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| Concerning the holy and immaculate Mysteries of the Lord.
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Chapter
XIII.—Concerning the holy and immaculate
Mysteries of the Lord.
God2391
| 2391 Greg. Naz.,
Orat. 42; Dion. De div. nom., ch. 3. | Who is good
and altogether good and more than good, Who is goodness throughout, by
reason of the exceeding riches of His goodness did not suffer Himself,
that is His nature, only to be good, with no other to participate
therein, but because of this He made first the spiritual and heavenly
powers: next the visible and sensible universe: next man
with his spiritual and sentient nature. All things, therefore,
which he made, share in His goodness in respect of their
existence. For He Himself is existence to all, since all things
that are, are in Him2392
, not only
because it was He that brought them out of nothing into being, but
because His energy preserves and maintains all that He made: and
in especial the living creatures. For both in that they exist and
in that they enjoy life they
share in His goodness. But in truth those of them that have
reason have a still greater share in that, both because of what has
been already said and also because of the very reason which they
possess. For they are somehow more dearly akin to Him, even
though He is incomparably higher than they.
Man, however, being endowed with reason and free
will, received the power of continuous union with God through his own
choice, if indeed he should abide in goodness, that is in obedience to
his Maker. Since, however, he transgressed the command of his
Creator and became liable to death and corruption, the Creator and
Maker of our race, because of His bowels of compassion, took on our
likeness, becoming man in all things but without sin, and was united to
our nature2393
. For
since He bestowed on us His own image and His own spirit and we did not
keep them safe, He took Himself a share in our poor and weak nature, in
order that He might cleanse us and make us incorruptible, and establish
us once more as partakers of His divinity.
For it was fitting that not only the first-fruits
of our nature should partake in the higher good but every man who
wished it, and that a second birth should take place and that the
nourishment should be new and suitable to the birth and thus the
measure of perfection be attained. Through His birth, that is,
His incarnation, and baptism and passion and resurrection, He delivered
our nature from the sin of our first parent and death and corruption,
and became the first-fruits of the resurrection, and made Himself the
way and image and pattern, in order that we, too, following in His
footsteps, may become by adoption what He is Himself by nature2394
, sons and heirs of God and joint heirs
with Him2395
| 2395 Variant,
φύσει
καὶ
κληρονόμοι
τῆς αὐτοῦ
γενώμεθα
χάριτος, και
αὐτου υἰοι,
καὶ
συγκληρονόμοι. | . He gave
us therefore, as I said, a second birth in order that, just as we who
are born of Adam are in his image and are the heirs of the curse and
corruption, so also being born of Him we may be in His likeness and
heirs2396
| 2396 Text,
κληρονομήσωμεν.
Variant, κληρονομήσαντες. | of His incorruption and blessing and
glory.
Now seeing that this Adam is spiritual, it was
meet that both the birth and likewise the food should be spiritual too,
but since we are of a double and compound nature, it is meet that both
the birth should be double and likewise the food compound. We
were therefore given a birth by water and Spirit: I mean, by the
holy baptism2397
: and
the food is the very bread of life, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who came
down from heaven2398
. For
when He was about to take on Himself a voluntary death for our sakes,
on the night on which He gave Himself up, He laid a new covenant on His
holy disciples and apostles, and through them on all who believe on
Him. In the upper chamber, then, of holy and illustrious Sion,
after He had eaten the ancient Passover with His disciples and had
fulfilled the ancient covenant, He washed His disciples’
feet2399
in token of the holy baptism. Then
having broken bread He gave it to them saying, Take, eat, this is My
body broken for you for the remission of sins2400
. Likewise also He took the cup of
wine and water and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it:
for this is My blood, the blood of the New Testament which is shed for
you for the remission of sins. This do ye in remembrance of
Me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do
shew the death of the Son of man and confess His resurrection until He
come2401
| 2401 St. Matt. xxvi. 27, 28; St.
Mark xiv. 22–24; St. Luke xxii. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi.
24–26. | .
