The Eucharist and Charity

‘A new commandment I give you: that you love one another and I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (S. John 13.34). Our Blessed Lord promises the gift of divinely communicated love, charity, to be the source of supernatural life and of the unity of His People, the Church of God. The Lord imparts charity as the bond which unites men to God and each other. How does God impart this transforming and unitative theological virtue of charity to man? The answer of Christ’s Church has always been unequivocal: sacramentally, in the Sacrament of Charity and Unity, the Eucharist. Does God give to mankind the theological virtue of charity through the Holy Eucharist in the Catholic Church? Undoubtedly. How does the ‘Church-making’ Sacrament of Jesus Christ, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist, actualise the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the communion of charity by the infusion of the theological virtue of charity? Or, more precisely, how does God, through the instrumentality of the Eucharistic mystery, bind together His children in the communication of the divine gift of caritas or agaph, making them participant in the life of the Holy Trinity which is Love? Is there an ecclesiastical dimension related to the Eucharist in which the theological virtue of charity is received, lived, and manifested to the new creation? These questions are posed and beautifully answered by the most imminent theologian of the Western Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo. This project intends to explore, in the light of Saint Augustine’s sermons and writings, and in comparison with other writers, the meaning of these questions and the answers which have been supplied by the Catholic and Apostolic Church for the better part of two-thousand years. The Sacrament of the Altar as the sacramentum unitatis, the Sacrament of Unity, has been held to be the constitutive power holding together the Church’s common bond of perichoresis, of mutual-indwelling-in-love of the members of the One Body, and, most profoundly, of mutual indwelling in the Life of God Himself, the Blessed Trinity, since the beginning of the formulation of Christian doctrine. The Church, as the mystical Body of Jesus Christ, is made one in Christ by the sacramental Body of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist. Church and Eucharist are inseparable realities, both being Christ’s Body. Through the ecclesial Body and Eucharistic Body of Christ, God the Holy Trinity imparts his own divine gift of love, from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, the theological virtue of charity, thus forming human beings into a participant reality in the Life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Church and Eucharist, infusing and implanting the grace of charity, cause man to be divinised, deified, to enjoy the supernatural transformation of qewsis: ‘God became man so that man may become God’ (S. Athanasius). The supreme gift of God, His own love, transfigures redeemed human nature to become by grace what God is by nature. By God who is Love the human person, united to the divinely-glorified humanity of Jesus Christ the God-Man present as Gift and Offering in the Eucharistic Solemnities, is made to become God-like in love.

I. The Teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo
‘O Sacrament of Piety! O Sign of Unity! O Bond of Charity!’ (In John 26). Because in the Eucharistic celebration the baptised are united to Christ’s offering of himself to the Father, they are therefore united to each other in Christ. For Saint Augustine, the offering of the Holy Eucharist enables the baptised to enter into the one perfect Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, his self-Oblation to the Father. By reception of the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ, Our Lord under the sacred species of bread and wine, the baptised communicants are formed by divine charity into the ecclesiastical or mystical Body of Christ, the Church. The Sacrament of Unity, the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, when received as charity and with the right predisposition of charity, forms the communion of charity, the Church. ‘The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the Communion in the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the Communion in the Body of Christ? Because there is one Bread, we who are many are one Body, for we all partake of the one Bread’ (1 Corinthians 16-17). ‘The chalice, or rather, what the chalice holds, consecrated by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. Through those Elements the Lord wished to entrust to us his Body and Blood which he poured out for the remission of sins. If you have received worthily, you are what you have received.’ (Sermon 227). ‘This food and this drink Our Lord would have us to understand as the fellowship of His Body and members, which is the Church of His predestinated, and called, and justified, and glorified, His holy and believing ones’ (Sermon 272). ‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ... Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it’ (1 Corinthians 12.12,27). Augustine borrows the ancient image of the second-century Syrian Didache in order to explain the efficacy of the Eucharist in creating the unity of the Church in love. He uses the image of many grains of wheat being gathered into one loaf of bread, this loaf being offered in the Eucharist as a symbol of the Church’s unity. The Saint of Hippo uses the typology of the Didache in his Easter instructions of the newly-baptised, neophytes who have just received the Holy Communion for the first time. ‘Our Lord betokened His Body and Blood in things out of which many units are made into some one whole: for out of many grains one thing is made and many grapes flow into one thing’ (On John Tract 26). In his teaching and preaching to new members of the Church, Augustine explains in detail: the neophytes are themselves the many grains threshed by oxen when the Gospel was preached to them; then they were stored in barns as catechumens when held back from sharing in the Eucharistic offering. Ground by exorcism and fasting, moistened with baptismal water and shaped into one lump of dough in Holy Baptism, the baptised were baked by the fire of the Holy Ghost into the Lord’s one loaf of bread by the sacrament of Confirmation. In a powerful metaphor, Saint Augustine describes the integral unity of the faithful as they are together forged into one indissoluble Body in the mystery of the Church and her sacramental life. ‘So by bread you are instructed as to how you ought to cherish unity. Was that bread made of one grain of wheat? Were there not, rather, many grains? However, before they became bread these grains were separate. They were joined together in water after a certain amount of crushing. For unless the grain is ground and moistened with water, it cannot arrive at that form which is called bread. So, too, you were previously ground, as it were, by the humiliation of your fasting and by the sacrament of exorcism. Then came the baptism of water. You were moistened, as it were, so as to arrive at the form of bread. But without fire, bread does not yet exist’ (Sermon 227). The Church as the mystical Body is created by Jesus Christ in the sacraments of the Church’s initiation.

