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Adoremus Bulletin, September 2020
Resuscitating the Mystical Body Theology as Key to a Mystical Liturgy
By Denis McNamara
AB/WIKIMEDIA
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When seen in light of Pius XII's encyclicals, Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium stand out as a great clarion call for the laity’s participation in the victimhood of Christ by virtue of their membership in the Mystical Body.
“ The postconciliar emphasis on the Church as the People of God nearly eclipsed perhaps the most prominent ecclesiological concept leading up to the Council: the Mystical Body of Christ.” Mystical Body of Christ, then, is not simply a concern of the academic specialists, but an explosive idea which was foundational to the entire concept of lay liturgical participation so universally promoted after the Second Vatican Council, and so frequently understood at only the shallowest level as a mere external busyness. Today’s understanding of Conciliar liturgical theology can be enriched by a second look at Mystical Body theology and the proper understanding of “community” as those who assemble for corporate worship as the mystici corporis Christi.
AB/CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY
he Second Vatican Council’s document Lumen Gentium (LG), “The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” gives many descriptive names for the Church, but perhaps none took root more widely in the post-conciliar years than “People of God” (LG, 9-17), often used to emphasize a “bottom up” model of the Church, sometimes with a strikingly anthropocentric turn associated with the word “community.” In 1966, Jesuit Avery Dulles wrote that Lumen Gentium struck a “democratic” tone because it spoke of the Church’s mission in terms of “service rather than domination.”1 Similarly, the Abbott-Gallagher translation of the documents of Vatican II added an explanatory footnote to the use of the phrase, noting that “People of God” met a “profound desire of the Council to put greater emphasis on the human and communal side of the Church, rather than on the institutional and hierarchical aspects which have sometimes been overstressed in the past….”2 This anti-hierarchical bias continued to grow in some quarters, such that in 2011 Notre Dame theology professor Father Richard McBrien could give an interpretation of “People of God” this way: “Who or what is the church? It is first and foremost people. It is also an institution. But it is primarily a community. The church is us.”3 This “People-of-God principle,” as he called it, was expressed “in parish councils, in base communities, in the multiplication of ministries, and particularly in ministries associated with the liturgy, education and social justice.” This reactionary postconciliar emphasis on the Church as the People of God nearly eclipsed perhaps the most prominent ecclesiological concept leading up to the Council: the Mystical Body of Christ, the notion that the Church is the continuing action of Christ in the world, operating mystically as both Head and Members. In our day, more than 50 years after the Council, rediscovery of Mystical Body theology provides many helpful insights in understanding what “active participation” really means. Indeed “new People of God” (LG, 9) is an apt and deeply scriptural name for the Church, since God called the chosen people in order to form and save them as a corporate body rather than as individuals. But Christ took this gathered people and raised the
Participation in liturgy is participation in Christ’s own perfect self-offering, and because the laity are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, they can be offered to the Father as a perfect offering as well. And sharing sacramentally in this seamless sacrifice, they are made holy as Christ is holy and, by extension, become perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect.
stakes, incorporating them into his own body, grafting them on to the vine of his own divine and human natures so that they might live with him, die with him, and rise with him.4 This Mystical Body, which includes all of the baptized, not simply ordained ministers, celebrates the Paschal Mystery in the Church’s liturgy. Consequently, when united to the ordained minister in the liturgy, the laity “are” Christ, and therefore the concept of participation takes on profound importance in modern liturgical theology. The lay faithful make a real priestly offering by virtue of their baptismal priesthood, and therefore join their offering of self to that which Christ makes to the Father. They therefore share in the glorification and resurrection that Christ enjoys at God’s right hand. This rediscovery of the theology of the
Pius XII and Mystici Corporis The promotion of Mystical Body theology took a great leap forward in 1943 with Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (MC).5 Teaching authoritatively, the pontiff makes it clear that he is clarifying ideas that are already present in the Church, encouraging that which is true and correcting errors.6 His text shows a hint of defensiveness, beginning with the claim that the doctrine was “taught us by the Redeemer Himself ” (MC, 1), and later he reminds those who think the doctrine “dangerous” that mysteries “revealed by God cannot be harmful to men…” (MC, 10). Mystici Corporis says surprisingly little about the implications of the doctrine on liturgy, but a few insights can be gleaned which would be developed four years later in its sister encyclical, Mediator Dei (MD). One of
his purposes in writing Mystici Corporis, Pius XII notes, is “to bring out into fuller light the exalted nobility of the faithful who in the Body of Christ are united with their head” (MC, 11). Later he makes the point that though the Body of Christ is subordinate to the Head, “they have the same nature” (MC, 46) and then extends that connection to human nature, which Christ took upon himself to make “His brothers according to the flesh partakers of the divine nature” (MC, 43). This divinization of the members of the body occurs through sacred rites of the Church, what Pius XII identifies as “participation in the same Sacrifice” of Christ (MC, 69). Pius XII calls the earthly priest one who “acts as the viceregent not only of our Savior, but of the whole Mystical Body and each one of the faithful” (MC, 82). But then he strikes the salient point which begins to establish the role of the laity in worship: united with the priest in prayer and desire, the faithful as well “offer to the Eternal Father a most acceptable victim of praise and propitiation…” (MC, 82). This earthly worship by the full Mystical Body, then, allows lay participation in Christ’s perfect self-offering, since he offers not only himself, but “in Himself, His mystical members as well.” The laity’s important role in worship here finds its foundation while preserving the liturgy’s hierarchical nature and the uniqueness of the ordained priesthood.
“ This rediscovery of the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ, then, is not simply a concern of the academic specialists, but an explosive idea which was foundational to the entire concept of lay liturgical participation so universally promoted after the Second Vatican Council, and so frequently understood at only the shallowest level as a mere external busyness.” Mediator Dei and the Mystical Body In Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei, this pontiff addressed the growing interest in liturgy during the previous decades, known collectively as the Liturgical Movement. The first encyclical in the history of the Church completely dedicated to liturgy, it clearly positions worship in relation to the Mystical Body, a phrase used 25 times through the text. He begins by defining the priestly life of Christ continuing “down the ages in His Mystical Body, which is the Church” (MD, 2-3), and later gives a remarkably succinct and complete definition of the sacred liturgy as “the public worship which our Redeemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its Founder, and through Him to the heavenly Father. It is, in short, the worship rendered by the Mystical Body of Christ in the entirety of its Head and members” (MD, 20). Pius XII is careful to maintain the essential distinctiveness of the ordained priesthood, noting that not all in the Body have the same powers (MD, 39); that minis-
