What the liturgy teaches us about our bodies.

St. Prosper of Aquitaine wrote: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. Loosely translated, it means that our whole life should harmonize with our prayer life, and our prayer life with our faith. We can apply this saying to the considerable role the body plays in our liturgical life.

The body plays this role most significantly because we have been raised up, redeemed, soul and body, by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity becoming a human being. It is true that the historical events of our redemption have already taken place in advance, as it were, but as Christians we are called on to undergo a continuous process of redemption in our earthly life, a process in which liturgy, and in particular the Eucharistic liturgy, plays a major role. And in the liturgy can by seen the importance accorded to our bodies.

"We are what we eat"

In the Eucharist, Christ, as High Priest, raises up creation to the Father. He changes simple bread and wine into his body and blood, and he changes us into himself by Communion, making us members of his body and one with our brothers and sisters in Christ. St. Augustine said that in this event "we are what we eat." Our body, of course, shares in this transformation of our soul, since it is one in being with it.

There are ramifications of this transformation. First, since we are one with Christ, so we, in our spiritual and bodily existence, at the elevation of the Host and the chalice, are raised up with Christ. Thus our everyday life becomes liturgical, and we become means of transforming the world. Secondly, the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ is a foretaste of the transfiguration of our bodies by Christ. Thirdly, there is, as it were, a demand made on our bodies as a requirement to become capable of resurrection. We must develop the virtues which train our bodies to live in accordance with our divinized nature, to foster purity, temperance, and the self-denial required to avoid sin and to inconvenience ourselves in order to be fair and generous in serving our neighbour.

We perhaps are aware of it only rarely, but on thinking about it we realize the important part that our bodies play in our observance of the Eucharist and of the other Sacraments. In the Eucharist we make the Sign of the Cross, we kneel at the appropriate times, we say the prayers assigned to the congregation, we sing the hymns, just before Communion we give a hand-clasp to our immediate neighbours as a symbol of us receiving from God the mercy we have ourselves shown to others, and we take part in processions. In baptism we have water poured on our head and salt put on our tongue. In Confirmation we receive the Sign of the Cross on our forehead and the symbolic blow on the cheek. In Penance we kneel. In the Sacrament of the sick, parts of our body are anointed with oil. In Marriage not just our souls but our bodies also are united to one another in remembrance of the union of the divine Bridegroom and his Bride. In ordination the hands of the new priest are anointed. Our bodies are involved also with Sacramentals; we may wear a Cross as a symbol of our faith, or finger our rosary beads.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) tells us that there is a good reason why we have a body. The reason is that God created two kinds of spiritual beings: angels and humans. Angels are superior to us in the natural order in that their intellect is of a higher order than ours. As a result, our body is given to us because our sense powers are an aid to our intellect, and enable us to exercise a higher order of intellect than we could without the body's aid. Our bodies therefore are good for us.

Some philosophers, such as Plato (427-347 B.C.), and some religious movements, such as Manichaeism (taught by the Persian prophet Manes about the third century B.C.), have downplayed or scorned the human body, but the Catholic liturgy teaches us that the human body is called to share in the life of Christ, in the resurrection of Christ, and in our eternal life with him.

Amy Gordon is our youngest contributor for this issue. She is in her fourth year of Arts at the Dominican University College, Ottawa, ON.