Chapter 31: Chrysostom and the Nature of the Eucharist
ORTH. You are caught in the same nets which you have laid. For those mystical signs, after sanctification, do not change their own proper nature: for they indeed remain in their former substance, both in figure and form, and are even so seen and handled as before. And the things that are done, are understood and believed and honored, as though they were such as they are believed to be. Compare therefore the image with the principal figure, and you shall see the similitude. For a figure must agree with the truth. For that very body itself has its first figure, and form, and circumscription, and (to speak plainly) the very substance also of a body. But after the resurrection, it became immortal, and it is accounted worthy of the seat which is at the right hand of God, and is worshipped by all creatures, as a body being of the Lord's own nature.
SOD. Howbeit that mystical sign changes its first name, and is not afterward named by that name which it was first called, but is called a body.
Wherefore the truth itself must now be called God, and not anymore a body.
ORTH. You appear ignorant to me: it is not only called a body, but also the bread of life: for so the Lord called it. Yea, and we also call this a divine body and a quickening body, and the Master's body, and the Lord's body, teaching, that it is no common body of every man, but the body of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who is God and man: even Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, and the same forever.
Chapter 31:
Chrysostom and the Nature of the Eucharist There is an extant Epistle in the Library of Florence (albeit not printed) from Chrysostom to Caesarius the Monk during his second banishment, written against Apollinaris and others who confounded the divinity and
humanity of Christ. He states, "Christ is both God and man: God because he cannot suffer; Man, because of his passion and suffering: One son, one
Lord, one and the selfsame doubtless possessing one dominion, and one power of the natures united (although they be not together of one substance) and each one of them being unmixed keeps an acknowledgement of his own property: for this cause that they be two things not confounded. For like as before the bread be sanctified, we name it bread, and the same being sanctified, by the divine grace by means of the priest is undoubtedly delivered from the name of bread, and is accounted worthy to be called the Lord's body, although the nature of bread has remained in it, and is declared not to be two bodies but one body of the Son: even so this divine φύσις, that is to say, the nature of an overflowing body, hath made both these one Son and one person."
Hesychius, in the 20th book upon Leviticus, the 8th Chapter, writes:
"Therefore he commands that the flesh should be eaten with bread, to the intent we might understand the same to be called a mystery of him, because it is flesh and bread together."
Gelasius, against Eutyches, wrote that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be. He makes a comparison of this Sacrament with Christ, in whom both the natures as well divine as human remain whole, even as in this Sacrament does the nature of bread and of the body of Christ.
Gregory, in the register, states: "While we take as well the sweet bread as the leavened bread, we are made one body of the Lord our Saviour."
Bertram, in his little book "De Corpore et Sanguine Domini," says regarding the natures of the signs, that according to the substance of the creatures, what they were before consecration, they remain afterward.
Bernard, in his Sermon "De Coena Domini," uses a similitude of a King, whereby any man receives either the faith of wedlock or the possession of