A VAGUE memory comes back to me from childhood days; I can't quite remember whether it was a riddle, or a game, or what, but the words of it ran something like this:

My mother used to quote it at me whenever I brought in from the garden a toad in a tin, or some tadpoles in a jar or other boyhood treasures which delighted my ten-year old heart but nauseated my teenage sisters - the sissies!

While the rhyme is not quite accurate, there is some truth in it. Girls and women (but also boys and men) are indeed made of "sugar and spice and everything nice". At least their bodies are made of these things. The sausage which you eat today will by tomorrow have become built into you as part of your body. It is "incorporated". But not for always. Though its elements will be for a while part of your muscle or bone, they will not stay there. There is a continual process of change in every living organism; its constituents break down and in due course pass out of the body, to be replaced by others. This is called "metabolism". Those who know about these things tell us that not an atom which is part of us today was in us seven years ago.

Yet the curious thing is that we go on possessing the same bodies. I am perfectly sure that I have the same body that I had when I was a boy; I have even got a scar on my shin which was the result of a bad hack at football when I was fifteen, Of course I have the same body! Yet the whole of it has changed since then, and it has grown.

Exactly the same is true (in its own way) of the Mystical Body - the Church. It is the same Mystical Body now as the Body whose members watched Our Lord ascend into heaven, whose members worshipped in the catacombs, who built the Roman basilicas and the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, and the English abbeys of Durham, Lincoln, Worcester and Westminster. Those members are no longer here; they have been replaced by other members. There has been metabolism in the living Mystical Body as in all other living organisms. Unless somebody is incredibly old the Mystical Body here on earth does not possess a single member who was in it a hundred and fifty years ago. Yet it is the same Body, though it has changed completely, and it has grown.

What does this change, this growth, involve? It means that the same Christ is living on all the time. but He lives in an organism of continually changing members. As Cardinal Suhard once expressed it, "Christ is incarnate in each succeeding generation" And, moreover, He grows in each succeeding generation. Not the historical Christ, of course, but Christ as He now is, Head and Body - the "whole Christ", to use St. Augustine's phrase. He is to grow, by the continual incorporation of new members, until He reaches a certain "fullness" or "stature" predetermined by His Father.

What degree of growth that implies we cannot know - it has not been revealed to us. But when it is achieved, then the task of Christ is completed; all those whom God predestines to the sharing of His own divine happiness in heaven will have been equipped, by incorporation into the Mystical Body, with that divine life by which alone they are rendered capable of the beatific vision.

There must be, then, innumerable successive incorporations; to untold numbers of human beings a share in the divine life is to be given. But the divine life can be given only to human beings who first have natural life. Until the end of time, then - until the Body of Christ shall have reached its full stature - countless natural lives will begin, and then become elevated to the supernatural level. So that the Mystical Body needs, for the fulfilment of its destiny, powers to beget natural life and powers to elevate this life to a share in the divine nature. And God has most wonderfully provided for both.

The Mystical Body, like all organic bodies, "has many members, but not all the members have the same function" (Rom. xii, 4). There are some members who have the function of begetting natural life, while others have the function of raising this life to the super natural plane. The former are parents; the latter are priests. And, within the Body, all these perform their life-giving functions in virtue of sacramental powers conferred on them.

"For the social needs of the Church," writes Pope Pius XII in his encyclical on the Mystical Body, "Christ has provided in a particular way by two sacraments which He instituted. The sacrament of Matrimony, in which the parties become the ministers of grace to each other, ensures the regular numerical increase of the Christian community, and, what is more important, the proper and religious education of the offspring, the lack of which would constitute a grave menace to the Mystical Body. And Holy Orders consecrates to the perpetual service of God those who are destined to immolate' the eucharistic Victim, to nourish the flock of Christ with the Bread of Angels and with the food of doctrine, to guide them by the divine commandments and counsels, and to fortify them by their other supernatural functions" (n. 19).

In considering the growth of the Mystical Body we are concerned, then, with two sacraments, Matrimony and Holy Orders.

