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Dear Father Angelo,
I have another question to ask you: when we receive the Eucharist we eat God and therefore God enters and dwells in us, but how is it possible that God who is infinite can be contained in a finite mortal body? In other words: is it not we who are contained by God rather than the other way around?
A thousand thanks
A warm greeting
Paola
Dear Paola,
1. What you say is true.
However, more than the body, it is the soul that receives God.
And the soul is enabled to receive God by means of sanctifying grace, which is a reality of a supernatural order, equipped precisely for this: to become the dwelling place of God.
2. Our senses are unable to receive God.
Instead, they are capable of receiving the appearances of the bread and wine which in the Eucharist convey the presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord.
3. On the other hand, this Sacrament is ordered to communicate to us the divine life which is a life of supernatural and not corporal order.
4. St. Thomas recalls that “the effect of this Sacrament must be deduced first and mainly from what is contained in this Sacrament, that is, from Christ” .
Who, as visibly coming into the world, brought life to it, according to the Gospel words: “Grace and truth have been given by Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17), thus coming sacramentally into man He produces the life of grace , according to the Lord’s words: “Whoever eats me will live on me” (Jn 6:57).
So that St. Cyril could write: “The life-giving Word of God uniting Himself with His own flesh made it life-giving.
It was therefore suitable that He should somehow unite Himself to our bodies by means of His holy flesh and His precious blood, which we receive in bread and wine through a life-giving communion “(In Luke 22:19)” (Sum theological, III, 79.1).
5. St. Thomas reminds us that this Sacrament restores spiritually and also reminds us that the grace that is communicated to us makes charity active and operative:
“This Sacrament confers grace spiritually together with the virtue of charity.
Hence the Damascene compares this Sacrament to the burning coal seen by Isaiah 6,6: “As coal is not only wood, but wood united with fire, so also the bread of communion is not only bread, but bread united with divinity” ( De fide orth.4.13).
Now, as St. Gregory observes, “God’s love does not remain idle, it works great things, if there is one” (Homilies on the Gospels, 30).
And so with this Sacrament, insofar as it depends on its efficacy, the habit of grace and virtues is not only conferred, but also put into activity, according to the words of St. Paul: “The love of Christ impels us” (2 Cor 5:14).
This is why by virtue of this Sacrament the soul is spiritually refreshed, as it remains delighted and almost inebriated, by the sweetness of divine goodness, according to the expression of the Songs: “Eat, friends; drink, get inebriated, dear ones “(Ct 5,1)” (Ib., ad 2).
6. However, even the body, since it conveys the Eucharist, although it is not the direct subject of grace, receives a beneficial effect.
St. Thomas writes: “Although the body is not the immediate subject of grace, nevertheless the effect of grace from the soul redounds on the body: because in the present life by virtue of this Sacrament” we offer our members to God as instruments of justice “, as Paul says (Rom 6:13); and in the future life our body will participate in the incorruption and glory of the soul “(Ib., ad 3).
While I wish you many beneficial effects from the reception of this Sacrament, I remind you to the Lord and I bless you.
Father Angelo