuality of the bread made Christ’s actuality, it is trans-actualization. The “trans” itself is one of actuality; it is an occurring of actuality and not an occurrence of actuity.

g) But there is also something essential to add in order to describe this structure. Body is not only the intrinsic, but also the formal principle of Christ, because of this, sôma can signify “I myself”. But by virtue of this formal and radical principle Christ can “extend” (if you will pardon the term) his own formal actuality, he can afterwards modalize his principle of actuality, incorporating the food-bread as principle of actuality. This is a modalization, but a subsequent one; Christ would have his body even if there were no Eucharist. The bread as food-bread is not the formal body of Christ. Christ, by his own formal reason, is not food-bread. What is modally identical to the body of Christ is the food-bread as principle of Christ’s actuality. The food-bread as the moment of intrinsic actuality is grounded in Christ’s body as the {416} formal moment of Christ’s reality. It is the same actuality, but modalized as food. This “extension” is, from my point of view, the precise point of the Eucharistic mystery as mystery. Christ is as actual in the bread as in his own person, but he is actual in the bread because he is already actual in his person. It is, I repeat, the same actuality, but modalized in the bread as food.

For Christ to “take” bread signifies, then, that he makes of the bread’s actuality the principle of His own actuality. By virtue of this, the real presence of Christ in the bread, i.e., this common actuality, from my perspective, constitutes what has been called the sacramental presence. The actuality of the bread as bread “signifies” actually the actuality of Christ in the bread as food.

Here we have the reality of Christ in the bread. It is, so to speak, the essential and radical moment of the Eucharist. But only radical, because the Eucharist is not exhausted in this real presence. The Eucharist is the supreme form of the life of Christ in each of us. The formal essence of the Eucharist is not exhausted, then, in the real presence. Without it there would be no Eucharist, but the real presence alone is not the formal reason for the Eucharist. What is this formal reason? That is the third problem, which I proposed to examine.


C) The formal reason for the Eucharist

This is not a matter of speculation, even a true speculation, but of something revealed by Christ himself. Christ said to us: “He who does not eat my flesh and drink my blood will not have eternal life” (cf. Jn 6:53-54). Therefore, we are not only dealing with the reality of Christ in the bread and wine, but also with the reality {417} of Christ as principle of life for all of us: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it” (cf. Mt 26:26). The verbs “take” and “eat” are an imperative to all those at the table. This is the formal reason for the Eucharist. In what does it consist?

I have already pointed to it when studying the real presence. Christ “is” here-and-now actually present in the bread, and by this presence the bread has been converted to spiritual food. And as such consecrated bread is something, which should be eaten. This terminology may seem a bit coarse to our mentality, but to the Jews of the time it was not. Christ is, then, principle of life by manducation. But here the problem arises, what in fact is this manducation?

The response to this question is already given in the very institution of the Eucharist; Christ gave the consecrated bread to be eaten at a “supper”. Hence, the manducation has two moments, both of which are essential, but perfectly distinct. One is the naked fact of “eating“, as one eats bread, etc. The other is the fact of eating gathered at a supper, that is, gathered at a “meal”. Obviously, without the fact of eating, what we call a supper with various people would not be possible. But in order to have a supper with various people it is not enough to eat. For simplicity, instead of the word supper I will use the equivalent term “banquet”, agape. The Church herself has spoken of the Eucharist as a celestial banquet. Hence, the bare fact of eating is only the radical essence of the banquet; something more is needed. And so, the Eucharist is a “banquet”. That is its formal essence.

In order to conceptualize this, we must consider two points, what a banquet is, and in what does the Eucharist as banquet formally consist.

1) First point, what is it to be a banquet? To a banquet, I constantly repeat, eating is essential. But the fact of eating {418} is not what formally constitutes a banquet. A banquet has that proper unity which is the community of the table-companions. They may gather in the unity of a special occasion as the Israelites gathered every year to commemorate the exodus from Egypt. But the companions may also be gathered around a person, as in the case of an honor banquet, or out of friendship for a person. Thus, the community of banqueters is established around the person who is the object of the banquet. What the banquet adds to the bare fact of eating is the unity of eating around a person, in his honor or in friendship with him. Because of this there can be a banquet even if only that person, and a single table-companion are present. At a banquet, the table-companions have a common actuality, since they are all present to each other, and to the person who is, as it were, the object of the banquet, and being here-and-now present is, as we have seen, actuality. And it is this common actuality, which formally constitutes a banquet. Conversely, the common participation in the agape is what constitutes the formal, and not only the radical reason for the banquet.

