PATRISTIC TESTIMONIES ON THE SACRAMENT
OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
Dr. Vladimir Moss
St. Ignatius of Antioch. "They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour, Jesus Christ." (To the Smyrnaeans, 
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St. Justin the Martyr. "As Jesus Christ our Saviour was made flesh through the word of God, and took flesh and blood for our salvation; in the same way the food over which thanksgiving has been offered by the prayer of the word which came from Him – the food by which our blood and flesh are nourished through its transformation – is, we are taught, the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ Who was made flesh." (Apology, I, 65-66).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. "As the bread, which comes from the earth, receives the invocation of God, and then it is no longer common bread but Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly; so our bodies, after partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the eternal resurrection." (Against Heresies, IV, 18).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. "If this flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us by His Blood, and the bread which we break is not a sharing in His Body. For there is no blood except from veins, and from flesh, and from the rest of the substance of human nature which the Word of God came to be, and redeemed by His Blood, as His Apostles also says: ‘In Him we have redemption through His Blood, and the forgiveness of sins’ (Colossians 1.14). And since we are His members, and are nourished through creation – the creation He furnishes for us, causing the sun to rise and rain to fall as He pleases – He declared that the cup, which comes from His creation, is His own Blood, from which He strengthens our blood; and He affirmed that the bread, which is from creation, is His very own Body, from which He strengthens our bodies. Since, therefore, both the mixed cup and the prepared bread receive the Word of God, and become the eucharist of Christ’s Body and Blood, from which the substance of our flesh is strengthened and established, how, then, can they say that the flesh, which is fed on the Body and Blood of the Lord, and is one of His members, is incapable of receiving the gift of God which is everlasting life? As the blessed Paul also says in the Letter to the Ephesians: ‘We are members of His Body, from His Flesh and from His Bones’ (Ephesians 5.30), saying this not about some kind of spiritual and invisible human nature, for a spirit has neither flesh nor bones, but about that arrangement which is authentic human nature, which consists of flesh and sinews and bones, and is fed from the cup, which is His Blood, and is strengthened by the bread, which is His Body" (Against Heresies, V, 2, 3).
St. Cyril of Jerusalem. "Once, in Cana of Galilee, He changed water into wine (and wine is akin to blood); is it incredible that He should change wine into blood?… Therefore with complete assurance let us partake of those elements as being the Body and Blood of Christ… so that by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ you may be made of the same Body and Blood with Him. For in this way we become Christ-bearers, since His Body and Blood is distributed in the parts of our body. Thus, as blessed Peters says, we ‘become partakers of the Divine nature’… Do not think, then, of the elements as mere bread and wine. They are, according to the Lord’s declaration, body and blood. Though the perception suggests the contrary, let faith be your stay. Instead of judging the matter by taste, let faith give you an unwavering confidence that you have been privileged to receive the Body and Blood of Christ" (Catechetical Discourses, IV, 6).
St. Hilary of Poitiers. "Christ gives evidence of this natural unity in us: ‘He who eats My Flesh, and drinks My Blood, dwells in Me, and I in him’. For no one will be in Christ, unless Christ is in him, unless he has taken into himself the Flesh of Christ, Who took man’s flesh… He ‘lives through the Father’: and as He lives through the Father, so we live through His Flesh… This is the cause of our life, that we have Christ dwelling in our fleshly nature, in virtue of His Flesh, and we shall live through Him in the same way as He lives through the Father. We live through Him by nature, according to the flesh, that is, having acquired the nature of the flesh. Then surely He has the Father in Himself according to the Spirit, since He lives through the Father. The mystery of the real and natural unity is to be proclaimed in terms of the honour granted to us by the Son, and the Son’s dwelling in us through His Flesh, while we are united to Him bodily and inseparably." (On the Trinity, 8.16,17).
St. Gregory the Theologian. "Do not hesitate to pray for me, to be my ambassador, when by your word you draw down the Word, when with a stroke that draws no blood you sever the Body and Blood of the Lord, using your voice as a sword." (Letter 171).