The wine to be consecrated in chalice, Augustine explains, symbolises the oneness of heart, mind, and soul experienced by the primitive first-century Church as related in Acts of the Apostles 4.32: ‘Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.’ Many individual grapes are pressed together in the winepress into one cup of wine that tastes lovely. The Eucharist gives the quintessential unity to this ecclesiastical reality made by the power of God in the Gospel of his love. The faithful are placed in the Eucharistic elements upon the Altar with the whole communion of the Body of Christ. They enter into the mystery of the Eucharistic oblation as being that oblation themselves. ‘If you are the Body and members of Christ, then it is your sacrament that is placed on the table of the Lord; it is your sacrament that you receive. To that which you are you respond ‘Amen’ (‘yes - it is true’) and by responding to it you assent to it. For you hear the words, ‘the Body of Christ’ and respond ‘Amen.’ Be then a member of the Body of Christ that your Amen may be true’ (Sermon 272). In his love and mercy the Lord Jesus has commended to the Church the gift of his Body and Blood in Holy Communion so that we may be transformed into him. ‘The one who is properly said to eat the Body of Christ and to drink his Blood is the one who is incorporated into the unity of his Body...’ (City of God 21.25). The Body and Blood of Christ are what the Christian becomes when he receives the Blessed Sacrament: ‘This is what he even made us ourselves into as well’ (Sermon 229). The Eucharist is the singular mystery which signifies the Christian’s being-in-Christ. The Christian sees himself and his own mystery upon the Altar. The faithful must give their personal assent to what is done on the Altar as pertaining to their being. The Christian receives what he is in Holy Communion. Another way of phrasing it would be, simply: ‘Be what you can see and receive what you are’ or again, ‘Behold! There you are in the Host! See! There you are in the chalice!’ Although there is a multiplicity of Masses celebrated on thousands of Catholic Altars throughout the Christian world, and therefore thousands of loaves of bread consecrated in the Mysteries in different places, there is still only One Bread because all faithful Christians together form the One Body of Christ. ‘Although many, you are the One Bread’ (Sermon 228). Participation in the Holy Eucharist as the Church-making sacrament effects the unity of the Body of Christ. The ecclesial Body of Jesus Christ is created or formed into a special unity by the sacramental Body of Christ - in charity. The two manifestations of the One Body are inextricable. Thus Saint Augustine admonishes the newly baptised: ‘In order not to be scattered and separated, eat what binds you together’ (Sermon 228). Christ joins his Body to himself and each member to the other member in the ‘Bond of Charity,’ the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The precise and specific purpose of the Lord’s Supper, the exact property of the Eucharist, is unity; the Eucharist orders itself towards the unity of the one Body. ‘By being digested into his Body and turned into his members we may be what we receive’ (Sermon 57). The Christian faithful are literally united to Jesus Christ and each other by eating Christ’s Flesh and drinking his Blood; the unitative efficacy of the Eucharist radically depends on the Real Objective Presence of Our Lord in the Mysteries of the Altar. Only a really, truly, and substantially-present Christ can cause his members to corporally participate in him and therefore be made One Body with him and each other. The Bishop of Hippo calls the Eucharist the ‘Sacrament of our peace and unity’ (Sermon 272) and declares it to be the means by which the Body of Christ is made one. The moral impact of the Eucharist is so profound and transformative that we receive this admonition: ‘Any who receive the sacrament of unity and do not hold the bond of peace, do not receive the sacrament for their benefit, but for a testimony against themselves’ (Sermon 272). If the Eucharist is received in a wrong or sinful state, and without the proper readiness and intention, the Mysteries become not a saving ordinance but a token of the sin of the receiver, a sign by which the bad communicant incriminates himself and publicly professes his wickedness. To be what they receive, the communicant faithful must receive Our Lord in Holy Communion worthily. Saint Augustine repeats the solemn warning of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 11: ‘Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord.’ Charity and the bond of unity can only be maintained if the reception of the Divine Sacrament is accompanied with faith, hope love, repentance, and the right dispositions. The sacrament unitatis causes a unity in the Lord’s Body the Church, being ‘the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body’ (as Augustine loves to describe it). The Body of Christ is made one by the ‘harmony of charity’ (Sermon 272). It is the theological virtue of charity which Eucharistically binds the Church together as a unity. There cane be no unity without this harmonious charity being present and active in the Body. Charity is the necessary prerequisite for beautifully and rightly receiving the Blessed Sacrament: ‘The wedding garment is charity out of a pure of heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned... Question yourselves; if you have real charity, you may be without fear in the Feast of the Lord [the Eucharist]. Let charity be born in you, let it be nourished, fostered, increased. Love the Lord, and so learn to love yourselves; that when by loving the Lord you shall have loved yourselves, you may securely love your neighbours as yourselves’ (Sermon 40). ‘So then Jesus both gave us his Body and Blood a healthful refreshment... let them eat and drink Life... love and God shall draw you... eat, drink, live!’ (Sermon 81). The Church is fashioned by Christ to be the permanent repository of charity, to be the Home of Charity, the Abode of God’s Love. ‘It follows after the commendation of the Trinity [in the Creed], ‘the Holy Church.’ God is pointed out, and so is His Temple. This same Temple is the Church, the one Church, the true Church, the Catholic Church, fighting against all heresies: it abides in its root, in its vine, which is charity’ (On the Creed). And yet, this charity can be broken, thus severing the unity of the Church. Charity, the supernatural love of God, given by God directly and personally, lived in God, holds the Church, the Body of Christ, together as its unifying principle. ‘Charity pertains to the unity of spirit and the bond of peace whereby the Catholic Church is gathered and knit together...’ (On Patience). The divine love, charity, is infused in the Christian by the grace of God. It is communicated to man by God himself. ‘Love, which is a virtue, comes to us from God, not from ourselves.’ (On Grace 20). Love is the communion of the first Lover, God, and the beloved, mankind. (On the Trinity 8.10, 14).

Let us observe in more detail the relationship in Augustine’s theology between the Eucharist as sacramentum unitatis or communio and the gift of divine charity. Love, for Augustine, is at the very heart of the Christian life and the Church. Charity should not confused with the sacraments themselves or outward visible acts of religion - for charity is interior to the person and is reflected in charitable action. People may approach the Lord’s Table and receive the Eucharist, but they can only be called Christian to the extent that they truly act out of love. Charity alone guarantees living the good life. The mode of life demonstrated in faith, hope, and charity, or of the lack thereof, shows what a person truly is or is not (ep. Jo. 5.7, 7.6, 4.4). Charity is inclination, movement, and striving. Propter seipsam rem aliquam appetere; motus ad aliquid; ad aliquid moveri (div. qu. 35.1 in Augustine 509). Love becomes concrete by the object which is loved: the Christian life must be a life of genuine charity practised in good works, lived-out visibly. The outward sacramental signs of the Christian Faith are no automatic guarantee of charity or holiness. The charity conveyed as grace must be co-operated with and exercised in a tangible way. Charity is the force of the soul, the source of life. Love is the basis of our life; charity determines what kind of life we live, whether good or evil. Charity is a matter of the will (Augustine 327). It is the gift of God, the greatest of all gifts: ‘Charity, which you have been given, surpasses all things’ (Sermon 95). The more we desire charity, the more it increases in our life and soul. What, specifically, is charity? Saint Augustine supplies a careful answer: ‘Wherefore whoso names the Father and the Son ought thereby to understand the mutual love of the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is Charity. And do not count charity a cheap thing. How indeed can it be cheap when all things that are said to not be cheap are called dear (chara)? Therefore what is not cheap is dear, and what is dearer than dearness itself (caritas)? (On John Tract 9). Charity, then, is God Himself, present in His own virtue of love. It is the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Trinity, the Love of Father and Son Who is charity, imparts charity, and unites the Church as the Body of Christ in the Trinitarian communion of love. The Spirit effects the union of the Church, as Body, with its divine Head, and with its members, as the Body of Christ is jointly united to the Father and the Spirit himself. Charity exists as a Trinitarian reality, encounter, and experience. ‘We therefore have the Holy Spirit if we love the Church; but we love the Church if we stand firm in its unity and charity. Before all great things the Apostle Paul has put charity. Have charity, and you shall have it all; without it, whatever you have will profit nothing. The charity we are speaking of is the Holy Spirit’ (On John Tract 32). The Holy Ghost is the source and bond of charity, being Charity Himself. Augustinian tradition is a theology of ecclesiastical charity, of the life and love of the Holy Spirit appropriated and translated into practice via the Holy Catholic Church as the Home of the Holy Spirit. This communio ecclesiae is bound together as one entity by the Eucharist, the ‘Sacrament of the Lord’s Body.’ Charity is the essence of God’s Being, incomprehensible and immutable, loving all creation. We are loved as members of Jesus Christ by the Father in the Spirit. Charity comes from God to us, God having loved us first. As God’s gift to us, caritas or agaph is the means by which Christ loves his Church - He endows the Church with this distinctive and particular gift of his Spirit. By charity, God sets apart his Church and his Saints from the world. Its ultimate effect is obedience to God. It is the source of unity and brotherhood in the Church. Charity is given us for God’s sake that we may love God for his own sake, and in so doing, charity perfects believers and unites them in the Spirit. Charity is the bond of the Trinity Himself and all virtues. Saint Augustine’s teaching finds eloquently summary in the Anglican liturgy: ‘Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee’ (Collect for Quinquagesima, Book of Common Prayer). Charity is infused into the believer that he may be like Christ, the New Man, and an heir of the New Testament People of God. It sustained the Saints of the Old Covenant and now transforms the world through the New Covenant. By loving each other, we come to enter the love of God. (Augustine 509). The inner heart and life of God himself, and the Bond of the Trinitarian Unity, the Holy Spirit, are conveyed to Christ’s new redeemed and transfigured creation, the Church, through the divinely-appointed instrumentality of the sacramental life as the extension of the Incarnation. As the reality of the Incarnate Lord Jesus, Who breathes on the Church the Holy Spirit, is expressed and re-presented by means of the Eucharistic liturgy, the People of God receive unity by the power of charity. ‘What are these bonds of unity? Above all, charity ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony.’ The unity of the pilgrim Church is also assured by visible bonds of communion: common celebration of divine worship, especially of the sacraments.’ (CCC 815).

II. The Holy Eucharist as Trinitarian Communion in Love
What theology underlies the teaching of Saint Augustine? It is the theology of the Eucharist as a communion with Divine Communion himself, the Trinity, through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian reality, of God as One Communion of Three Divine Persons, is the mystery of the self-communication of God economically and of the internal life of God eternally. God gives and receives Himself within the Triune Mystery of His own Godhead. The Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Tri-Personal God, is the Divine Love that emanates between the Father and the Son. He is, according to Saint Augustine, the ‘Bond of Love’ between Father and Son. As such, the Spirit is God’s own Love for God, God’s enjoyment of being God: He is the joy of God being Himself. The Spirit of Love, being Himself the Bond of Love between Father and Son, is imparted to redeemed mankind, the baptised, through Jesus Christ. Our Lord sends the Holy Ghost upon the Church from the Father. ‘But when the Comforter comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me’ (S. John 15.26). The Holy Spirit effects our share in the very life of God, that we may live in the shared of life of God’s enjoyment of being God. The mutual-indwelling, this participation in the life of God, is granted by God Himself as the principle of mankind’s divinisation or deification, qewsis. This perichoresis, or mutual interpenetration of life and love, means that the Father and the Son give us share in their love of each other and Their joy of being God, which is personified within the Godhead as the Holy Spirit. We are thusly lifted up to God, into the love and life of God. God gathers the Church up into Himself, into the mystery of His very Tri-Hypostatic Being, to live and love in Him, not losing the members’ individual identities and realities in the process, but having them transformed to share as participants in God, who is Love. The Father and the Son know each other and are known by each other; in theosis, the Love that is given each to the other, the mutual Father-Son acknowledgement and joy of God being God, the Holy Spirit, embraces the redeemed. The baptised and confirmed Christian initiates live in the embrace of the Father and the Son for each other - the Holy Spirit. We possess in an ineffable manner God’s own sharing of God’s own life in common with God.