If then the Word of God is quick and
energising2402
, and the Lord
did all that He willed2403
; if He said, Let
there be light and there was light, let there be a firmament and there
was a firmament2404
; if the heavens
were established by the Word of the Lord and all the host of them by
the breath of His mouth2405
; if the heaven
and the earth, water and fire and air and the whole glory of these,
and, in sooth, this most noble creature, man, were perfected by the
Word of the Lord; if God the Word of His own will became man and the
pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever-virginal One made His
flesh without the aid of seed2406
| 2406 Text, καὶ τὰ
τῆς...καθαρὰ
καὶ ἀμώμητα
αἵματα
ἑαυτῷ. Variant, καὶ ἐκ τῶν
τῆς...καθαρῶν
καὶ ἀμωμήτων
αἱμάτων
ἑαυτῳ. | , can He not then
make the bread His body and the wine and water His blood? He said
in the beginning, Let the earth bring forth grass2407
, and even until this present day, when
the rain comes it brings forth its proper fruits, urged on and
strengthened by the divine command. God said, This is My
body, and This is My blood, and this do ye in remembrance of
Me. And so it is at His omnipotent command until He
come: for it was in this sense that He said until He
come: and the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit becomes
through the invocation the rain to this new tillage2408
| 2408
Iren.,bk. iv., ch. 35; Fulg., Ad Monim., bk. ii.,
ch. 6; Chrys., De prod. Judæ; Greg. Nyss., Catech.,
&c. | . For just as God made all that He
made by the energy of the Holy Spirit, so also now the energy of
the Spirit performs
those things that are supernatural and which it is not possible to
comprehend unless by faith alone. How shall this be, said
the holy Virgin, seeing I know not a man? And the
archangel Gabriel answered her: The Holy Spirit shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow
thee2409
. And now you
ask, how the bread became Christ’s body and the wine and water
Christ’s blood. And I say unto thee, “The Holy Spirit
is present and does those things which surpass reason and
thought.”
Further, bread and wine2410
| 2410 Nyss., Orat.,
Catech., ch. 37. |
are employed: for God knoweth man’s infirmity: for in
general man turns away discontentedly from what is not well-worn by
custom: and so with His usual indulgence He performs His
supernatural works through familiar objects: and just as, in the
case of baptism, since it is man’s custom to wash himself with
water and anoint himself with oil, He connected the grace of the Spirit
with the oil and the water and made it the water of regeneration, in
like manner since it is man’s custom to eat and to drink water
and wine2411
| 2411 Clem.,
Constit., bk. viii.; Justin Martyr., Apol. i.;
Iren., v. 2. | , He connected
His divinity with these and made them His body and blood in order that
we may rise to what is supernatural through what is familiar and
natural.
The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in
truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received
up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine
are changed into God’s body and blood2412
| 2412 Greg. Nyss.,
Orat. Catech., c. 37. | . But if you enquire how this
happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was through the Holy
Spirit, just as the Lord took on Himself flesh that subsisted in Him
and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we
know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energises
and is omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched
out2413
| 2413 Simile Nyss.
loc. cit. | . But one can put it well thus, that
just as in nature the bread by the eating and the wine and the water by
the drinking are changed into the body and blood of the eater and
drinker, and do not2414
| 2414 οὐ is absent in some mss. | become a
different body from the former one, so the bread of the table2415
| 2415 The Greek is
ὁ τῆς
προθέσεως
οἶνος, the bread of the
prothesis. It is rendered panis propositionis in the
old translations. These phrases designate the Shewbread in
the LXX. and the Vulgate. The πρόθεσις is
explained as a smaller table placed on the right side of the altar, on
which the priests make ready the bread and the cup for
consecration. See the note in Migne. | and the wine and water are supernaturally
changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body
and blood of Christ, and are not two but one2416
| 2416 See
Niceph., C.P., Antirr. ii. 3. | and the same.
Wherefore to those who partake worthily with faith, it
is for the remission of sins and for life everlasting and for the
safeguarding of soul and body; but to those who partake unworthily
without faith, it is for chastisement and punishment, just as also the
death of the Lord became to those who believe life and incorruption for
the enjoyment of eternal blessedness, while to those who do not believe
and to the murderers of the Lord it is for everlasting chastisement and
punishment.