HOLY MATRIMONY

Marriage is one of the most astounding works of God's wisdom and goodness. It is perfectly certain that God could fill up the gaps caused by death in human ranks by the direct creation - body and soul - of new human beings. But instead He "created man to his own image; to the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them" (Gen. i, 27). He made human nature in some way resemble His own divine nature and the juxtaposition of the sentences in holy Scripture shows that that resemblance is to be found precisely in the fact that human beings are of two kinds, male and female.

How does that make man resemble God? In this way: that though God is but One, He does not exist in solitude or loneliness. He has revealed to us that within the Godhead there is companionship and loving inter-course between divine Persons. The First Person loves the Second Person; the Second Person returns the love of the First Person; and the very fact that these Persons love one another is the origin of the Third Person. The Third Person is, in fact, the personified love of the First and Second Persons for each other.

And when God created man in His own image, He arranged it that in human nature also there would be companionship and loving intercourse between human persons. He ordained that the first person (a man) should love, and be loved by, a second person (a woman); and that this mutual love of theirs should become personified in a third person - a child!

And because, in human nature, the body is the instrument through which the soul expresses itself, God made the bodies of men and women such that they could express, even in a bodily action, their love for each other. Their desire to be united as closely as possible in their love issues in a physical union by which, in Christ's words, "they two become one flesh".

And herein lies the marvel! Other physical acts of man (such as chewing and swallowing food) produce their natural result (nourishment) by processes completely within the powers of human nature (such as digestion). There is no need for any special act of God every time somebody eats a piece of apple pie! But the physical love-union of man and woman cannot produce its natural result (the generation of new human life) except by the direct and special act of God in creating a new human soul to animate the tiny organism which their love originates.

Here, then, is an astonishing action which alone, among merely human actions, surpasses merely human powers. It completely transcends nature; for it brings into play the divine power of creation! God alone can create a soul. Never, in fact, are men and women so close to God in any of their merely human actions, as in the consummation of marriage; for in this is involved both love and creation. And God is Love; and God is Creator. How wonderful is marriage, even on the natural plane!

But Christ Our Lord has made it even more wonderful still. He supernaturalised it; He made it a sacrament - one of those signs which effects what it signifies.

Remember that, as we saw in a previous chapter, the sacraments are mysterious and potent signs which are not only our actions but are also Christ's actions. They are our actions because we do them; they are Christ's actions because He endowed them with the power of making present in a new, sacramental, order of existence, those actions of His which they signify. We saw, for instance, that baptism signifies dying and rising to life. The underlying reality in the sacramental order of existence is the death and resurrection of Christ which thus becomes our death and resurrection to new life.

Now matrimony signifies union. Hence the underlying reality in the sacramental order of existence is Christ's union. It is His union, then, which becomes the union of Christians who marry.

But what is this union of Christ which, through the sacrament, becomes the union of Christians? It is the union of Christ with His Church. Christ and His Church are one. "A husband is the head of the wife," says St. Paul, "just as Christ is the head of the Church . . Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for her. .

We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be one flesh" (Eph. v, 23ff).

According to St. Paul, then, it is not that Christ, in uniting Himself with His Church, gave to that union the qualities which are to be found in the union of a man with his wife. It is the other way round. The union of Christ with His Church is the underlying reality which determines the intrinsic nature of the union between the baptised member of Christ and his partner in marriage.

Moreover, their union is not a mere imitation of the union between Christ and the Church. If it were just an imitation, in what sense could St. Paul say that "it is a great mystery" (Eph. v, 32)? It would in that case be no more a mystery than would the performance of Anton Preisinger at Oberammergau who, in the Passion Play, imitates the death of Christ on the cross. No; it is a great mystery because it is a sacrament - one of the "Mysteries of Christ" whereby what Christ did becomes actualised here and now in the sacramental order of existence. Marriage is thus no mere imitation of the union of Christ with His Church; it is that union in fact - in sacramental fact.

