Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, which surfaced in early 2020, has become an opportunity for theologians and philosophers to sort out several dogmatic issues. One of the tasks that were undertaken was an attempt to establish the place of the old devotional practice called spiritual communion in the religious order. Spiritual communion is usually defined as the earnest desire to receive sacramental communion, which can arouse in a believer in situations when it is not possible to receive the Eucharist physically. Most often, this desire is accompanied by appropriate prayer. However, theologians are not unanimous about the effectiveness of spiritual communion: some argue that spiritual communion is as effective as sacramental communion, while others claim that the effectiveness of spiritual communion cannot be equated with that of sacramental communion. The aim of this study is to justify the thesis that sacramental communion always surpasses spiritual communion in terms of effectiveness. This can be supported by statements of Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent, as well as a philosophical analysis of the fact of incarnation that God made in order to enter into a physical, not just spiritual, community with humans.