The greatness of the heavenly benefits exceeds the narrow bounds of the human mind. And therefore divine providence has so ordained it, that what the reasoning of things, overwhelmed by their mass, could not grasp in us, devout faith might conceive, and robust belief might nourish the understanding. Since therefore, through the first transgression of Adam, we were held liable to origin and to death, God, perceiving from on high in what manner we were debtors of life, restored by the gift of redemption the conditions of our captivity: that is, that for the death owed, He might offer one not owed. And because neither had we the means to live, nor He the means to die, He took matter from our mortality, so that, His own immortality being laid down, Life might be able to die for the dead.
And therefore He who was about to take away from our eyes the body He had assumed, and to bear it to the stars, deemed it necessary that on this day He should consecrate for us the sacrament of His body and blood, that what was once offered as a price might be continually venerated through the mystery; that, because a daily and unwearied redemption ran for the salvation of men, the oblation of redemption might also be perpetual, and the perpetual victim might live in memory, and be ever present in grace—the one and perfect victim, to be esteemed by faith and not by appearance, nor to be judged by outward sight but by inner gaze. Whence rightly heavenly authority confirms that 'my flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.'
Let every ambiguity of unbelief therefore withdraw, since He who is the Author of the gift is also Himself the witness of the truth. For the invisible Priest, by the secret power of His word, converts visible creatures into the substance of His body and blood, saying thus: 'Take and eat, this is my body.' And with the sanctification repeated: 'Take and drink, this is my blood.' Therefore, at the nod of the commanding Lord, suddenly from nothing there stood forth the lofty heavens, the deep floods, the vast lands. With equal power, in the spiritual sacraments, the might of the word commands, and the effect serves the thing.
How great the benefits that the power of divine blessing works when celebrated—how it ought not to seem new and impossible to you that earthly and mortal things are changed into the substance of Christ—ask yourself, who are now regenerated in Christ. Not long ago a stranger to life, an alien to mercy, you were inwardly exiled from the life of salvation. Suddenly initiated into the laws of Christ and renewed by the saving mysteries, you passed into the body of the Church, not by seeing but by believing, and from a son of perdition you deserved by a hidden purity to become an adopted son of God. Remaining in a visible measure, you were made greater than yourself invisibly, without any increase of quantity.
Though you were one and the same, you came to be far otherwise by the advances of faith; nothing was added in the exterior, and the whole was changed in the interior. And thus a man was chosen as a son of Christ, and Christ was formed in the mind of the man. As therefore, without any bodily sensation, the pretended usefulness being laid aside, you were suddenly clothed with a new dignity; and as this, that God healed what was wounded in you, washed away what was defiled, wiped clean what was stained, was entrusted not to your eyes but to your senses; so too, when you ascend to the awesome altar to be fed with the sacred food, behold with faith the body and blood of your God, marvel with honor, touch with the mind, receive with the hand of the heart, and above all take it in with the inner draught.
But if that manna of the law, of which it is read, 'He rained manna upon them, that they might eat' (Exod. 16; Ps. 77), tasted to each one as his desire craved—one thing was what was taken, another what was seen, invisibly that savor was formed in the senses of each—yet that manna of the law, coming down from heaven, exceeded by its manifold sweetnesses the merit of nature and the sight of its own kind. And when the dispensation of the Giver seasoned His creature with manifold diversity, it offered to the taste what the sight did not know. According to the desire of the one receiving, the novelty and dignity of that food was born. That honey-flowing gift of the rain, and the manifold service of the dry shower, refreshed each one with varied and diverse savors.
Since these things are so, what dryness did there, let faith do here. And if in the body food has savor, in the breast let God advance by belief, as we read: 'Let man draw near to the deep heart, and God shall be exalted' (Ps. 63). Therefore, what there delight obtained in the throat, here let blessing work in the senses. To know and receive the sacrifice of the true body, may He Himself strengthen you, and the power of the Consecrator invite you. He who was then hidden, prefigured in the manna, let Him now be manifested to you in grace. That He Himself was prefigured in the appearance of that manna, the prophet also clearly shows, saying: 'He gave them bread of heaven; man ate the bread of angels' (Ps. 77).
And what is the bread of angels, if not Christ, who satisfies them with the food of His love and the light of His brightness? This bread—as the prophet says: 'On the sixth day you shall gather double, but on the sabbath you shall not gather' (Exod. 16)—since it is bestowed in the law from the first day, that is, from the Lord's day, and is denied on the sabbath alone, even then it is shown that Christ is to be received by the Church, for whom the resurrection consecrated the Lord's body; and He is proclaimed to be denied to the synagogue, to which the worship of the sabbath pertained, while this day, that is, the seventh day, is defrauded of the heavenly bread.
Of which bread the ancient history relates that neither did he who had gathered more have more, nor did he who had prepared less find less, because the sacred reception of the Eucharist consists not in quantity but in power. Which body, when the priest dispenses it, is as much in a small portion as it is known to be in the whole. Which, when the Church of the faithful takes it, just as it is full in all, so it is proved to be whole in each. Of which sense the apostolic sentence teaches, saying: 'He who has much shall not abound; and he who has little shall not lack' (2 Cor. 8). If perchance we were to set out food of bread for the hungry, it would not wholly reach each one, because each would take his portion piece by piece and in small bits. But of this
bread, when it is received, individuals have nothing less than all together. One receives the whole, two the whole, many the whole, without diminution: because the blessing of this sacrament knows how to be distributed, but knows not how to be consumed by distribution. And so we find the form of this sacrament expressed even in the pages of the Jews. For of Melchizedek we read in Genesis, 'And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine, and blessed Abraham' (Gen. 14). Now Melchizedek was priest of the Most High God. While the future circumcision is blessed by the foreskin, that is, by the Gentile, the glory of the Church is proclaimed, and the people acquired from the Gentiles is set before the unbelieving Synagogue.
