Plunging Bodily

This chapter argues that mystic body of the Church should not be opposed to the true body of the eucharistic sacrament; it is its manifestation as well as its perfect expression. The unreserved bodily plunge offered on the day of the Last Supper (“Take; this is my body” [Mark 14:22]), and later shared by the disciples at Emmaus after the Son has disappeared into invisibility (“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” [Luke 24:31]), is present all the more in that it is a letting go and very far from the kind of consciousness that it is a gift, which might destroy its donation. He plunges in bodily [literally, in French, “the body lost”], just as one forgets oneself and lives as another when there is a task ahead or the body is to be constructed. This is exemplified in the narrative of the washing of the disciples' feet, which is placed there to establish the community through the eucharist.

The Animal That Therefore I am

This chapter argues that what counts in philosophy as in theology is the question of essence, and not simply the physiological species, as in biology. That humans are of the animal species tells us in reality nothing about their features, nor their nature and destiny. At most it tells us about an origin that we would certainly be wrong to forget. On the other hand, animality in humankind reminds us of a tie, or link, and necessitates that we give it metaphysical meaning. To do this we have to explore the deepest levels of our Chaos, of our passions and drives—something that certain philosophical approaches, particularly that of phenomenology, have wrongly put on one side, by dint of wanting to signify too much. There is nothing in reality telling us that we must definitively leave this animality behind or get rid of it, precisely because we are constituted by it. But also, nothing stops us from thinking that it is on the basis of this animality that we are given to see and to think our humanity, and that our bodies themselves are, if not the actual proof of this, at least the sign of it.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, or the liturgical practice of the eucharist, can provide for us—or, perhaps better, can be said to reassure us—because we can be nourished by it and incorporated into Christ, who is waiting there to sojourn with us. He who, in a redoubling of the desired and the desirable, has “eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:153), invites us now to a Last Supper of desire. The future of Christianity will not depend simply upon “religious fervor,” or “a joyful way of being together,” or “friendly proximity,” or “passionless egalitarianism.” It will come in reality solely from that quality that is “interior to man and that will give the necessary vitality”.

“This Is My Body”

This chapter attempts to think through the transformation of our embodiedness in the act of the eucharist (eucharistic content), having rooted it in an animality that is converted into humanity through recognition of its filiation (eucharistic heritage), and before performing the donation in an agape that loses nothing of its erotic genesis even in relinquishing its own body to the body of the other (eucharistic modality). This is my body takes over from the Passover of animality, waiting for the “lost body” while the viaticum nourishes us on our voyage, as it keeps us in God. As we have seen, there is a cultural problem. The formula hoc est corpus meum constitutes for Western thought our Om mani padne (Sanskrit mantra recited in Buddhism), our Allah ill'allah (Islamic creed: There is no god but God), and our Schema Israel (section of the Torah recited in Jewish prayer: Hear O Israel), and so it needs to be analyzed as such. Above all, it is a statement made when the this has become my body and will purportedly be reified at the same time as it is spoken by the priest.

Eros Eucharisticized

This chapter deals with the meaning of the eucharistic eros. It argues that there is a habitus (i.e., a custom unconsciously associated with it by those who participate), or, we could say, there are reasons to eat in the act of the eucharist. As St. Paul says, you must “examine yourselves [dokimazetô eauton]” before eating and drinking, while “discerning [diakrinôn]” what you eat and drink (1 Cor. 11:28, 29). There are no shortcuts here, and this participation in the eucharist is not something that can be defined in isolation. Everything depends on the angle from which we look: in subjective terms, or in terms of objective reality.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. It talks about descending, philosophically, into the abyss to discover there the Chaos of our existence as well as its embodiment, until we come to read the figure of the sacrificial lamb. Next, we stay with man to uncover his animality, to recognize his organic nature and differentiate his sexuality. Then, theologically, we see the Son of God, as “embodied God” transforming our animality at Easter, giving his own body to be eaten, and giving himself up to eros while awaiting “agape” [the Christian “love-feast”]. Thus, we can make our dwelling place in him, gather together in a “common flesh,” or Ecclesia, and entirely live there.

The Passover of Animality

This chapter argues that animality, present and offered in the bread of the eucharist, also awaits its Passover; indeed, it awaits its metamorphosis into a humanity that will recognize its divine filiation. The transformation of the sense and of threshold of cannibalism by Christianity is not enough to exempt the eucharistic mystery completely from the suspicion that weighs on it: that one is eating the man (anthropophagy) and, indeed, eating God (theophagy). Whether or not one escapes from the charge of anthropophagy, the issue remains problematic in a consideration of the start of the eucharistic Last Supper, when it is no longer ethnological and anthropological but becomes a metaphysical and theological question. There are two ways of getting around, or at least reducing, the scandal in the eucharist of flesh given to humans to eat, or even to chew (trogôn) (John 6:56–57): through exegesis, and in philosophical terms. These are both technical moves, but they also serve as an excuse for the believer not to be, or no longer to be, satisfied simply with what Péguy calls the “habituated” soul.

Embrace and Differentiation

This chapter argues that body on its own, whether we consider it as organic or as manifesting itself in flesh, is not enough to define the content of the eucharist. The way of the body is that it gives itself: if it does not, it perishes in the wish to take and be taken. The carnal embrace (eros) is part of the most spiritual gift (agape). The this is my body does not firstly or solely proffer the words of Christ to his disciples on the day of the eucharistic Last Supper, but these are also, in effect, the words of the spouse to his espoused in the erotic scene—a scene that only gains sense in the Christian system through the eucharistic Last Supper. The topic, then, is philosophical even before it is theological. It is as “donation,” and “humanly desired” that the body leaves off its animality to some degree—and goes from a difference of male-female to one of man-woman.

Return to the Organic

This chapter returns to the organic, to the bodying life that we have already seen in the Kantian “mass of sensations” and in organs of the body as the site of drives. The organic, however, this time does not point simply to the manner, but to the matter, the organicity (or ensemble of phenomena associated with the organ) as well as the materiality (organic matter). It is not enough to account for the organic by saying that bodily organs derive from the necessities of life; rather, we could say that life derives from the organ. Our animality is not primarily this organicity, this ensemble of phenomena, or the organization of a machine. On the contrary, animality is the mark of our interior Chaos of feelings, that accumulation of passions and drives that ensures we open up the world by the body rather than by the consciousness— by the animal (far from being beast) rather than by the angel (which could then seem foolish). The organicity of the animal, as of our own bodies, comes first from its materiality as subject to decay (putrefaction), even though, while living, it is nourished by breath, or by “thrust” (poussée).

The Staging of the Last Supper

This chapter analyzes the problem of the sacrificial lamb. Ever since Vatican II, public discussions of the eucharist have been dominated by reflections on the eucharist either as a meal (a “repast”) or an “action of grace” (eu-charis): the food that gives us strength; the sharing with fellow guests; the one who presides, and so on. However, a curtain has been drawn over the meaning of what is to be eaten—probably because the significance of transubstantiation, something inherited from medieval categories, is not simple to explain. For the bread to become the body and the wine to become the blood, in the Christian staging of consecration during the repast of the Last Supper, we need to connect with and transform the flesh sacrificed and the blood offered in the Jewish staging of the sacrificial lamb (on the altar of the Temple).