Gift that Becomes Communion: Perichoresis, Eucharistic Ethos, and Relationality as Keys to a Theological Anthropology

Abstract

This article proposes a theological anthropology centered on the Trinitarian dynamic that is articulated by the Eucharist. Starting from the hermeneutical metaphor of the spiral staircase, perichoresis, the reciprocal relational interpenetration of the divine Persons, when actualized by the action of the Spirit, reveals a communal anthropology whose historical and sacramental embodiment is found in the Eucharistic ethos. After explaining the Christological-kenotic foundation of this proposal, a pneumatological reading of history is developed that considers the Spirit as the principle that actualizes Christ's gift until eschatological consummation. Two experiential paradigms are contrasted: inhabitation (inner experience of love, with Augustinian and mystical roots) and cohabitio (communal experience of communion, exemplified in the spirituality of Chiara Lubich), culminating in an integrated proposal, coinhabitatio, articulated by intentionality, corporeality and reciprocity. The Eucharist appears as the sacramental place where memory, presence and promise are brought into tension, and from where the Church receives and transmits a relational ethic capable of responding to cultural fragmentation. The text combines patristic, theological and magisterial sources with contemporary proposals, suggesting avenues for theological formation, community pastoral care and future research on the social translation of a communal anthropology.