St. Gregory of Nyssa. "The subsistence of every body depends on nourishment… and the Word of God coalesced with human nature and did not invent some different constitution for man’s nature when He came in a Body like ours. It was by the usual and appropriate means that He ensured the Body’s continuance, maintaining its subsistence by food and drink, the food being bread. Now in our case one may say that when anyone looks at bread he is looking at a human body, for when the bread gets into the body it becomes the body. Similarly in the case of the Word of God, the Body which received the Godhead, when it partook of nourishment in the form of bread, was in a manner of speaking identical with that bread, since the nourishment was transformed into the natural qualities of the body…the Body which by the indwelling of the God the Word was transmuted to the dignity of Godhead. If this is so, we are right in believing that now also the bread which is consecrated by the Word of God is transmuted into the Body of God the Word… It is not a matter of the bread’s becoming the Body of the Word through the natural process of eating: rather it is transmuted immediately into the Body through the Word, just as the Word Himself said, ‘This is My Body’… The God Who was manifested mingled Himself with the nature that was doomed to death, in order that by communion with the Divinity human nature may be deified together with Him. It is for this purpose that by the Divine plan of His grace He plants Himself in the believers by means of that Flesh." (The Great Catechism, 37).
St. Ambrose of Milan. "Whenever we take the sacraments, which through the mystery of the sacred prayer are transfigured into His Flesh and Blood, we ‘proclaim the Lord’s death’." (On the Faith, 4.125).
St. Ambrose of Milan. "First of all, I told you about the saying of Christ, whose effect is to change and convert the established kinds of nature. Then came the saying of Christ, that He gave His Flesh to be eaten, and His Blood to be drunk. His disciples could not stand this, and they turned away from Him. Only Peter said: ‘You have the words of eternal life; how I take myself away from you?’ And so, to prevent others from saying that they are going away, because of a horror of actual blood, and so that the grace of redemption should continue, for that reason you receive the sacrament in a similitude, to be sure, but you obtain the grace and virtue of the reality. ‘I am,’ He says, ‘the living Bread Who came down from heaven.’ But the Flesh did not come down from heaven; that is to say, He took flesh from a virgin. How, then, did bread come down from heaven – and bread that is ‘living bread’. Because our Lord Jesus Christ shares in both Divinity and body: and you, who receive the Flesh, partake of His Divine substance in that food." (On the Sacraments 6.3,4).
St. Ambrose of Milan. "It is clear, then, that the Virgin gave birth outside the order of nature. And this Body which we bring about by consecration is from the Virgin. Why do you look for the order of nature here, in the case of the Body of Christ, when the Lord Jesus Himself was born of a virgin outside the natural order? It was certainly the genuine Flesh of Christ that was crucified, that was buried: then surely the sacrament is the sacrament of that Flesh. The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, ‘This is My Body’. Before the blessing of the heavenly words something of another character [alia species] is spoken of; after consecration it is designated ‘Body’. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before consecration it is spoken of as something else; after consecration it is named ‘Blood’." (On the Mysteries, 54).
St. Ephraim the Syrian. "He stretched forth His hand and gave them the bread which His right hand had sanctified: ‘Take, eat, all of you of this bread which My word has sanctified. Do not regard as bread what I have given you now… Eat it, and do not disdain its crumbs. For this bread which I have sanctified is My Body. Its least crumb sanctifies thousands of thousands, and it is capable of giving life to all that eat it. Take, eat in faith, doubting not at all that this is My Body. And he who eats it in faith eats in it fire and the Spirit. If anyone doubts and eats it, it is plain bread to him. He who believes and eats the bread sanctified in My name, if he is pure, it will keep him pure, if he is a sinner, he will be forgiven. He, however, who despises it, or spurns it, or insults it, he may be sure that he is insulting the Son Who has called the bread His Body, and truly made it so." (Station of the Night of the Fifth of Passion Week)
St. John Chrysostom. "Because the earlier nature of flesh, that which had been formed from the earth, had become dead through sin and was devoid of life, He brought in an another sort of dough and leaven, so to speak, His own Flesh, by nature the same, but free from sin and full of life… What the Lord did not endure on the cross [the breaking of His legs] He now submits to in His Sacrifice for His love of you: He permits Himself to be broken in pieces that all may be filled… What is in the chalice is the same as that which flowed from Christ’s side. What is the bread? Christ’s Body." (Homily 24 on I Corinthians).
St. John Chrysostom. "Not only ought we to see the Lord: we ought to take him in our hands, put out teeth into His Flesh, and unite ourselves with Him in the closest union. ‘I shared in flesh and blood for your sake. I have given back again to you the very flesh and blood through which I became your kinsman." (Homily 46 on John).