Thus Karl Adam can write: "The fundamental mystery of Christianity, the nuptial relationship between Christ and His Church, the fact that Christ and His Church are one sole Body, is realised anew in every Christian marriage. . . (Christian marriage) has existence only by the fact that in it Christ's sacred nuptials, His union with the Church in one sole Body, are actualised."

And Dom Albert Hammenstede, O.S.B., writes:

"The married couple shows forth to men a perceptible, external sign through . . which the life of Christ with the Church is made present sacramentally."

Note carefully that it is the union of man and wife that is the sign; the union, then, is the sacrament; for the sacrament is a sign. This sign is given or uttered at the wedding ceremony by the man and his bride. It is not given, but only witnessed and blessed, by the priest. Which means that it is the man (not the priest) who gives the sacrament of matrimony to his bride, and vice versa.

Thus matrimony is the only sacrament which the laity themselves administer, and which properly belongs to them. (Baptism can indeed be administered by laity in certain circumstances, but it does not belong to them to do so.) It is thus specifically the sacrament of the laity. "It is the only one in which sacramental grace is poured forth from the fullness of Christ's humanity directly upon the members without priestly mediation."

And as a result of Christian marriage man and wife become a unit. "They two become one flesh." This unit is a new organ of the Mystical Body - which brings into natural existence those who are destined for supernatural life within that Body. The products of its action are destined for Christ's Body and for participation in its life.

"When, therefore, a Christian man and woman unite in holy marriage," writes Dom Godfrey Diekmann, O.S.B., "they dedicate themselves to God for a holy service, the extension of His kingdom among men. They are to bring into the world not only children as images of God (every marriage has that end), but to beget adorers in spirit and in truth. Christ and the Church, His Bride, have as their first objective to form a cult-community, to praise the Father. So also a husband and wife."

HOLY ORDERS

Husband and wife, "they two in one flesh", form, as I have said, a new unit - a generative organ of the Mystical Body. But this unit is not sufficient unto itself; it needs another in order that the final result - increase of the Mystical Body - may be attained. For its products have but natural life, and the Mystical Body lives with supernatural life.

This other generative organ is provided by Christ through the sacrament of Holy Orders. In this sacrament certain members of the Body are given a special function which is also generative - they are to generate supernatural life. They are to have spiritual offspring. That is why they are so rightly called by the title of "Father". The priest, in administering baptism, generates supernatural life in the natural offspring of the Christian spouses. Parents alone do not cause growth of the Mystical Body; priests alone do not cause this growth; both are needed in order that the growth of the Body may ensue. There must be children before there can be baptisms. There must be marriages before there can be ordinations.

A beautiful story is told of Pope Pius X, that great liturgical leader who has recently been raised to the altars of the Church. After his consecration as bishop of Mantua he went immediately to see his mother. And to her he displayed, with filial pride, his scintillating new episcopal ring. She thoughtfully fingered the worn, simple gold ring on her own finger. "Yes dear," she said, "your ring is very beautiful. But remember that you would never have had yours if I had not first had mine!"

Holy Orders, like Matrimony, is a "social sacrament"; it exists for the growth and welfare of the Mystical Body of Christ. Parents and priests are organs of growth; marriage and priesthood stand side by side; they both build up the Body of Christ towards its "full stature", and neither could do it without the other.

What exactly is "priesthood"? What is a priest? Something - Someone - altogether unique. For in point of fact there is really only one priest - Christ. There is only one priesthood - His priesthood. Before He came there were, indeed, men who were called priests. There were priests of Baal, of Moloch, of Zeus, but these were no more really priests than Baal, Moloch or Zeus (called "gods") were really God. There were also the Livitical priests of the Old Testament. They had some right to the title because their office was instituted by God, and they did for God's chosen people some, at least, of the things which Christ, the one true Priest, does for the whole human race. But their priesthood was only a partial priesthood, and it only foreshadowed the real priesthood which Christ alone has.

For the power of priesthood is the power of effective mediation between creation and its Creator. Christ alone can do that; He alone is the Pontifex, the bridge-builder who spans the infinite distance between God and man and leads man effectively and finally to God. "I am the way," He told us. "No man cometh to the Father except by me" (John xiv, 6). "There is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ who gave himself a redemption for all" (I Tim. ii, 5).

