In a recent PrayTell post, a passing criticism was made of St. Alphonsus Liguori’s “Act of Spiritual Communion” which, in many places, is being prayed at the time of communion during livestreamed Masses. While hardly the main point of the original post, it did touch off some discussion in the comments, which led me to ponder this notion of “spiritual communion.”
The prayer under discussion goes as follows:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things,
and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there
and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You.
In general, “spiritual communion” is the eucharistic analogue to “baptism of desire.” That is to say, in both cases the Church teaches that one who desires the sacrament but who for some reason cannot share in the sacramental sign, can still receive the ultimate effect of the sacrament. At least in the case of baptism, this view is present in the early centuries, first with regard to catechumens who were martyred and later with regard to those who died of natural causes.
In the scholastic era, both spiritual communion and baptism of desire are discussed in terms of the threefold distinction of sacramentum tantum (sacramental sign), res et sacramentum (immediate effect), and res tantum (ultimate effect). Because God is gracious, one can receive the ultimate effect without receiving either the sacramental sign or the immediate effect. So, in the case of Baptism one can receive the grace of justification (res tantum) without being washed in the name of the Trinity (sacramentum tantum) or receiving baptismal character (res et sacramentum); in the case of the Eucharist one can be united with Christ in love (res tantum) without consuming the eucharistic elements (sacramentum tantum) or Christ being present sacramentally (res et sacramentum). Thomas Aquinas used these distinctions also to account for how Christians can receive Christ sacramentally–consuming not only the sacramental signs but also Christ really present–and still fail to receive the ultimate effect of the sacrament, and so “eat and drink judgement against themselves” (1 Cor. 11:29).
I realize that scholastic distinctions are not everybody’s cup of tea, but these at least help show that a prayer like St. Alphonsus’s Act of Spiritual Communion is not, despite some of its phraseology, simply a bit of sentimental piety, but is rather undergirded by a robust theological account of God’s gracious agency and the role of human desire in the sacraments. This is not to say that St. Alphonsus’s prayer is a perfect expression of our understanding of the Eucharist. At the very least, it does not say everything that might be said.
Fr. Anthony noted in the comments of the earlier post: “[Real Presence is] always a Presence FOR something, it always points to and leads to something bigger…That bigger thing is that, in Christ, we are united to each other, we become the Body of Christ, we are united to all of Creation which God wishes to reconcile to himself.” To put his point in scholastic language, it might be the case that St. Alphonsus’s prayer expresses the res tantum too narrowly. The unity with Christ that is the ultimate effect of the sacrament is union with the totus Christus, the whole Christ, both head and members. It is not merely my personal union with Jesus, though it is indeed that, but it is also an ecclesial union in which, as Henri de Lubac put it, the Eucharist makes the Church. It is likewise an eschatological union, by which we are joined to the future fullness of God’s reign and share in the banquet of the Lamb along with all of redeemed creation.
I am confident that St. Alphonsus’ believed these things about the Eucharist. But they remain at best implicit in his Act of Spiritual Communion. Were we to make them explicit, it might run something like this:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things,
and I desire to receive You into my soul,
to be in communion with Your body, the Church,
and to feast at the Lamb’s sacred banquet in the new creation.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there
and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You,
build up the bonds of charity among your people,
and bring us all to the feast of heaven.
Of course, not every prayer has to say every possible thing. And since the Eucharistic liturgy itself is replete with ecclesial and eschatological language, I don’t think any great harm is done by using St. Alphonsus’s prayer as written. Indeed, I rather think that it could likely do great good for those who feel sorely deprived of sacramental communion.
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