This communication in God and with God is deification. God loves us with his own theological virtue of love to the degree that he offers Himself as perfect and eternal intimacy with man. The very life of God is infused into ‘in-Christed’ man. Man is the Image and Likeness of the Trinity, and so Divine Communion or Community, the inner reality of the heart of God, reproduces itself in the human person by creation, and redemption. The Trinitarian life is the life of a Divine Family, a Community of Three Divine Persons in One Life. Therefore, the Holy Catholic Church as the Body of Christ is communio, participation, communion, shared life in Christ. The Church, People of God, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit, was fashioned directly by God as a divine reality, a divine society and family, through which human beings may come into communion with the Divine Trinity. The Church is the extension of the Tri-Personal God, the extended life of the Trinity to man. Through the Church as communion, as participation, as unity-in-diversity, God extends the divine Communion of His Tri-Personal Being to His ‘Icons’ in the created order. The microcosm of this mysterious self-giving in God as Trinity towards us is the Holy Eucharist. The divine Mysteries of the Altar, the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ, are the Gift of Christ’s Life to his purchased and possessed people, his new creation in Him. Being gathered into Christ as many members of one Body in Christ, we, by participating the substantial essence of Christ are carried into the perichoresis of the Trinity. Therefore, communion with Christ in the Holy Mysteries of the Eucharist is communion through the Son, in the Spirit, with the Father: The Eucharist is a Trinitarian mystery. Through the Son Jesus Christ we share in the life of His heavenly Father through the outpoured gift of the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father through the Son. The Eucharist constitutes in sacramental form the Trinitarian reality of God. The Eucharist is genuine participation in the Trinity, and is thus the means of divinisation, the ‘medicine of immortality’ (S. Ignatius of Antioch). The centre, source, and summit of the Christian life, the Holy Eucharist is Holy Communion, divine participation in the One Divine Person in two natures, human and divine, of Jesus Christ. The Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist is the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - who is Love, Charity, Himself. The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ realises the unity of our nature both with Christ and at the same time with all the members of the Church (Lossky 180). Saint John Chrysostom reiterates the teaching of Blessed Augustine on the subject: ‘We become one body; members, it is said, of His flesh and of his bones. This is effected by the food which He has freely given us. He has mingled His Body with ours that we may be one, as Body joined to Head’ (S. John Sermon 46). The One Church really appears by virtue of the Eucharist’s unitative power to be a single human nature united to Jesus Christ -- the Church becomes One Body and Blood with Christ (S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Myst. Cat. 2), one with the human nature of the glorified Son of God. The Eucharistic union fulfils the nature of Christians by virtue of union with Christ. The members of Christ find their fulfilment in Eucharistic conjunction with Christ. In the Church and through the sacraments, and particularly the Eucharist, our human nature enters into union with the Divine Hypostasis of the Son of God, Who is the Head of his mystical Body the Church. Our humanity becomes one in essence, nature, with the divinised humanity of Christ, and thus we are united to the One Person of Christ. The deified human nature is Christ’s own Gift to us in the Eucharistic species. What the communicant receives in Holy Communion is nothing less than the Person of the Divine Word, complete with both natures human and divine. Our human nature is united to Christ in the Church which is His Body, a union consummated and fulfilled in the Eucharistic life. In the Eucharist, Christ analogously causes to be reproduced in his human members what exists in the Trinity: the Church becomes compromised of a multiplicity of different and separate hypostases or persons all united in one Life, Christ, just as Christ is One Person with two natures who lives with and in Two other Hypostases in the Life of the Trinity, which shares One Essence of Life. We are called to be conformed to Christ, to posses a created nature filled with the fullness of divine grace, and to be as the Church a multiple collection of hypostases united in the grace of the Holy Spirit (Lossky 180). The multiplicity of the Church’s persons can only be fulfilled in the unity which comes about by the Holy Spirit. One new nature with a multiplicity of persons is created by the Spirit Himself by the Eucharistic union, which is the most perfect of all. The Church is the microcosm of the Trinity as a unity of persons united to God. In a single foundation in Christ, the persons of the Saints, the divinised, assimilate the fire of the Holy Spirit through the Eucharist (Zizioulas 78-80). God’s very life being conferred on us by the Holy Spirit, the Church is the work of Christ and the Spirit by which many human persons in the Spirit are united to the one human nature of Jesus Christ the God-Man. The Church is a single Body and therefore a single nature united to the single divinised human nature of Jesus - this single nature of redeemed man is united to the whole Person of Christ as well. The Eucharist relates to our nature as received into the Person of Christ (Lossky 183).

