and renew its presence (which Cabasilas calls “signification,” sēmasia: Cabasilas, 130). On the one hand, in the words of the encyclical Mediator Dei, with which
the modern Church, in a crucial moment of its history, sought to restore vitality
to the liturgical tradition, the “objective” element of the liturgy, the “mysterium
of the mystical body,” whose operator is grace, which is manifested in the charis-
mas and acts in the sacraments ex opere operato (through the simple completion
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of a certain action); on the other, the “subjective” element of the cult provided
by the participation of the faithful, ex opere operantis Ecclesiae (§27; cf. Braga and Bugnini, 574–75).
The insistence with which the encyclical Mediator Dei attempts to negate
and almost to exorcise the contradiction between “the action of God” and “the
collaboration of man,” between the efficacy of “the external administration of
the sacraments, which comes from the rite itself ( ex opere operato)” and “the
meritorious action of their ministers of recipients, which we call the agent’s ac-
tion ( opus operantis),” between “the ascetical life and devotion to the liturgy”
(§36; cf. Braga and Bugnini, 578), betrays a difficulty that the Church has never
succeeded in fully unraveling.
What defines the Christian liturgy is precisely the aporetic but always reit-
erated attempt to identify and articulate at the same time in the liturgical act—
understood as opus Dei—mystery and ministry, that is, of making the liturgy as
effective soteriological act and liturgy as the clergy’s service to the community,
opus operatum and opus opertantis Ecclesiae, coincide.
א It is customary, based on the authority of Du Cange, to attribute the creation of the
syntagma opus Dei to the Benedictine rule, where it appears multiple times to designate the liturgical office. In truth, the compiler of the rule depends in this case as well on his principal source, the Regula magistri. The concordance of Vogüé’s edition registers around thirty occurrences for the expression opus Dei and shows, moreover, that already in the first quarter of the sixth century (when, according to Vogüé, the Regula Dei would have been composed) the syntagma had become a technical term for the monastic office. If it is a matter of an invention on the part of the author of the rule, it could derive from his definition of the monastery as officina divinae artis ( Officina vero monasterium est, in qua ferramenta cordis in corporis clausura reposita opus divinae artis diligenti custodia perseverando operari potest [The workshop is the monastery, where the instruments of the heart are kept in the enclosure of the body, and the work of the divine art can be accomplished with assiduous
care and perseverance]; Vogüé, 1:380/119). According to the correspondence between lit-
urgy and trinitary economy that we have evoked, the origin of the expression is with all
likelihood to be sought in the definition of Christ as prumum opus Dei, which one finds, for example, in an Arian text, the letter of Candidus to Marius Victorinus on the divine
generation (mid-fourth century): Dei filius, qui est logos apud Deum, Jesus Christus, per quem effecta sunt omnia et sine quo nihil factum est, neque generatione a Deo, sed operatione a Deo, est primum opus et principale Dei (“the Son of God, who is the ‘ Logos with God,’
Jesus Christ, ‘through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made,’
is, not by God’s begetting but by God’s operation, the first and original effect of God”; in Victorinus, 122/55). In any case the syntagma opus Dei, which extended its effectiveness well beyond monasticism, acquires its proper sense in the context of the liturgy, conceived as the place in which mystery and ministry, priestly service and community obligation
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tend to coincide. When the syntagma is today associated with a powerful Catholic or-
ganization, founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, one must not forget that
their choice of the name is perfectly coherent with this premise.
10. The distinction between opus operatum and opus operantis in the encyclical Mediator Dei comes from the scholastic tradition and found its sanction in
the Council of Trent (session VII, canon 8, Denzinger 851): “If any one saith, that by the said sacraments of the New Law grace is not conferred through the act
performed [ ex opere operato], but that faith alone in the divine promise suffices
for the obtaining of grace; let him be anathema.”
In this formulation is expressed a principle that constitutively defines the li-
turgical praxis of the Church: the independence of the objective effectiveness and
validity of the sacrament from the subject who concretely administers it. Opus
operatum thus designates the sacramental act in its effective reality, opus operantis (the oldest formulation is actually opus operans) designates the action insofar as it is carried out by the agent and is qualified by his moral and physical dispositions.
The origin of the distinction goes back to the disputes over the validity of
baptism that divided the Church between the third and fourth century. The
salient moments here are the controversy between Cyprian and Pope Stephen in
256 and that between Augustine and the Donatists between 396 and 410. In both
cases it is a matter of affirming, against Cyprian and the Donatists, the validity
of baptism conferred by a heretic or by an unworthy minister, that is, of securing
the objective validity of the sacrament and the priestly action beyond any subjec-
tive conditions that could render them null or ineffective. Just as those who were
baptized by Judas, writes Augustine, did not have to be baptized again, since
it is Christ who baptized them, “In like manner, then, they whom a drunkard
baptized, those whom a murderer baptized, those whom an adulterer baptized,
if it was the baptism of Christ, were baptized by Christ” ( In Evangelium Johannis
Tractatus 5.18). As happens in every institution, it is a matter of distinguishing the individual from the function he exercises, so as to secure the validity of the
acts that he carries out in the name of the institution.
