That individual members of the faithful become a corporate worshiping subject in liturgical celebration is a mainstay of Catholic liturgical ecclesiology, but how corporate subjectivity is established in liturgy has not been specified. This article investigates some key scientific factors contributing to the cohesion of the corporate worshiping subject and theorizes that corporeality ideally leads to prosociality. It points to theological underpinnings of liturgical corporeality and studies how the Holy Spirit may shape the corporate bond utilizing affective and neurophysiological mechanisms, particularly emotional contagion, postural and gestural mirroring, synchrony, and hormones.

Vatican II introduced the principle of “organic growth” to describe its preferred postconciliar liturgical reform process. Botanical interpretations have dominated scholarly readings of this analogy and restricted the emergence of richer analogies for understanding liturgical change. This article interprets “organic growth” in the liturgy via the analogy of neuroplasticity both to explore historic and prognostic