Here therefore, in Melchizedek, whose genealogy or origin escaped the knowledge of that time, by the oblation of bread and wine he prefigured this sacrifice of Christ. Of whom the prophet declares: 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek' (Ps. 109). For blessed Moses too, speaking of that mystery, signifies wine and blood under one appellation in the blessing of the patriarch, showing forth long beforehand the Lord's passion, saying thus: 'He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape' (Gen. 49). Note how evidently it stands that the creature of wine is named the blood of Christ. What further you ought to inquire concerning this twofold species, learn from the Lord Himself as witness.
'Unless,' He says, 'you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you' (John 6). Which testimony is most evident and most valid against the blasphemies of Pelagius, who, having seized upon impiety, presumes to assert that baptism is to be conferred on little ones not for the sake of life, but for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. For under these words of the Lord, by which the evangelist declares, 'you shall not have life in you,' it is plainly to be understood that every soul void of the gift of baptism lacks not only glory, but life.
That this wine of the Lord's blood is to be mingled with water, the Lord shows not only by tradition, but also by the very manner of His passion, from whose sacred side blood and water flowed out at the striking of the lance, as the prophet also long before foretold, saying: 'He struck the rock, and the waters flowed' (Ps. 77). And the Apostle: 'They drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ' (1 Cor. 10). 'They drank,' he says, 'of the rock that followed them.' You see that he who has drunk of the grace of Christ, the mercy of Christ follows him. But in Solomon we read it foretold concerning the Lord Himself: 'Wisdom,' it says, 'has built herself a house' (Prov. 9): that is, He assumed the body of a man, in which dwelt the fullness of divinity.
'And she set up seven pillars.' Because the blessing of the Holy Spirit filled Him with sevenfold grace. 'She has slain her victims, she has mingled her wine in the bowl, and she has prepared her table.' And in what follows: 'Come and eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you.' We read, therefore, of wine mingled with water; let us now inquire into the reason why the Lord willed both to be mingled. When at the banquet of the Jews the nuptial wine, that is, faith among them, was failing—'the wine,' it says, 'was failing' (John 2)—because the vineyard was denying its fruit, of which it is said: 'I expected that it would bring forth grapes, but it brought forth thorns' (Isa. 5).
Hence also He set a crown of thorns upon the head of the Redeemer, when the Lord, at the nuptial season—that is, when the Bridegroom was to be joined to His Church in the exultation of the Passover—turned the water into wine: He plainly prefigured that multitudes of the nations would come to His grace through His blood. For that peoples are signified by waters is disclosed in the sacred oracles, as we read: 'These waters which thou sawest are peoples, and nations, and tongues' (Rev. 17). We perceive that in the waters the figure of the nations is shown, while in the wine the blood of the Lord's Passion is displayed;
and thus, while in the sacraments the water is mingled with the wine, the faithful people is incorporated and joined to Christ, and is united to Him by a certain bond of perfect charity, so that it may say with the Apostle: 'Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or persecution?' (Rom. 8) and the rest. But God is mingled with man through the sanctification He has taken up, when faith is poured into that very breast with the affection of justice, mercy, and piety. In this very thing also—that we know the bread is made from countless grains, as it were, of the wheat kind—it is established that the unity of peoples is signified.
For thus the wheat, prepared with the accustomed care of the winnower, is brought to a white appearance by the labour of the millstones, and through water and fire is gathered into the substance of one loaf.
So the varied peoples and diverse nations, coming together into one faith, make of themselves one body of Christ; and the Christian people, like countless grains of wheat, is sifted out from the sacrilegious nations by a purifying and winnowing faith, and is gathered into one, as it were with the chaff of the unbelieving passing away; and it shines with the instruction of the two Testaments as with a garment prepared by the twofold work of the millstones, and is changed with its native whiteness into that dignity of its first origin, and through the water of baptism, or through the fire of the Holy Spirit, it becomes the body of that eternal bread.
Therefore, just as the grains cannot be separated from the union of that finished loaf, and just as water mingled in wine cannot return to its own substance, so also all the faithful and wise, who acknowledge themselves redeemed by the blood and Passion of Christ, ought to be so bound to their Head, as inseparable members, by preservation and most ardent devotion, that they can be severed from Him neither by their own will nor by necessity, nor by any grasping after earthly things, nor finally by death itself. And let no one doubt that primal creatures can pass, by the nod of His power and the presence of His majesty, into the nature of the Lord's body, since he sees that man himself has been made the body of Christ by the craft of heavenly mercy.
But just as anyone coming to the faith, before the words of baptism, is still in the bond of the old debt, but once these have been recited he is soon stripped of all the dregs of sin: so, when the creatures to be blessed by heavenly words are placed upon the sacred altars, before they are consecrated by the invocation of the holy Name, there is present the substance of bread and wine; but after the words, it is the body and blood of Christ. And what wonder is it, if He who was able to create things by His word can convert by His word the things He has created? Indeed it now seems the lesser miracle, if He who is acknowledged to have founded them out of nothing should be able to change into something better that which is already founded.
Ask what could be difficult for Him, for whom it was easy to raise up things visible and invisible by the command of His will; for whom it was easy to clothe man, formed from the matter of clay, with the image of His own divinity; for whom it is ready to recall him again from the depths, to restore him from perdition, to repair him from dust, to lift him from earth to heaven, to make an angel of a man, to bring the human body back into conformity with the body of His glory, and to exalt His own handiwork into fellowship with His kingdom, so that He who took up the body of our frailty may take us up into the body of His immortality. May He deign to prepare us by pious works for that glorious resurrection, He who reigns unto ages of ages. Amen.