NOTES for Eph 1:15-23
If we read the apostle Paul’s words attentively, we discover something strange. Paul says that the Church is not merely the Body of Christ, an image familiar to us, but His fullness! He who fills all in all, that is, the source of every fullness, willed that the Church should become necessary to Him, that it should become His fullness. In other words, the Lord loved the Church so much that without her He Himself seems to lose His fullness: out of love, He made Himself dependent on people. What does this dependence consist in? After the Ascension, the bodily presence of Jesus on earth, that is, His fullness, since He is truly Man and would be incomplete without a body, is realized only through the Church. This refers first of all to the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which He is bodily present. But the Church is also His body, and this means that every member of the Church embodies His presence in the world.