In Aquinas the doctrine of the efficacy of the sacraments ex opere operato is
already fully elaborated. He first of all distinguishes the sacraments of the Hebrew
law, which “did not have effectiveness ex opere operato, but only through faith,”
from those of the new law, “which confer grace ex opere operato” (Thomas Aqui-
nas, Scriptum super Sententiis 92). In the treatise on the sacraments in the Summa theologica (III, qq. 60–65), the neutralization of the opus operantis and the subjective condition is developed through the doctrine of the priest as instrumental
cause of an act whose primary agent is Christ himself. And, as “the instrumental
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cause works not by the power of its form, but only by the motion whereby it is
moved by the principal agent” (q. 62, art. 1), so “the ministers of the Church work
instrumentally in the sacraments, because, in a way, a minister is of the nature of
an instrument” (q. 64, art. 5). For this reason, insofar as the minister is a sort of
“animate instrument” (q. 64, art. 8) of an operation whose agent is Christ, not
only is it not necessary that he have faith or love, but even a perverse intention (for
example, baptizing a woman with the intention of taking advantage of her) does
not take away the validity of the sacrament. In virtue of
the effectiveness ex opere
operato and not ex opere operantis, in fact “the perverse intention of the minister perverts the sacrament insofar as it is his action: not insofar as it is the action of
Christ, whose minister he is” (q. 64, art. 10, sol. 3).
א Grundmann has observed that the early and clear formulation of the doctrine of
the opus operatum that is found already in Innocent III’s De sacro altaris mysterio can be considered as a response to the polemics of the spiritual movements, like the Waldensians, who called into question the validity of the sacrament imparted by unworthy priests
(Grundmann, 519/413n50). “In the sacrament of the body of Christ nothing more is ac-
complished by a good priest, and nothing less by a bad priest . . . because it is confected not through the merit of the priest, but through the word of the Creator. Therefore the sin of the priest does not impede the effect of the sacrament, just as the sickness of the doctor does not corrupt the power of the medicine. Therefore, although the one doing the work
is sometimes unclean, nevertheless the work done is always clean.” ( In sacramento corporis Christi nihil a bono maius, nihil a malo minus perficitur sacerdote . . . quia non inmerito sacerdotis, sed in verbo conficitur creatoris. Non ergo sacerdotis iniquitas effectum impedit sacramenti, sicut nec infirmitas medici virtutem medicinae corrumpit. Quamvis igitur opus operans aliquando sit immundum, semper tamen opus operatum est mundum; Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio, bk. 3, chap. 5.)
11. Modern treatises on the sacraments attribute the first formulation of the
doctrine of the opus operatum in a generic way to the Sentences of Peter of Poitiers, a twelfth-century theologian who, owing to his subtlety, was aligned with Peter
Abelard, Gilbert of Poitier, and Peter Lombard among the “labyrinths of France.”
A survey of the two passages of the work in which the distinction appears will
prove particularly instructive. The first articulation of the doctrine does not, in
fact, have to do with the theory of the sacraments but that of the action of de-
mons. “And the devil,” writes Peter in his labyrinthine style,
serves God and God approves the works that he has done, but not the way in
which he has done them [ opera eius quae operatur, non quibus operatur]: the works
done, as one is accustomed to saying, not the doing of the works [ opera operata,
ut dici solet, non opera operantia], which are all evil, since they do not proceed
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from charity. So God approved of the passion of Christ carried out by the Jews,
insofar as it was the Jews’ work done [ opus iudaeorum operatum], but did not
approve the Jews’ doing of the work [ opera iudaeorum operantia] and the actions
by which they worked that passion. God is offended by the devil’s action, but
not by the act itself; God does not want the devil to do that which God com-
mands him to do in the way he does it. If one reads in the Scriptures that God
commands the devil to do something, as is said for example in the Book of Kings
(chap. 22) of the deception of Ahab . . . this must not be understood to mean
that he commands it as he wants it. Rather, if he wants him to do it, he does
not, however, want him to do it as he does it. Even if the devil does what God
wants, he does not do it as God wants and for that reason, he is always sinning.
(Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae 1.16)
One can understand why in the modern treatises the attribution of the doctrine
of the opus operatum to Peter of Poitiers must necessarily remain generic. That
the first formulation of the distinction that would furnish the paradigm of the
sacramental paradigm of the priest was conceived to define the action of the devil
within the providential economy cannot fail to appear embarrassing for histori-
ans of theology. It is only in book 5, in fact, in connection with the effectiveness
of baptism, that Peter moves the distinction into the sphere of the theory of the
sacraments:
When someone is baptized, it is by the authority of someone: either Christ or the
priest. If it is by the authority of the priest and not by the baptism of Christ, then
it is the priest who remits the sins. . . . [The purification] is the work of someone,
either the one baptizing or the one being baptized. If it is the work of the one
baptizing and it is by virtue of charity, then the merit of the baptism belongs
to the one baptizing. In the same way he has the merit of the baptismal action
[ baptizatione], in the sense in which baptizatio is called the action by which he baptizes, which is a different work from baptism [ baptismus], since it is a doing
of a work [ opus operans], while baptism is a work done [ opus operatum], if one can say so. (Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae 5.6)
א It is important to note that both Peter of Poitiers and Innocent III speak of opus
operans and not of opus operantis, as later theologians do. The distinction—in which, as we will see, its novelty consists—does not, that is to say, divide only the subject of the action but also the action itself, considered in one moment as the work of an agent and
in another in itself, that is, in its effectiveness.
12. The stakes in the strategy that leads to distinguishing the opus operatum
from the opus operans are clear at this point. It is a matter of separating, in an action, its effective reality from the subject who carries it out (though he cannot,
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for that reason, be exonerated from all responsibility for it) as much as from the
process through which it is accomplished. Let us reflect on the singular status
that thus comes to belong to the priestly action. It is split in two: on the one
hand, the opus operatum, that is, the effects that derive from it and the function that it carries out in the divine economy; on the other, the opus operans (or
operantis), that is, the subjective dispositions and modalities through which the
agent calls the action into being. The liturgy as opus Dei is the effectiveness that results from the articulation of these two distinct and yet conspiring elements.
In this sense the ethical connection between the subject and his action is bro-
ken: what is determinative is no longer the right intention of the agent but only
the function that his action carries out as opus Dei. Just as the demon’s action as opus operatum is carried out in the service of God even if it remains evil as opus operantis, so the liturgical action of the priest is effective as opus Dei even if the unworthy priest is committing a sin. The liturgy thus defines a peculiar sphere
of action, in which the mystery paradigm of the Letter to the Hebrews (Christ
the high priest’s opus operatum) and the ministerial paradigm of the letter of
Clement (the opus operantis Ecclesiae) coincide and are at the same time distin-
guished. This can happen, however, only at the price of dividing and emptying
of its personal content the action of the priest, who, as the “animate instrument”
of a mystery that transcends him, exercises an action that is still in some sense his
own. In this sense, if on the one hand (with respect to the mystery and the opus
operatum) he is not a subject but an instrument who in Aquinas’s words does not
act “by the power of its form,” on the other hand (with respect to his ministry)
he maintains his specific action, just as the axe, in Aquinas’s example, “does not
accomplish the instrumental action save by exercising its proper action, that is,
by cutting” ( Summa theologiae III, q. 62, art. 1). The priest as animate instrument is that paradoxical subject who fulfills the “ministry of the mystery. ” Insofar as in him the opus operantis can coincide with the opus operatum only on condition of being distinguished from it and can be distinguished from it only on condition
of disappearing into it, one can say that (in the terminology of speech acts) its
felicity is its infelicity and its infelicity is its felicity.
א It is significant that the 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei devotes special attention to the problem of the distinction between opus operatum and opus operantis Ecclesiae and seeks in every way to minimize the problem of the gap ( discrepantia) that persists between them. “In the spiritual life,” reads the text, “there can be no opposition or discrepancy
[ discrepantia vel repugnantia] between the action of God, who pours forth His grace into men’s hearts so that the work of the redemption may always abide, and the tireless work
and collaboration of human beings [ sociam laboriosamque hominis operam], who must
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not render vain the gift of God. No more can the efficacy of the external administration
of the sacraments, which comes from the rite itself ( ex opere operato), be opposed to the meritorious action of their ministers of recipients, which we call the agent’s action ( opus operantis). Similarly, no conflict exists between public prayer and prayers in private, between morality and contemplation, between the ascetical life and devotion to the
liturgy. Finally, there is no opposition between the jurisdiction and teaching office of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the specifically priestly power exercised in the sacred ministry”
(§36; translation altered; cf. Braga and Bugnini, 578).
Moreover, insofar as the text claims several times that, at least as concerns the sacra-
ments, the effectiveness of the cult is produced “first of all and principally from the act itself ( ex opere operato)” (§27; cf. Braga and Bugnini, 574), it is not clear how one should understand the necessity of the opus operantis Ecclesiae that the encyclical is anxious to affirm.
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