St. John Chrysostom. "Moses in his account of the first man has Adam say: ‘Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’, hinting to us of the Master’s side. Just as at that time God took the rib of Adam and formed a woman, so Christ gave us blood and water from His side and formed the Church… Have you seen how Christ unites to Himself His Bride? Have you seen with what food He nurtures us all? It is by the same food that we have been formed and are fed. Just as a woman nurtures her offspring with her own blood and milk, so also Christ continuously nurtures with His own Blood those whom He has begotten" (Baptismal Instructions, III, 18,19).
St. Augustine of Hippo. "How was He ‘carried in His own hands’? When He gave His own Body and Blood, He took in His own hands what the faithful recognize; and, in a manner, He carried Himself when He said, ‘This is My Body’." (On Psalm 32, 2.2).
The Anaphora of St. Mark. "This is in truth the Body and Blood of Emmanuel our God, Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe and I confess unto the last breath that this is the vivifying Flesh which Thine Only-Begotten son our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ took of the Lady of us all, the holy Theotokos Mary."
St. Cyril of Alexandria. "We shall see that the flesh united with Him has life-giving power; it is not alien flesh, but flesh which belonged to Him Who can life to all things. Fire, in this world of the senses, can transmit the power of its natural energy to any materials with which it comes into contact; so that it can change even water, which is in its own nature a cold substance, to an unnatural condition of heat. This being so, is it strange or in any way incredible that the very Word from God the Father, Who is in His own nature life, should give to the Flesh united to Himself this life-giving property? For this Flesh belongs to the Word; it does not belong to some other being than Himself Who may be thought of separately as another member of the human race. If you remove the life-giving Word of God from this mystical and real union with the body, if you completely set Him apart, how are you to show that Body as still life-giving? Who was it Who said, ‘He who eats My Flesh, and drinks My Blood, remains in Me, and I remain in Him’? If it was a man who was born in his own separate nature; if the Word of God did not come to be in our condition; then indeed what is performed is an act of cannibalism, and participation in it is of no value at all. I hear Christ Himself saying, ‘The flesh is of no value; it is the Spirit that gives life.’" (Against Nestorius, 4.5).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. "We approach the consecrated Gifts of the sacrament, and are sanctified by partaking of the holy Flesh and the precious Blood of Christ, the Saviour of us all. We do not receive it as common flesh (God forbid!), nor as the flesh of a mere man..; we receive it as truly life-giving, as the Flesh that belongs to the Word Himself. For as being God He is in His own nature Life, and when He became one with the Flesh which is His own, He rendered it life-giving." (Epistle 17).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. "He said quite plainly This is My Body, and This is My Blood, so that you may not suppose that the things you see are a type; rather, in some ineffable way they are changed by God, Who is able to do all things, into the Body and Blood of Christ truly offered. Partaking of them, we take into us the life-giving and sanctifying power of Christ. For it was necessary for Him to be present in us in a Divine manner through the Holy Spirit: to be mixed, as it were, with our bodies by means of His holy Flesh and precious Blood, for us to have Him in reality as a sacramental gift which gives life, in the form of bread and wine. And so that we should not be struck down with horror at seeing flesh and blood displayed on the holy tables of our churches, God adapts Himself to our weakness and infuses the power of life into the oblations and changes them into the effective power of His own Flesh, so that we may have them for life-giving reception, and that the Body of Life may prove to be in us a life-giving seed." (On Luke 22.19).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. "It was necessary that not only the soul be recreated into the newness of life through the Holy Spirit, but that this gross and earthly body be sanctified and called to incorruptibility by a grosser and kindred participation" (On John 6.54).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. "We have Him in us sensibly and mentally and intellectually. He dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and we share in His holy Flesh, and are sanctified in a double manner" (On I Corinthians 6.15).
St. John of the Ladder. "The blood of God and the blood of His servants are quite different – but I am thinking here of the dignity and not of the actual physical substance" (The Ladder, 23.20).
St. John of Damascus. "The bread and 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’." (On the Orthodox Faith 4.13).
The Synodicon of Orthodoxy. To those who do not partake of His holy and immortal Mysteries with fear, since they consider them to be mere bread and common wine rather than the very flesh of the Master and His holy and precious blood shed for the life of the world; to such men be Anathema.