Or more simply put, in the Eucharist, Christ gives to individual human persons His human nature which is perfectly united to His divine nature and has been deified by divine grace. Our Lord’s divinised human nature, which participates in the Deity of the One Person of the Son, is our spiritual food in the Blessed Sacrament. By receiving the Eucharist, individual human persons come to share in the human nature of Christ and are thus made into one nature in Him: many human persons becomes one nature in the human nature of Jesus. But, Jesus’s human nature is in perfect union with his divine nature in His One Divine Person, and so the Church becomes one with Christ’s whole Hypostatic Union, and thus one with the whole Christ, totus Christus (as Saint Augustine describes it), and thus one with the Divine Trinity, for Christ is ‘One of the Holy Trinity.’ The Eucharist is union with the Son and therefore with the Father and the Spirit. The Eucharist is divinisation, communion with the life-giving Trinity. In a very real sense, charity is the bond of union within the Godhead, the fiery love of the Holy Spirit, who unites the Father and Son. This supernatural bond of charity, which is created for man, as Saint Thomas teaches (II-II, Q. 23, Art. 2), unites us to Christ and each other in the Holy Spirit by virtue of the Eucharist, which makes-present the ontological existence of unity in the Church. There can be no unity without charity, and charity is communicated to man via communion with God Eucharistically. The theological virtue of charity is therefore God’s gift in the Eucharistic mystery, which is itself the mystery of the Trinity anamnetically presented to us. Love presupposes a similarity between the persons concerned: ‘All love culminates in union and begins in likeness’ (S. Gregory Palamas, Homily 56). Christ nourishes us in the Eucharist with his Body and Blood. The faithful are therefore joined in one flesh with Christ, and joined in charity to his Likeness. ‘He has bound us to himself and united us as the bridegroom unites the bride to himself.’ Our union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist is not simply a moral union, a union of wills or intentions, but one of supernatural charity. By receiving the Divine Communion we become ‘Christlike.’ Man is united to the divine and divinising flesh of Christ Eucharistically and made to love God and love one’s neighbour as oneself. In the end, we come to know God as the Blessed Trinity, living in his life of love by loving God. It is by love, divine charity, that we both know and live in the Mystery of God as the Tri-Personal Communion of Love. Saint Augustine expresses the truth of this reality in these terms: ‘No other thing is required to know the Trinity but true love, real love. This is true love - that we may cleave to the truth and live righteously...we should be prepared to die for others... therefore man must above all else, to know God, love God....’ (On the Trinity 8). Love, charity, is the very essence of God as Trinity. ‘What of the very fountain of love in the Father and the Son? Is it still not more so here that the Trinity is one God? For thence, of that Holy Spirit, does love come to us. If then the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, makes many souls one soul, and many hearts one heart, how much rather are the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, one God, one Light, and one Beginning? (On John Tract 39). The Blessed Trinity, our life, is the Communion of Love given and exchanged in One Essence. The Trinity is Love: the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. By the theological virtue of charity, men are formed into a union, a family relationship, like that of the Holy Trinity. In God-likeness or Christ-likeness, the Church receives divine love, the binding power of God’s own Being, to be made a unique Unity and reality. The Church is the Icon of the Holy Trinity, by love. Ad relatio, we relate and are related to other human beings, to other Christians in the communion of the Church, and to God Himself in the Trinity, just as the Trinitarian Persons of the Godhead relate to each other - in charity. As Saint John succinctly puts it, ‘God is Love.’

III. The Teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas
Let us note the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica on the nature of the Eucharist as the sacrament of charity and of ecclesial union and participation in Christ. ‘The reality of the sacrament is the unity of the mystical Body, without which there can be no salvation: for there is no entering into salvation outside the Church... The Eucharist is the consummation of the spiritual life, and the end of all the Sacraments’ (III.Q. 73, Art. 3). ‘With regard to the present the Eucharist has another meaning, namely, that of Ecclesiastical unity, in which men are aggregated through this Sacrament: and in this respect it is called Communion or Sunaxis, For Damascene says that it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead, and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it... the Eucharist is called Metalhyis, Assumption, because we thereby assume the Godhead of the Son’ (III.Q.73, Art 4). ‘Men are united with Christ through this sacrament as the members with the head.’ The Eucharist serves to unite the communicant in a real and objective way with whole Christ, the One Divine Person in two natures. The Flesh and Blood of Christ, supernaturally present under the form of bread and wine, communicate to the recipient the human nature, flesh, and divine nature, Godhead, of the Eternal Son. The members of Christ’s Body the Church are integrally united to their Head in Holy Communion. Saint Thomas affirms the Augustinian tradition in vivid and unmistakable terms in his cumulative teaching on the nature and purpose of the Eucharist. He proclaims the Eucharist as the Sacrament of Charity in this way: ‘The sacrament confers grace together with the virtue of charity. Hence Damascene compares this sacrament to the burning coal which Isaiah saw: For a live ember is not simply wood but wood united to fire; so also the bread of Communion is not simple bread, but bread united with the Godhead. But as Gregory observes... God’s love is never idle; for, wherever it is, it does great works. And consequently through this sacrament, as far as its power is concerned, not only is the habit of grace and of virtue bestowed, but is further aroused to act, according to 2 Corinthians 5.14: The charity of Christ presses us. Hence it is that the soul is spiritually nourished through the power of this sacrament by being spiritually gladdened....’ (III. Q. 79, Art. 1). Saint Thomas views the Eucharist as not only the instrument by which Our Lord unites His Church with Himself in one Body, but also the means by which the theological virtue of charity is infused into the human person, to ‘gladden the heart’ and to rouse the Christian to charitable action towards one’s neighbour. Simply put, the Eucharist as Communion with Christ and his members the baptised participants of the Body, effectually causes the infusion of divine charity into us, enabling us to love God and one another in genuine action. The Eucharist functions as the bond of love between Christ and Christian and between Christian and Christian. The Holy Mysteries compel love into action and actualise the reality of charity in the human person; the Body and Blood of the Lord, being Christ Himself, have a causal effect on the communicant by the grace of divine charity as love is spiritually imparted in an objective way, motivating the receiver unto good works and the charitable life of Christian holiness. The charity of Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament, the love of Jesus concealed in the Host, urges the member of the Body on in the life of Christian holiness and love, which is itself translated into good works. As the Anglican Eucharistic rite prayer of thanksgiving after Communion reverently describes this fundamental truth: ‘And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship [of the mystical body of thy Son,] and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in...’ (BCP 83). This whole Thomistic tradition imbibes the spirit and the theology of Saint Augustine of Hippo. The Eucharistic offering and sacrament embody uniting love in action.

IV. The Moral Implications of Eucharistic Charity
The practical implications of Saint Augustine’s teaching, supported as it is by the consentient voice of Catholic Tradition through the centuries, are clear and manifest: the Eucharist has a powerfully moral dimension. Charity is born in our souls through the devout and regular reception of Holy Communion. The Blessed Sacrament engenders a living charity in the Christian soul which unites the soul to God and to other believers in the communion which is Christ’s Body. The Holy Eucharist becomes a weapon against temptation, equipping and enabling the communicant to resist the tests of the devil (Harton 61). The divine charity born in our souls through Holy Communion eliminates envy as it enables the believer to have fervent charity amongst all men. Our Lord concealed in the Eucharist, uniting us to the Father and Holy Spirit as well as Himself, supernaturally empowers us to desire the good of others as much as our own and to truly love our neighbours as ourselves. Our wills are moved in love toward God and neighbour by the right partaking of the Sacrament. In doing so, in putting charity into practice through pious and faithful reception of Christ in the Holy Mysteries, we resist temptation and grow in holiness. Charity is the root cure for all sins and the sure-fired preventative against any kind of temptation. The divine Love of God infused into our souls frees us to co-operate with divine grace and to freely correspond with God in the living the Trinitarian and Christocentric life intended by God in the gift of His divine Self by charity. In the act of Holy Communion, as the Sacrament of Charity, we must ever keep in mind the three joined together in this union: Christ, the Church, and the individual communicant. Charity, which begins in the desire, and in the will of Christ towards us, now makes itself present supernaturally in His Objective and Corporal Presence on the Altar. In the Eucharistic presence of Charity Himself, we adore and love Christ. In the action of receiving Holy Communion we receive Our Lord in order to more fully give ourselves to Him in self-oblation, in union with Christ’s self-Oblation made sacramentally present. Our Lord withholds nothing from the communicant in the act of Communion, for He gives not only divine grace in the means of grace, but Himself, whole and entire. Jesus gives us the complete and total gift of His Person, which in turn demands the whole and complete gift to Christ of our own persons: we receive Christ in order to give to Christ, an act of real caritas. The Sacrament energises us to desire to give the most complete self-gift to Christ of which we are capable, and thus the Eucharist by its grace of charity draws charity from us and stirs in us the increase of our generosity towards God and man. This mystery of Christ’s self-giving grace in us requires human correspondence and co-operation with grace (Harton 133). The more open our hearts are to Our Lord and His Gift, the more of the Gift we receive, and in turn the wider the doors of our hearts are flung open. The more we allow, the more we receive. This process can and should culminate in sanctity, holiness, and, ultimately, deification, as we are conformed more and more closely to the Likeness of Jesus Christ by our charity which is inspired and activated by Christ’s Eucharistic Heart. If we persevere in this divine exchange of the virtue of charity within us, we can become heroic in our virtue and in our self-oblation in union with Jesus, and become Saints. Sainthood is what is offered to us by the charity produced in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, if we are but willing to receive it. In properly receiving Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament, we must be predisposed to have charity for God and neighbour.

