What early Christians believed about the Eucharist

St Ignatius of Antioch belonged to the generation of Christians that  emerged towards the end of the first century immediately after the apostles. He was a friend of St Polycarp who, according to tradition, was a disciple of the evangelist, St John. We are very close to the historical person of Jesus and the very first apostles. We should read Ignatius with this context in mind.

As bishop of Antioch, he wrote a number of important letters to Christians in other parts of the very early Christian world.  Some of these were written on his way to martyrdom at the turn of the first century.  He gave clear witness to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: he referred to the Eucharist as ‘the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ’, and writes of his desire for ‘the bread of God … which is the flesh of Jesus Christ’ and for ‘the drink of God, namely His blood’.  He referred to the Eucharist as the’medicine of immortality’ (Ignatius to the Ephesians 20:2).

In chapter 7 of his Letter to the Smyrnaeans he taught that those who denied Christ's real human nature also rejected the Eucharist because they would not acknowledge that ‘the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ’.

In the writings of Ignatius we see the link between the Eucharist and the Incarnation. Because Christ truly became flesh and truly suffered, the Eucharist can truly be his flesh given for the salvation of the world.

Ignatius understood martyrdom in Eucharistic terms. As wheat becomes bread through crushing and transformation, so the Christian, through self-giving love and faithfulness, is conformed to Jesus and made one with Him. In his Letter to the church in Rome he wrote:

I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.