St. Nicetas Stethatos. Those who accept unleavened wafers remain under the shadow of the law and eat the Jewish meal, and not the rational and living God, [which is] superessential (e p i o u s i o n ) and consubstantial with us, the faithful. We have received the superessential bread from the heaven, for what is that which is superessential if not that which is consubstantial with us? But there is no bread that is consubstantial with us besides the Body of Christ, which is consubstantial with us according to His human flesh." (Dialexis (1054), to Cardinal Humbert).
St. Nicetas Stethatos. "Performing on Himself the sacred mystery of our re-creation, the Word offered up Himself on our behalf on the Cross, and He continually offers Himself up, giving His immaculate Body to us daily as a soul-nourishing banquet, so that by eating it and by drinking His precious Blood we may through this participation consciously grow in spiritual stature. Communicating in His Body and Blood and refashioned in purer form, we are united to the twofold Divine-human Word in two ways, in our body and in our soul; for He is God incarnate Whose flesh is the same in essence as our own. Thus we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him Who has united us to Himself through this immortal meal and has made us by adoption what He Himself is by nature."
St. Theophylact of Bulgaria. "By saying, ‘This is My Body’, He shows that the bread which is sanctified on the altar is the Lord’s Body Itself, and not a symbolic type. For He did not say, ‘This is a type’, but ‘This is My Body’. By an ineffable action it is changed, although it may appear to us as bread. Since we are weak and could not endure raw meat, much less human flesh, it appears as bread to us although it is indeed flesh" (On Matthew 26.26).
St. Nicholas Cabasilas. "If we speak of re-creation, it is from Himself and from His own Flesh that He restored what is necessary, and He substituted Himself for that which had been destroyed." (The Life in Christ, 17).
St. Nicholas Cabasilas. "So precisely does He conform to the things which He assumed, that, in giving these things to us which He has received from us, He gives Himself to us. Partaking of the body and blood of His humanity, we receive God Himself in our souls – the body and blood of God and the soul, mind and will of God – not less than His humanity." (The Life of Christ, 4)
St. Gregory Palamas. "The Body of Christ is truly the Body of God and not a symbol." (Against Akindynos, VII, 15).
St. Gregory Palamas. "In His incomparable love for men, the Son of God did not merely unite His Divine Hypostasis to our nature, clothing Himself with a living body and an intelligent soul, ‘to appear on earth and live with men’, but, O incomparable and magnificent miracle! He unites Himself also to human hypostases, joining Himself to each of the faithful by communion in His holy Body. For he becomes one Body with us, making us a temple of the whole Godhead – for in the very Body of Christ ‘the whole fulness of the Godhead dwells corporeally’. How then would He not illuminate those who share worthily in the Divine radiance of His Body within us, shining upon their souls as he once shone on the bodies of the apostles on Tabor? For as this Body, the source of the light of grace, was at that time not yet united to our body, it shone exteriorly on those who came near it worthily, transmitting light to the soul through the eyes of sense. But today, since it is united to us and dwells within us, it illumines the soul interiorly." (Triads I, 3, 38).
Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848). "We believe that in this sacred rite our Lord Jesus Christ is present not symbolically [typikos], not figuratively [eikonikos], not by an abundance of grace, as in the other Mysteries, not by a simple descent, as certain Fathers say about Baptism, and not through a ‘penetration’ of the bread, so that the Divinity of the Word should ‘enter’ into the bread offered for the Eucharist, as the followers of Luther explain it rather awkwardly and unworthily – but truly and actually, so that after the sanctification of the bread and wine, the bread is changed, transubstantiated, converted, transformed, into the actual true Body of the Lord, Which was born in Bethlehem of the Ever-Virgin, was baptized in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, resurrected, ascended, sits at the right hand of God the Father, and is to appear in the clouds of heaven; and the wine is changed and transubstantiated into the actual true Blood of the Lord, which at the time of His suffering on the Cross was shed for the life of the world. Yet again, we believe that after the sanctification of the bread and wine there remains no longer the bread and wine themselves, but the very Body and Blood of the Lord, under the appearance and form of bread and wine."
