Opus Christi

In the officium divinum or, in Benedictine parlance, the opus divinum, Christ's sacrifice, the redeeming act, constantly repeats itself anew while still remaining the unique sacrifice that was accomplished, and is accomplished ever again, by Christ himself inside time and ou

Jung identifies the liturgical opus divinum as the institutional, perpetually renewed form of Christ's redemptive work, providing the theological matrix against which the alchemical opus defines itself.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis

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he is the redeemer of God and not the one to be redeemed, he is more concerned to perfect the substance than himself. Moral qualities he takes for granted and considers them only in so far as they help or hinder the opus.

Jung articulates the structural inversion by which the alchemist assumes an agent-position analogous to Christ's—becoming a redeemer of the divine substance rather than a recipient of redemption—thereby displacing the Opus Christi into an individual, material labour.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis

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'Occasus Christi, passio Christi.' That surely is why such strange things are happening to our much lauded civilization, more like a Gotterdammerung than any normal twilight.

Edinger, following Jung, reads the darkening of the Christ-image as a historical passion—the cultural sunset of the dominant God-image—that inaugurates the psychological necessity of a new opus.

Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis

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'Occasus Christi, passio Christi.' That surely is why such strange things are happening in our much lauded civilization more like a Götterdämmerung than any normal twilight.

Von Franz reiterates Jung's diagnosis that the passion and setting of Christ constitute a psycho-historical crisis demanding the renewal of consciousness through the inner work that mirrors and replaces the Opus Christi.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting

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The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation of the cosmos.... This work is difficult and strewn with obstacles; the alchemical opus is dangerous.

Edinger presents the alchemical opus as structurally co-extensive with the redemptive aims of the Opus Christi—salvation of soul and cosmos—while emphasising its perilous, individuated character.

Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting

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Christi vertitur, ut anima nostra quae in sanguine est, per hoc vivificetur. Etenim ordo ille qui pro claritate sapientiae dici poterat aurum modo obscuratum est et rursum velut in nigrum plumbum.

Von Franz's Aurora Consurgens commentary records how the blood of Christ is invoked as the animating principle of the alchemical work, demonstrating the textual interweaving of Christological and operational alchemical language.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting

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Now is the stone shaped, the elixir of life prepared, the love-child or the child of love born, the new birth completed, and the work made whole and perfect.

This passage from Pordage, cited by Jung, illustrates how alchemical completion language—resurrection, redemption, new birth—maps directly onto the soteriological vocabulary of the Opus Christi.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting

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What's required, rather, is that the lost dominant—the lost God-image—undergo the renewal process that the alchemical imagery refers to, be reborn and reemerge into view.

Edinger frames the psychological task as the renewal of the God-image, positioning the individuation process as the contemporary successor to the renewal enacted in the Opus Christi.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995aside

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since Adam was the prototype of Christ, and Eve, sprung from his side, that of the Church, it is understandable that a picture of Christ should develop showing distinctly feminine features.

Jung's reflection on androgyny in the Christ-image situates the Opus Christi within a broader mythological pattern linking the Adamic prototype, the hermaphroditic lapis, and the Church as feminine complement.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955aside

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