But what is this community? Community is not mere collectivity. Community is not an additive moment, but a unity determined by something, which is rigorously common to all the persons, who constitute community only because of this, which is common to them. In a mere community of persons, the persons enter into it solely insofar as some are not others. There can be, and there are in every community, differences which are, in a sense, qualitative, but persons form a community only as others. Actuality is common to the others as others.

But persons can have another type of common actuality. They can have common actuality, not as “others”, but as “persons”, each being in itself what it {419} personally is. In reality, persons enter into community in an impersonal mode. Impersonality is a thing, which excludes personal realities; the other realities are not impersonal but a-personal. On the other hand, there is another type of unity of persons into which persons enter each being in himself what he personally is. Thus the common actuality of all of them is more than community; it is personal communion. Without community there is no communion of persons, but community is not the same as personal communion.

Given this, we ask ourselves what the formal essence of the Eucharistic banquet is.

2) Second point, the formal essence of the Eucharistic banquet. First of all, the Eucharist is formally a banquet, agape. Spiritual food is not eaten as material food is eaten. In other words, it is not the fact of the bread in and of itself that matters, but the fact that it is eaten by each one in that real unity which is established between spiritual food as food and the person of Christ. It is a banquet to Christ, of Christ, and with Christ. It is essential, I believe, to insist on this aspect of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not only a question of the real presence of Christ in the bread; it is also formally a question of the one who receives the Eucharist with Christ. This unity is a unity of actuality, Christ becomes actual in me, and I become actual with Christ. It is not a matter of a communication of substances or properties, but a unity of actuality. In what does the common of this actuality consist? That is the question.

The common actuality of Christ and his table-companions is not mere community; it is communion. Here is an essential point of the formal reason for the Eucharist, communion with the person of Christ. The essence of the Eucharist is communion. This may appear to be a tautology because of the indiscriminate use of both concepts in the common term “communicate”. But it is not a tautology; rather, communion is a moment of the formal essence of the Eucharist. Food {420} as such is proper to community; communion is a personal unity in and by alimentation. The Eucharist is banquet, it is agape, and this agape consists in a personal communion with Christ, and derivatively in the personal communion with the other persons. The common actuality of the table-companions at the Eucharistic banquet is the personal unity of all of them in the personal actuality of Christ.

But communion is only one moment of the formal reason for the Eucharist; we need to ask ourselves, in what does the unity of this personal communion consist? This unity is in man a unity of actuality. And the principle of human actuality is what constitutes corporeity. The body is formally a principle of actuality. Hence, it follows that in the personal communion of the participants in the agape with Christ, Christ is actual in each one of them through His principle of formal actuality, i.e., through His body. The participants in the agape, upon acquiring an actuality in Christ, thereby form a body with him, and by its virtue their personal communion with Christ is precisely, and formally an incorporation into the body of Christ. And since all form a single body with Christ, it follows that, as St. Paul tells us, we are all co-corporeal in Christ. The idea of the body of Christ, of incorporation to Christ, and of co-corporeity is expressed in St. Paul. The formal essence of the Eucharist is personal communion, and the essence of personal communion is incorporation to the body of Christ. And since body is the actuality of the “I, myself” in reality, it follows that this incorporation consists in the fact that each participant in the agape is “I, myself”, being I in, and by the I of Christ. Every Christian is another Christ.


The Eucharist is the supreme form of the mystery of the life of Christ in each one of us. This life constitutes itself sacramentally above all in the Eucharist.

{421} I indicated at the beginning that I do not pretend to say new things about the Eucharist, but conceptualize in my own way those already known. This conceptiveness appeals to three concepts: substantivity, actuality, and corporeity. And these concepts take us directly to all the Pauline ideas. The life of Christ in us is a life that emerges from Christ (food) through transubstantivation, in the form of corporeal actuality, which formally consists in the incorporation to Christ.

When Christ taught us to pray, he taught us to ask the Father for daily bread. The bread Christ was thinking of —let us not fantasize— is certainly the bread of material sustenance. But Christ reminded us at other moments of his life, reaching for a phrase from Deuteronomy (cf. Dt 8:3), that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (cf. Mt 4:4). And shortly before he died he tells us that, “who does not eat my flesh, and drink my blood will not have eternal life” (cf. Jn 6:53-54). Material sustenance itself is not foreign to the life of Christ in us. Because of this, although in a literal sense “daily bread” may mean material sustenance, its sense is not falsified by asking the Father to “give us this day our daily bread, the bread of your Holy Word, the bread of the Holy Eucharist, and the bread of material sustenance”. The intrinsic unity of these three moments of bread constitutes the formal structural essence of the life of Christ in us, the formal structural essence of the Eucharist.