St. John of Kronstadt: "What a wonderful creation of God is man! God has wonderfully placed in the dust His image, the immortal spirit. But marvel, Christian, still more at the wisdom, omnipotence and mercy of the Creator: He changes and transforms the bread and wine into His most pure Body and into His most pure Blood, and takes up His abode in them Himself, by His most pure and Life-giving Spirit, so that His Body and Blood are together Spirit and Life. And wherefore is this? In order to cleanse you, a sinner, from your sins, to sanctify you and to unite you, thus sanctified, to Himself, and thus united to give you blessedness and immortality. 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Rom. 11:33)." (My Life in Christ: Part 1, Holy Trinity Monastery pg. 100)
St. John Maximovich. "Bread and wine are made into the Body and Blood of Christ during the Divine Liturgy… How is the Body of Christ at the same time both the Church and the Holy Mystery? Are the faithful both members of the Body of Christ, the Church, and also communicants of the Body of Christ in the Holy Mysteries? In neither instance is this name ‘Body of Christ’ used metaphorically, but rather in the most basic sense of the word. We believe that the Holy Mysteries which keep the form of bread and wine are the very Body and the very Blood of Christ… For the full sanctification of man, the body of the servant of the Lord must be united with the Body of Christ, and this is accomplished in the mystery of Holy Communion. The true Body and the true Blood of Christ which we receive, becomes a part of the great Body of Christ… Christ, invisible to the bodily eye, manifests Himself on earth clearly through His Church just as the unseen human spirit manifests itself through the body. The Church is the Body of Christ both because its parts are united to Christ through His Divine Mysteries and because through her Christ works in the world. We partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Mysteries, so that we ourselves may be members of Christ’s Body: the Church." ("The Church as the Body of Christ", Orthodox Life, no. 5, 1981).
Archbishop Averky of Jordanville. "’It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh profiteth little. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and life.’ This means that the words of Christ must be understood spiritually, and not in a crudely sensual way, that is, as if He offered His Flesh for eating like the meat of animals, being consumed for the satisfaction of a carnal hunger. It is as if the Lord says, ‘My teaching is not of meats, nor of meals that nourish the bodily life, but of the Divine Spirit, of grace and eternal life, which are established in people by grace-filled means.’ ‘The flesh profiteth little’ – He by no means said this of His own Flesh, but about those who understand His words in a carnal manner. What does understanding carnally mean? ‘To look on things in a simple manner without representing anything more – that is what understanding carnally means. We should not judge in this manner about the visible, but we must look into all its mysteries with internal eyes. That is what understanding spiritually means’ (Chrysostom). The Flesh of Christ separated from His Spirit could not give life, but it is understood, of course, that in the words of Christ He is not talking about His soulless, lifeless Flesh, but about His Flesh, indivisibly united with His Divine Spirit… All three Synoptics describe this in approximately the same way. The Lord ‘received’ that is, ‘took’ bread and blessed and broke it, and distributed it to the disciples, saying: ‘Take, eat; this is My Body’. ‘Bread’ here is ‘artos’ in Greek, which means ‘risen bread’, leavened with yeast, as opposed to ‘aksimon’, which is the name for the unleavened bread used by the Jews for Pascha. One must suppose that such bread was deliberately prepared at the command of the Lord for the institution of the new mystery. The significance of this bread lies in the fact that it is as it were alive, symbolizing life, as opposed to unleavened bread, which is dead bread. ‘He blessed’, ‘He gave thanks’, refer to the verbal expression of gratitude to God the Father, as it was, for example, at the moment of the resurrection of Lazarus: that which was asked was fulfilled at the very moment of asking, which is why at that same moment it became an object of thanksgiving. What the Lord said here is exceptionally important: ‘This is My Body’: He did not say ‘this’ [in the masculine gender], that is: ‘this bread’, but ‘this [in the neuter gender], because at that moment the bread had already ceased to be bread, and had become the genuine Body of Christ, having only the appearance of bread. The Lord did not say: ‘This is an image of My Body’, but ‘This is My Body’ (St. Chrysostom, St. Theophylact). In consequence of the prayer of Christ, the bread acquired the substance of Body, preserving only the external appearance of bread. ‘Since we are weak,’ says Blessed Theophylact, ‘and could not endure raw meat, much less human flesh, it appears as bread to us although it is indeed flesh’. ‘Why,’ asks St. Chrysostom, ‘were the disciples not disturbed on hearing this? Because before that Christ had told them much that was important about this mystery (we recall His conversation about the bread that comes down from heaven) (John 6).’ By the ‘Body of Christ’ is understood the whole physical substance of the God-man, inseparably united with His soul and Divinity." (Guide to the Study of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, vol. I, pp. 156, 275).