Grace and the Mystical Body

Extract

The vitally important doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ has found a valuable exponent in Mgr. Fulton Sheen, in whose recent book is to be found a popular exposition of this hitherto somewhat neglected teaching of St. Paul and the Fathers. Unfortunately, however, there does not appear in it a clear notion of the union of the Mystical Body, without which the significance of the doctrine must inevitably escape the lay reader. In this book, as elsewhere, one finds a very useful distinction between an organization and an organism, which serves to set the Church apart from any other type of social unit. Yet many of the terms, such as “body,” “organism,” “life,” “cells,” commonly used in this context swing to and fro between mere metaphor and strict analogy, so that it is not always easy to pierce the cover of resemblance and lay hold of the reality beneath. Further, analogy is of the lower with the higher, and represents the attempt to arrive at a knowledge of the invisible by comparison with the visible and the material. Continual stress on material likeness is apt to shape the hidden truth according to the unreality of the looking-glass; so that when there does exist a notion which is immediately applicable to the truth itself, and which is commonly understood by the general reader, that notion should be used with insistence. We may gain a considerable knowledge of the nature of “art” by studying it in terms of lines and masses, but we can hardly obtain by these means a clear idea of the vital spirit which makes a work of “art” something beyond either line or mass.