a. Explication of the Second Conclusion

361. Now explaining this second conclusion specifically I say that Christ as he is in the Eucharist can have a merely spiritual action, namely both on the part of the principle of acting and on the part of the term of the action. He can also have an action spiritual on the part of the principle of acting but bodily on the part of the term of the action.

362. The first of these claims I prove because if some angel were present to Christ in the Eucharist, the soul of Christ could enlighten the angel and speak to him in mental speech, in the way that an angel existing where Christ is present could enlighten another angel or speak to him. For this enlightening and speaking only require an active principle sufficient for enlightening and speaking, and an able subject on the side of him who is illumined or to whom speech is made. And perhaps there is required closeness in definite ‘where’, or a simple closeness of the enlightener to the enlightened or of the speaker to the one spoken to. And their presence there in place is not required, just as neither is it if an angel were to speak to another. Now all this is included in the matter at issue.

363. But as to how Christ has a principle of enlightening angels and speaking intellectually to them, let it be supposed from Ord. III d.14 nn.80-83.

364. The second claim [n.362], namely that he can have an action spiritual on the part of the principle yet bodily on the part of the term, is made clear as follows, because an angel has a power, a non-organic power, of moving in place. The point is plain because an angel cannot have any organic power; the non-organic power can be a principle of moving a body as a whole, not as to the parts in the way our body is moved organically; but any intellective soul has such a power; therefore it can be the principle of such motion; and consequently it is merely spiritual on the part of the principle, because it is in no way organic, and yet it is bodily on the part of the term, because its term is the local motion of a body in place.