A Transformative Eucharistic Spirituality

Faced with the urgency of “safeguarding the dignity of the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” Pope Leo addresses his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, not only “to all the Catholic faithful,” but also “to all Christians and to all men and women of goodwill.”¹ Nonetheless, his “Introduction” and “Conclusion” show clearly that the vision inspiring, guiding, and sustaining his teaching is foundationally Christ-centered—indeed, Eucharistic.

Thus, the encyclical’s very first paragraph confesses: “we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is ‘only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.’ In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.”² The internal quote is taken, of course, from the passage in Gaudium et Spes so beloved of Saint John Paul II.

By way of contrast, Leo discerns

that the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.³

The threat, in brief, is what the Catholic philosopher, Charles Taylor, in his A Secular Age terms “excarnation,” and what Leo himself calls a “disembodied humanity.”⁴ In many ways, we confront today a new and more perilous Gnosticism, seeking liberation from the limitations and messiness of bodies and an escape into a realm of ersatz “spiritual” light, governed by an all-knowing elite.
Whatever its promise, AI also poses an evident peril to a fully embodied existence, to the cultivation of and commitment to personal relations, and to the enriching and enlivening experience of community and communion. In contrast, Leo calls his fellow Christians to a renewed appreciation and realization of their defining confession: the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. For “at the heart of everything is the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.”

But a merely notional affirmation of doctrine is far from sufficient. What is required is personal conviction and commitment, embodied in an ascetical practice whose ardent desire is for an intimate apprehension of the living presence of Jesus Christ in the midst of a “magnificent humanity,” redeemed and beloved. What we need now, Leo urges, is formation for radical transformation both of self and society.

Thus, in the encyclical’s “Conclusion,” he forthrightly affirms:

I would like to propose a sober yet demanding program of Christian life with which we can navigate this epochal change in the light of the Gospel. This avenue emerges through contemplating God’s plan, living ecclesial unity by partaking of the Eucharist, building a world centered on the common good and praying in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary.⁵

I suggest that Leo is reviving a too-neglected sense of a Church that is “militant”—one firm in its conviction that, in the words of Ephesians, “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness” (Eph 6:12). He is calling disciples to advance, with loins girded, under the banner of their Lord and Savior. In effect, he is proposing spiritual exercises for the twenty-first century.

And, paradoxically, the “arms” which disarm the powers and principalities are the Eucharist—Christ’s assumption and transformation of the humble earthly material of bread and wine. Eucharistic food and drink become “the armor of God” by which the “wiles” of the enemy can be clearly discerned and its idolatrous desires disarmed. However, such Eucharistic faith, though deeply mysterious, is far from magical. It works its transforming effect gently and patiently, almost imperceptibly, as befits our embodied existence.

Thus, in a crucial passage of the encyclical’s “Conclusion,” Leo writes:

The spirituality that we need is a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love. The Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery reveal God entering into our human condition and transforming it through the gift of himself. This gift remains present and active in the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives himself and gathers the Church together, so that his offering becomes the principle of unity and source of new life. It is from this communion that Christian solidarity also arises, since “union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself.”⁶

Pope Leo’s Eucharistic vision and spirituality were on conspicuous display during his recent apostolic voyage to Spain. In Madrid on the feast of Corpus Christi, Leo exulted: “We are gathered around the Eucharist, the gift of Christ’s living presence among us. He who wished to offer us his life so that we might enter into communion with the Father and become his children, is here as the living Bread come down from heaven, to nourish us with the very life of God, with a love stronger than death.”⁷

One could meditate at length on these two sentences alone. Let me highlight a few points. It is “Christ’s living presence” that gathers us as Church: that attracts, distinguishes, and directs us as a community. Further, it is his self-offering, his sacrifice, that continues to nourish us and give us new life. As Paul told the Galatians: “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). A Eucharistic spirituality would daily confess and rejoice: the Son of God who loves me and gives himself for me in the Eucharist.

Thus, in the Eucharist, believers encounter Christ and experience his friendship, which impels their own loving self-gift. As Leo told the clergy and pastoral workers in his meeting with them in the Canary Islands: Christ “is the center of Christian life, before whom we bow our knees in adoration, around whom we gather to form one body and with whom we offer ourselves as a ‘living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’ (Rom 12:1).” Leo’s homilies and teachings appear as so many creative variations upon the one vibrant theme sounded in his episcopal motto: In Illo Uno Unum (In that One Christ We are One).