We must not think that mediation was just one of the things Christ did (like teaching, or healing the sick). He is essentially the Mediator; His mediative priesthood was not merely the purpose of His incarnation, but derives directly from it. By the very fact of His becoming incarnate, the bridge between God and man was built. After His incarnation He carried out the priestly act of offering the redemptive Sacrifice which enabled us to pass over that bridge. But the bridge was there as soon as He was here. it was not only on Calvary that He was a priest; He was priest from the first moment of His mortal life, intrinsically.

As St. Augustine put it: "In as much as He is born of the Father He is God, not a priest. He is priest by reason of the flesh which He assumed." The priest hood of Christ which will never have an end did have a beginning. And that beginning was the moment when Our Blessed Lady said her Fiat.

"But the priestly life which the divine Redeemer had begun in His mortal body," says Pope Pius in his encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei, "was not finished. He willed it to continue unceasingly through the ages in His Mystical Body, which is the Church. Accordingly the Church, at the bidding of her Founder, continues the priestly office of Jesus Christ, especially in the liturgy" (n. 2, 3).

Thus we see that the Church - which is Christ living now in His Mystical Body - is, as He was, the "one Mediator between God and man". Christ's priesthood resides in the Church as a whole, and in every member of it. "By reason of their baptism Christians are in the Mystical Body and become by common title members of Christ the Priest; by the character that is graven on their souls they are appointed to the worship of God, and therefore, according to their condition, they share in the priesthood of Christ Himself" (ibid., n. gz).

Moreover, as we shall see later, there is even an exercise of the priesthood of Christ through every member; all members are capable of certain priestly acts through this power which Christ has shared with them. But again we find differentiation of function among the members of the Body. Some, and those the more important, of Christ's priestly activities are carried on, not through any and every member, but only through members appointed and consecrated for that purpose. These are the "ordained".

In the sacrament of Holy Orders something is signified, namely, the beginning of a function of mediation between God and man. Candidates at ordination receive an office, a status, for which they are anointed. That is what they do, so it is their action. But because it is a sacrament it is also Christ's action. Hence the sacramental reality which underlies it is Christ's exercise of mediation. God the Son was not always a priest; but He began to be a priest when He became Christ ("the anointed One"). This action of His, then, becomes theirs in this sacrament, in the course of which they, too, are anointed.

Just as when men are baptised, Christ's death and resurrection becomes their death and resurrection, and just as, when Christians marry, Christ's union becomes their union - so also when Christians are ordained, Christ's priesthood becomes their priesthood. Theirs is not a priesthood of their own, but His priesthood made theirs by the sacrament.

A human priest is not an extra intermediary, interpolated between God and man; his mediation is but that of Christ now signified and made actual sacramentally. The priest does not say "This is Christ's body", but "This is My body". When the priest forgives sins it is Christ who forgives sins. The priesthood of Christ the One Mediator is actualised here and now in this anointed ("Christed") member of the Mystical Body. Sacerdos alter Christus - the priest is another Christ. (This well-known phrase must not, of course, be understood as implying any kind of "real presence" of Christ in the priest, as in the Eucharist. As Fr. Charmot points out in his book Le Sacrament de l'Unité p. 164: "The substance of man has not disappeared. nor has it been changed into the substance of Christ.")

Our Lord said He had come "that they may have life". He is the generator of supernatural life in men. He continues now to generate this life through His Church, composed of many members with differing functions. The member through whom divine life is generated within the Mystical Body is the priest. It is also his function to tend and foster and nourish this supernatural life by all his priestly activities, just as the married not only generate natural life, but also tend and nourish and foster it in all their parental activities.

Thus it is that both Matrimony and Holy Orders minister to the Mystical Body, that it may "grow up, into a due proportion, with Christ who is the head. On him all the body depends; it is organised and unified by each contact with the source which supplies it; and thus - each limb receiving the active power which it needs - it achieves its natural growth, building itself up" (Eph. iv, 15, 16).