The bread and the wine are not merely figures of
the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the
Lord itself: for the Lord has said, “This is My
body,” not, this is a figure of My body: and “My
blood,” not, a figure of My blood. And on a previous
occasion He had said to the Jews, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. For My flesh
is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. And again, He
that eateth Me, shall live2417
2418
| 2418 ζωὴν αἰ&
240·νιον is added in many
mss. | .
Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and
certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as we
believe, doubting nothing. Let us pay homage to it in all purity
both of soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near
to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the
cross2419
| 2419 Cyril Hierosol.,
Cat. Mystag. 5; Chrys. Hom. 3 in Epist. ad Ephes.;
Trull. can. 101. | let us receive the body of the Crucified
One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of
the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us,
with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our
sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified
by the participation in the divine fire. Isaiah saw the
coal2420
. But coal is not plain wood but
wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the
communion2421
is not plain
bread but bread united with divinity. But a body2422
which is united with divinity is not
one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another
belonging to the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is
not one nature but two.
With bread and wine Melchisedek, the priest of the
most high God, received Abraham on his return from the slaughter of the
Gentiles2423
. That
table pre-imaged this mystical table, just as that priest was a type
and image of Christ, the true high-priest2424
. For thou art a priest for ever
after the order of Melchisedek2425
. Of
this bread the
show-bread was an image2426
| 2426 Text, εἰκόνιζον.
Variant, εἰκονίζουσι. | . This
surely is that pure and bloodless sacrifice which the Lord through the
prophet said is offered to Him from the rising to the setting of the
sun2427
.
The body and blood of Christ are making for the
support of our soul and body, without being consumed or suffering
corruption, not making for the draught (God forbid!) but for our being
and preservation, a protection against all kinds of injury, a purging
from all uncleanness: should one receive base gold, they purify
it by the critical burning lest in the future we be condemned with this
world. They purify from diseases and all kinds of calamities;
according to the words of the divine Apostle2428
, For if we would judge ourselves, we
should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of
the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.
This too is what he says, So that he that partaketh of the body and
blood of Christ unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to
himself2429
. Being
purified by this, we are united to the body of Christ and to His Spirit
and become the body of Christ.
This bread is the first-fruits2430
of the future bread which is
ἐπιούσιος, i.e.
necessary for existence. For the word ἐπιούσιον
signifies either the future, that is Him Who is for a future age,
or else Him of Whom we partake for the preservation of our
essence. Whether then it is in this sense or that, it is fitting
to speak so of the Lord’s body. For the Lord’s flesh
is life-giving spirit because it was conceived of the life-giving
Spirit. For what is born of the Spirit is spirit. But I do
not say this to take away the nature of the body, but I wish to make
clear its life-giving and divine power2431
.
But if some persons called the bread and the wine
antitypes2432
| 2432 Anastas.,
Hodegus, ch. 23. | of the body
and blood of the Lord, as did the divinely inspired Basil, they said so
not after the consecration but before the consecration, so calling the
offering itself.
Participation is spoken of; for through it we partake of
the divinity of Jesus. Communion, too, is spoken of, and it is an
actual communion, because through it we have communion with Christ and
share in His flesh and His divinity: yea, we have communion and
are united with one another through it. For since we partake of
one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one blood, and members
one of another, being of one body with Christ.
With all our strength, therefore, let us beware
lest we receive communion from or grant it to heretics; Give not
that which is holy unto the dogs, saith the Lord, neither cast ye your
pearls before swine2433
, lest we
become partakers in their dishonour and condemnation. For if
union is in truth with Christ and with one another, we are assuredly
voluntarily united also with all those who partake with us. For
this union is effected voluntarily and not against our
inclination. For we are all one body because we partake of the
one bread, as the divine Apostle says2434
.
Further, antitypes of future things are spoken of,
not as though they were not in reality Christ’s body and blood,
but that now through them we partake of Christ’s divinity, while
then we shall partake mentally2435
| 2435 Text, νοητῶς
διὰ μόνῆς
τῆς Θέας:
νοητῶς is wanting in some
Reg. 2928 having διὰ
μόνης τῆς
Θείας
ἑνώσεως. | through the
vision alone.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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