Corpus Mysticum: Transubstantiation and the Poetics of Ecstasy

Abstract

Corpus MysticumTransubstantiation and the Poetics of Ecstasy Adam Glover (bio) In one of the eucharistic poems that lie at the heart of his 1986 collection Libro de la pasión (Book of the Passion), the Chilean poet José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois (b. 1936) recounts the events surrounding the Last Supper and the Institution of Holy Communion. Toward the middle of the poem, as the narrative slowly approaches the decisive moment of consecration, the focus turns to Christ: take and eat this is my bodythis is my blood of the eternal covenant that will be poured out on the crossrenew this sacrifice in my memory he says and taking himself in his own handhe distributes his communionand after the body victim is consumed it disappears into his twelve lovesand the voice of the high and eternal priest after the sacrifice oh Goddisappears into the love of God for a few minutesit is the deep prayer that follows communiontwelve inner Christs gaze with astonishment upon outward Christ . . . 1 [End Page 98] This passage is rich and complex, and I will return to it in more detail later in the essay. For the moment, I simply want to notice that Langlois’s suggestion that as the disciples consume Christ’s sacramental body they are transformed first into “twelve loves” (line 10) and then into “twelve Christs” (line 14) reflects an insight about the Eucharist that goes back at least to Augustine’s Confessions. There Augustine argues that unlike ordinary food, which is converted into the substance of the one who consumes it, the Eucharist has the effect of converting the communicant into Christ himself.2 This idea would prove enormously influential for subsequent Christian thinkers.3 In his commentary on the Gospel of John, for instance, Aquinas draws out its implications by suggesting that if the Eucharist is indeed capable of transforming those who consume it into Christ, it is therefore also capable of “inebriating man with divinity” (divinitate inebrians) and “making him divine” (hominem divinum facere).4 In a later commentary on the Psalms, Aquinas picks up the motif of “divine inebriation” and carries the point further still. Identifying the “inebriating chalice” (calix inebrians) of Psalms 23:5 (Vulgate 22:5) with the blood of Christ, he contends that just as one who is drunk is not “in control of his faculties” (non est in se), so likewise those who receive the Eucharist are so “full of divine love” that they are “made to be in ecstasy” (in extasim factus).5 It is at precisely this intersection of Eucharist, ecstasy, and deification that Langlois situates not only the poem cited in the opening paragraph, but also his broader account of the Eucharist in Book of the Passion. It is also here that the Chilean poet articulates an account of the relationship between poetry and Eucharist for which I will have to justify the phrase a poetics of sacramental ecstasy. Although largely unknown outside the Spanish-speaking world, Langlois is easily contemporary Chile’s most eminent religious poet, as well as a distinguished theologian and literary critic, an active Roman Catholic priest, and a former member of the International Theological Commission (1986–1990).6 A theologically conservative “anti-modernist” and a fierce critic of liberation theology, Langlois is often classified [End Page 99] as an “orthodox,” even a “dogmatic,” poet, and much of his verse reflects a commitment not only to an unapologetically traditionalist brand of Roman Catholicism,7 but also to a conception of poetry and poetics as potential sources of spiritual and theological insight.8 Despite his own theological predilections, however, Langlois’s verse also reveals the unmistakable influence of his staunchly atheistic and emphatically non-traditionalist compatriot Nicanor Parra (1914–2018), whose so-called “anti-poetry” sought, among other things, to dislodge the “vatic” or “prophetic” conception of poetry associated with the Chilean “creationist” poet Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948) and, preeminently, with Pablo Neruda (1904–1973).9 Both aspects of Langlois’s intellectual heritage are on full display in Book of the Passion, where the poet mixes a theologically orthodox reimagining of the central events of Christ’s passion...