will. Thus, in union with the Theanthropos by the eucharistic presence, they come in communion with all the objects which are to bring them to perfection by a gradual development and transformation.
Take the corporal presence of the Theanthropos away, and the supernatural faculties would only be in communication with the infinite, but not with the finite; with God, but not with his cosmos; because these faculties could never come in contact with the whole cosmos, except inasmuch as it exists and lives in the Theanthropos.
This argument introduces us to another. Every elevated person, to live fully and perfectly, must be in communication not only with the infinite and the finite as to nature, but also as to personality. Every elevated person must commune in a real, living, actual, quickening manner with elevated persons in time and space. The perfection of unity of the cosmos claims this communing, as it is evident; and the fulness of life of each particular person demands it, because life in its plenitude[88] results from communing with all its proper objects.
Now, how to bring together all elevated persons living at a distance of time and space—some in the initial and germinal state, others in the state of completion and palingenesia? We come into communion with things and persons distinct and separate from us by time, space, or individuality, by a medium common to us and those things or persons we wish to enter into communion with. Thus, I come into communication with persons at a certain distance from me by the mediums of light and air, which are between me and them, and common to both. Suppose I was
speaking, the air which exists between me and my hearers would be the common medium of communication. In articulating, I would strike the air which surrounds me, and the strokes would be transmitted from particle to particle in every direction until they would reach the ears of my audience, and thus a communication by speech would be established between us. If, therefore, all elevated persons must come in contact with each other, there must be something which will bring them together—a medium common to them all—to make them commune with each other. Now, this medium is the real substantial presence of the Theanthropos incorporating himself in all elevated persons. I commune with the Theanthropos, with his divinity and his humanity, with his intelligence, his will, his heart, his body: I appropriate him to myself; another communes likewise with the Theanthropos; and thus we are brought together, we come in contact, we are united in the same life, intelligence, will, heart, body; thus we meet and live in one common theanthropic life. This is the foundation partly of that sublime, magnificent, ennobling doctrine of Catholicity, the communion of saints—communion of all persons elevated to the supernatural moment. Communion! What is the medium which brings them together? It is the real, living, substantial presence of the Theanthropos incorporated in them, and on which they have fed and shall feed for eternity.[89]
How beautifully, how divinely was this communication of the Theanthropos
given to us in the shape of food and at a banquet! Men in all times and in all places, by a prophetic instinct implanted in them by the Creator, have recognized the banquet as the supreme and the best expression of union and communication; because it was to appropriate, to drink life at one common source, from one common food. In the eucharistic banquet this is realized truly. Imagine a banqueting-hall as unbounded as space, and a banquet as long as time. Suppose millions upon millions of elevated persons entering the banqueting-hall to partake of the same repast. It is nothing less than the flesh and blood of the Theanthropos, not dead, but living and quickening, by the indwelling of his soul and divinity, under the appearance of the simplest and most primitive elements of life—bread and wine. All partake of it; it penetrates and fills them all. A glow of theanthropic life runs through their supernatural being; their supernatural intelligence grows brighter at the flashes of his infinite, finite intelligence; their will expands at the embraces of infinite and finite loveliness; their hearts swell with virtues under the pressure of the heart of Jesus; their affections are purified, cleansed, ennobled, divinized at the contact of the affections of Jesus; their very flesh is spiritualized at the touch of his flesh; a seed, a germ of immortality is sown in it, to bud and blossom in the end of time. They live; not they, it is the Theanthropos who lives in them. And what wonder is it, then, that their natures, coming in contact in him, their intelligences meeting in him, their will harmonizing in him, their hearts beating together in him, their emotions mingling in him, their flesh touching in him and through him—what wonder, I say, is it, then, that
they should communicate with each other, and that their virtues and their very merits should become common? Those who have never realized such a doctrine may often have marvelled, on hearing a Catholic speaking of those who have passed from the initial and germinal state to the state of palingenesia, as if they were present to him, as if he were actually holding sweet converse with them. This doctrine explains it all. A Catholic feels truly that the life of the apostles and evangelists glows in his bosom, that the blood of martyrs runs in his very blood and ennobles it, that the guileless simplicity and innocent loveliness of the virgins beams on his countenance, that the virtues of all the saints are transfused into him; because at the eucharistic banquet he can meet them living in the eternal mediator of all things, the Theanthropos, and in him and through him he mingles with them, associates with them, comes into the closest possible communication with them. Utopians have dreamt of a universal society, in which everything would be common. It is the eucharistic doctrine of the substantial presence of the Theanthropos which alone realizes this universal, sublime, ennobling society of all elevated spirits in one common medium, and having everything common in the only mediator, Jesus Christ, in all time and space.[90]
We feel that withal the arguments we have brought forward in vindicating the beautiful and sublime dogma of the real presence of the Theanthropos in his cosmos will have no effect on some minds, unless we remove the metaphysical difficulties which are raised against it, and show consequently its possibility. Therefore, we willingly hasten to the task. And as these objections are very popular, we shall put them in the popular form of a dialogue. The dialogue is between W. and D., the first a Protestant, and the other a Catholic.
W. I shall begin by a very strong objection. I cannot conceive the possibility of the body of a full-grown man being within the small portion of space filled by a wafer. Christ was a full-grown man. He is so now. How, then, can he reside or be contained in such a small particle of space as the host?