We must, immediately after receiving the Body and Blood at Mass, focus solely on Jesus alone - Who is our most precious Gift. We should be occupied with praise, thanksgiving and adoration of Him Who now lives in our hearts. Christ’s goal for us, by providing supernatural Food in his Body and Blood, is that our whole being may be concentrated upon Him so that we may be changed into the shrine of His presence, the living tabernacle of His own Charity to both God and man. Our Communion prayer should be, ‘Lord, make me an instrument of thy charity.’ We should endeavour to carry Christ within our souls and bodies from the Altar rail into the world at large, and to bear Christ’s self-donating charity toward God in service and love of all men. The Eucharist as the Real Presence of Our Lord’s Body and Blood is vouchsafed to us that we may advance on the illuminative way to genuine holiness by real charity, in which we more deeply and powerfully love God and in so loving God love each other. The Lover of our souls gives us all He has to give, Himself, so that we may love with His love: ‘Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant does not know what his lord is doing: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you’ (S. John 15.15). By virtue of Eucharistic Communion, the Christian faithful enjoy God’s Presence and Reality and are made to be the true friends of God. Saint John of Damascus, in his On the Orthodox Faith calls the Eucharistically-fed Saint ‘the Friend of God.’ We are Christ’s friends if we do what he commands. Saint Thomas Aquinas reminds us that charity is fundamentally based in relationship; charity is friendship. ‘Since there is a communication between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates His happiness to us, some kind of friendship must needs be based on this same communication. The love which is based on this communication, is charity: wherefore it is evident that charity is the friendship of man for God’ (Summa, II-II. Q. 23 Art. 1). We are Christ’s friends at the Altar of His Sacrifice, the Mass. In divine charity made-present in the Mass, the Christian, related to God, becomes God’s friend as he is befriended by God and is made God’s friend. The level of charity advanced to us in the Eucharist should compel the Christian believer to spiritual perfection in love. We are commanded by the Eucharistic Lord of Charity to love the downtrodden, the poor, the suffering, the disabled, the abused, the persecuted, the rejected and disdained. We are to love all men with the love of Jesus Christ. Transformed by unconditional love into Icons of the Trinity, we are to be loving as God is loving, to be merciful as God is merciful. Saint John Chrysostom admonishes us: ‘You have tasted the Blood of the Lord, yet you do not recognise your brother. You dishonour this table when you do not judge worthy of sharing your food someone judged worthy to take part in this meal. God freed you from all your sins and invited you here, but you have not become more merciful’ (in CCC 233). This teaching is echoed by the saintly Anglo-Catholic missionary Bishop of the early twentieth century, Bishop Frank Weston: ‘If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down the country. You must walk mystically with Christ, mystically present in you, through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the people of your cities and villages. And it is folly - it is madness - to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacrament and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges... Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them. And when you have found him, gird yourselves with his towel of fellowship and wash his feet in the persons of his brethren’ (ACC 1920). The life of the Holy Trinity which belongs to the Church in the communication of the Eucharistic gift is a life of utter self-giving in love to the other, the gift of self. As partakers of the self-donating kenotic Christ, Who condescends to become present in the Eucharistic elements and to again present his one Sacrifice in every Mass, the communicants of Christ must seek to live out the moral implications of this wonderful Food. The Eucharist is the extension of the Incarnation. It extends in space and time the loving kenosis of the self-abandoning Jesus. The Christian should strive to be the Imago Christi, the charitable image of the loving and self-sacrificing Lord. ‘This is the path of charity, that is, of the love of God and neighbour. Charity is the greatest social commandment. It respects others and their rights. It requires the practice of justice, and it alone makes us capable of it. Charity inspires a life of self-giving: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.’ (CCC 1889). Saint Augustine asserts the same: ‘we may expect to be united with the risen Christ, but first we have to pay attention to him lying in the street’ (Sermon 239). We must love totus Christus, the whole Christ, Christ present in all human beings. We love Christ’s members and thus love Christ Himself. When we love Christ, we love the Father. Saint Augustine says the Church is one loving reality: ‘the One Christ, loving Himself’ (ep. Jo. 20.55). And, hence, we have the answers to the initial questions posed at the beginning of this project. God the Holy Trinity, the Catholic Church, and the Holy Eucharist co-exist as a mutually-interpenetrating mystery of charity. They together conform us to the Likeness of God... and God is Love.