Vigils Reading

A reading from “The Life in Christ” by

NICHOLAS CABASILAS

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After receiving the Sacrament of Chrismation, we approach the Holy

Table, the consummation of our life in Christ, which leaves no further happiness

to be desired. Now it is no longer a question of sharing in Christ’s death or burial

or in a higher kind of life, but of welcoming the risen Lord himself. It is no longer

the gifts of the Spirit that we receive, insofar as we are able, but our benefactor

himself, the very temple that enshrines all gifts.

Christ is present in each of the Sacraments: he himself confirms us and

cleanses us, and he is our food. He is present to those receiving the Sacraments

of initiation, though in different ways. In Baptism he takes away the stain of sin

and imprints his own image on the baptized. In Chrismation he brings into

action the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of which his own flesh is the repository. But

when he leads communicants to his Table and gives them his body to eat he

completely transforms them, raising them to his own level. This is the last

Sacrament we receive because it is impossible to go beyond it or to add to it

anything whatever.

We remain imperfect even after Baptism has produced in us its full effect

because we have not yet received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are given in

Chrismation. Those baptized by Philip did not receive the Holy Spirit simply by

the grace of Baptism: it was necessary for John and Peter to lay their hands on

them. As Scripture says, the Holy Spirit had not yet come down on any of them;

they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and

John laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Yet even among those who had been filled with the Spirit and who

prophesied, spoke in tongues and displayed other such gifts, there were some in

the time of the Apostles who were so far from being divine and spiritual as to be

guilty of envy, rivalry, contention, and other similar vices. This is what Paul

referred to when he wrote to them: You are still unspiritual and are living on a

purely human plane. They were indeed spiritual by reason of the graces they

had received, but these graces did not suffice to free them from all sinfulness.

With the Eucharist, however, it is different. No such charge can be

brought against those in whom the Bread of Life, which has saved them from

death, has had its full effect and who have not brought to this feast any wrongful

dispositions. If this Sacrament is fully effective it is quite impossible for it to

allow the slightest imperfection to remain in those who receive it.

If you would know the reason for this, it is because through communion,

in fulfilment of his promise, Christ dwells in us and we in him. He lives in me, he

said, and I in him. When Christ lives in us, what can we lack? When we live in

Christ, what more can we desire? We at once become spiritual in body and soul

and in all our faculties because our soul is united to his soul, our body to his

body, our blood to his blood. The consequence is that the higher prevails over

the lower, the divine over the human. As Paul says, referring to the

Resurrection: What is mortal is swallowed up by life. And elsewhere he writes:

It is no longer I who live: it is Christ who lives in me.