However, a comprehensive and transformative Eucharistic spirituality hardly encloses disciples in upon themselves or within a rigidly circumscribed community. It opens them in compassion to the myriad needs of humanity who, in Christ, discover their infinite dignity as created in the image of God. In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo insists:

the Eucharist opens us to justice and sharing, with a preferential concern for those who are burdened by poverty or marginalization. And while new economic and technological networks can generate exclusion, isolation and dependencies, the Church — nourished by the Eucharist — is called to make visible a different paradigm, one that preserves human connections, gives a voice to the invisible and ensures that processes are aimed at respecting people’s dignity.⁸

Indeed, in his homily in Barcelona’s Basilica of La Sagrada Familia, the Pope exhorts, with almost prophetic fervor: “Dear brothers and sisters, we cannot believe in Jesus and promote war. We cannot believe in Jesus and kill the innocent. We cannot believe in Jesus and abandon those who suffer, those who weep, those who flee from misery.”⁹

Clearly, an Eucharistic spirituality, as Leo envisions it, is all-embracing. For the Eucharist’s inexhaustible mystery realizes presence and evokes adoration; it creates community and promotes justice. And its telos is radical transformation. As Leo insisted before the Corpus Christi procession in Madrid: It is not merely a matter of bringing out the monstrance, but of allowing ourselves to be brought out of our selfishness and indifference, of a comfortable, private faith, so as to respond to his invitation to conversion, to change our perspective, and to welcome his presence which transforms us and makes us builders of a new world.”¹⁰

I think it is crucial to underscore the words “transform” and “new,” for they are at the heart of the Encyclical and of Leo’s entire magisterium. He counters the tendency, in some quarters of the emerging AI sphere, to speak of “transhumanism” and even “posthumanism.” For he discerns the danger of thus reducing humanity to disembodied monads, bereft of relationship, of compassion and communion. Nor does he fail to challenge AI’s favoring of the technocratic elite who control all access to its presumed privileges.

In contrast, Leo, in a passage that has received scant notice, recalls that

the expression “more than human” is not an exclusive domain of technological promise. For centuries, the Christian tradition has maintained that human beings are not confined by the boundaries of their own nature; rather, they are called to self-transcendence, not through an escape from reality or a contempt for their limitations, but through their fulfillment in love. Faith recognizes an openness toward the “beyond,” which originates as a gift from God. This transformation is a work of the Holy Spirit.¹¹

Thus, he can confidently declare that “it remains possible to enter into the heart of that inexhaustible life, even as we journey through the limitations of this world.”¹² And he concludes: “Herein lies the radical departure from Promethean dreams: what saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship that liberates, a communion that transforms.”¹³

That “communion” finds its fullest sacramental realization in the Eucharist. I am increasingly persuaded that our Eucharistic experience and imagination would be enhanced if we were to ponder the Eucharist less as a noun than as a verb: the grace-filled action and outpouring that is the living heart of our communion with God and with one another. “Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro” (Let us give thanks to the Lord our God), the celebrant exhorts the congregation by way of introduction to the Eucharistic prayer, which is itself an action, a gratiarum actio, the ever-new enacting of Christ’s sacrificial thanksgiving. Drawing on the Eucharistic mysticism of John of the Cross, Pope Leo says: “The Eucharistic Jesus is ‘that eternal spring that is hidden’ — a spring that flows and quenches thirst, yet without blinding, without imposing itself through outward power, without presenting itself in a spectacular way.”¹⁴

And the fruit of this Eucharistic action is to make of its recipients not better individuals, but new persons. As Leo exhorted in his Corpus Christi homily in Madrid: “Eucharistic grace transforms us and makes us protagonists of the transformation of history, a sign of hope for those we meet.”¹⁵

Sprinkled throughout A Secular Age, Charles Taylor makes several suggestive, but undeveloped references to theosis or divinization. He speaks of it as that “further greater transformation”¹⁶ which truly fulfills humanity. Pope Leo, tutored by Saint Augustine and the Eastern Christian tradition, is pointing precisely to that graced transformation, that theosis, wherein humanity finds its fulfillment not by negation but by transfiguration, by incorporation into Christ’s Body. In the face of the “technocratic paradigm’s” increasing disembodiment, the Eucharistic Christ calls and forms us to a radically deeper embodiment. Incorporated into Christ, we become persons: men and women constituted by their relations to one another and to God.

In the Eucharistic Christ, we become Eucharistic selves, formed to discern the counterfeits and idolatries, bold to speak the truth in love, courageous to disarm the hostile powers.

I suggest that in his teachings, Pope Leo, inspired by his mentor Saint Augustine, is laying the foundations for a theology of history, “a theology of communion in history.”¹⁷ Beyond a merely humanistic drive for unity and peace in the earthly city, however desirable these may be, magnificent humanity is called to a graced supernatural communion. Actively participating in the “recapitulation of all in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10), humanity learns its true dignity and identity.

Amid the constant chatter about old and new “paradigms,” the Catholic Tradition joyfully confesses that the truly new “paradigm,” God’s novissimus is a Person, Jesus Christ. Christians, and, indeed, the world (whether it be fully aware or not), are called to conform to and be transformed by him, to be renewed in him. In Illo Uno—Christo Eucharistico—Unum (In the One—Eucharistic Christ—We Are One).¹⁸

(Editor’s note: This essay was posted originally on the “What We Need Now” site, and it is republished here with kind permission.)

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