Does Divine Intervention circumvent longer casting times?

Question

New 2024 Divine Intervention that level 10 clerics get:

Divine Intervention You can call on your deity or pantheon to intervene on your behalf. As a Magic action, choose any Cleric spell of level 5 or lower that doesn’t require a Reaction to cast. As part of the same action, you cast that spell without expending a spell slot or needing Material components. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a Long Rest.

My reading of this feature is that, upon activating it, you fully cast the spell you have chosen as part of its action.

I'm reading elsewhere the opinion that, in the case of a longer casting time spell such as Prayer of Healing, the Magic action used for Divine Intervention would only qualify as the first of many Magic actions taken to fully cast this spell, with repeated reference to the definition of 2024's Magic action:

Longer Casting Times Certain spells—including a spell cast as a Ritual—require more time to cast: minutes or even hours. While you cast a spell with a casting time of 1 minute or more, you must take the Magic action on each of your turns, and you must maintain Concentration (see the rules glossary) while you do so. If your Concentration is broken, the spell fails, but you don’t expend a spell slot. To cast the spell again, you must start over.

The logic being that, because Divine Intervention is itself a Magic action, it is only the first of, say, ten Magic actions to actually cast a 1-minute casting time spell.

Does Divine Intervention's text saying "As part of the same action, you cast that spell..." sufficiently establish that the spell is being cast in its entirety? Or does it not circumvent casting time in this manner? If the latter, how would it work with a bonus action spell, which doesn't even make use of the "Magic Action" in the first place?

Answer 1

Not every Magic action is a "spellcasting action"

The Magic action is defined thusly:

When you take the Magic action, you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated.

In the case of Divine Intervention, you take the Magic action to "use a feature", not to cast a spell. It's a bit of a fine distinction: you are not taking the Magic action to cast a spell, but you are casting a spell as part of that Magic action, because that's what the feature does when you use it. That means that the casting time of the chosen spell is irrelevant, because the feature overrides the general rule by saying that the casting occurs "as part of the same action".

Even if you use Divine Intervention to cast a spell with a casting time of 1 Action, you still aren't casting the spell by fulfilling its casting time, you're casting it because Divine Intervention says so. In fact, here's an interesting bonus fact: if a spell has a casting time of 1 Bonus Action, you can use Divine Intervention to cast it as part of your Action instead, allowing you to cast a 2nd Bonus Action spell with your actual Bonus Action on the same turn.

Other interpretations lead to nonsensical results

If Divine Intervention's Magic action was only the first of multiple Magic actions to cast a spell with a longer casting time, you would still need to provide Material components for the remaining actions, and at the end of the casting you would still need to expend the spell slot, since the final Magic action when the spell slot is actually expended is not part of Divine Intervention. In other words, you would still need Material components to cast the spell, and you would still need to expend the spell slot. This is clearly a nonsensical interaction, which is further evidence that this interpretation of Divine Intervention is not the intended one.