52. Jo. eu. tr. 65.1; Rettig, Tractates, 4.51; cf. Jo. eu. tr. 111.6. (continued)
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 207 guards against any temptation to attribute Christian holiness or virtue to the creature. In the "whole Christ" the holiness of Christ and of the Christian are not separated. Augustine asks:
"Must I exclude my holiness from Christ's?" The answer: "No; I can be certain that when he speaks, he speaks inseparably from his body. Shall even then I dare to say, I am holy? If I meant 'holy' in the sense of making others holy and standing in no need of anyone to sanctify me, I should be arrogant to claim it, and a liar; but if it means 'holy' in the sense of 'made holy' . . . then, yes, let Christ's body dare to say it."53
It is Christ's voice therefore when we hear someone claim "I am holy" because it is ultimately Christ's sanctity now alive in the created soul which renders that creature godly. Augustine's keen sense of participation again proves pivotal: by participating in its head, Christ's body receives all he is without ever being able to claim such graces autonomously as one's own.
The second factor is the nature of praise and prayer. The Christian cry upward is no longer construed as the lone individual calling out to a distant deity. Rather, in the totus Christus we come to recognize our own hearts. In Christ's utterance of "Abba" we perceive our own voices. Consequently, one never prays alone:. . . when we speak to God in prayer we do not separate the Son from God, and when the body of the Son prays it does not separate its head from itself. The one sole savior of his body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and he is prayed to by us as our God. Accordingly we must recognize our voices in him, and his accents in ourselves. . . . We pray, then, to him, through him and in him; we speak with him and he speaks with us.54
Christ continuously prays in his body, thus uniting not only the Father with humanity but Christian with other Christian as
53. en. Ps. 85.4; Boulding, Expositions (III/18), 224. 54. en. Ps. 85.1; Boulding, Expositions (III/18), 220–21.