Everywhere, always, by all

 

In my blog of this series (“Bread for the Journey”) published yesterday (Just believe) I quoted from the Imitation of Christ written in the 15^th Century:

Do not argue in your own mind, or try to answer the doubts the Devil hurls against you. Trust the word of God, believe his saints and prophets, and you will put your wicked enemy to flight.

The author was interested in a relationship with the Lord and not in disputes over philosophy or theology important and useful as these may be in context.

What did St Cyril of Alexandria advise in this regard? It is worth quoting at length from his commentaryon the Gospel of St Luke which can also be accessed here beginning with an emphasis I have applied:

Nor doubt that this is true; for He plainly says, This is my body; but rather receive the words of your Savior in faith. For since He is the Truth, He lies not. They rave foolishly then who say that the mystical blessing loses its power of sanctifying, if any remains are left till the following day. For the most holy Body of Christ will not be changed, but the power of blessing and the life giving grace is ever abiding in it. For the life-giving power of God the Father is the only-begotten Word, which was made flesh not ceasing to be the Word, but making the flesh life giving.

What then? since we have in us the life of God, the Word of God dwelling in us, will our body be life-giving? But it is one thing for us by the habit of participation to have in ourselves the Son of God, another for Himself to have been made flesh, that is, to have made the body which He took from the pure Virgin His own Body.

He must needs then be in a certain manner united to our bodies by His holy Body and precious Blood, which we have received for a life giving blessing in the bread and wine. For lest we should be shocked, seeing the Flesh and Blood placed on the holy altars, God, in compassion to our infirmities, pours into the offerings the power of life, changing them into the reality of His own flesh, that the body of life may be found in us, as it were a certain life-giving seed. He adds, Do this in commemoration of me.

For Cyril as well as for St Ignatius of Antioch, St Justin Martyr St Irenaeus (as I will explain in future blogs) and for the Church in the 5^th Century Christians took Christ at his Word; there is a real transformation in the bread and wine and it is a life-giving participation in Christ’s body and blood.  At this point the Church shows a shared realist understanding of the Eucharist.  The essential core of Eucharistic doctrine is clearly present even though its theological articulation continues to develop.

A universal and shared understanding means catholic.  Here, again another long citation is in order from Saint Vinent ofLerins writing around the same period:

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.

The definitions and disputes about the mode of Christ’s presence is of another era far off into the future from here.  However, we can be sure that the essence of eucharistic doctrine consistent with what was believed ‘everywhere, always, by all’ is established in the first five centuries of Christianity.