And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said,
Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Do you wish to know how it is consecrated with heavenly words? Accept what the words are. The priest speaks. He says: Perform for us this oblation written, reasonable, acceptable, which is a figure of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ… . Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when Christ’s words have been added, it is the body of Christ… . And before the words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water. When the words of Christ have been added, then blood is effected which redeemed the people. –.
The teaching of the blessed Paul is of itself sufficient to give you full assurance about the divine mysteries by admission to which you have become one body and blood with Christ… . When the Master himself has explicitly said of the bread, “This is my body,” will anyone still dare to doubt? When he is himself our warranty saying, “This is my blood,” who will ever waver and say it is not his blood? … With perfect confidence, then, we partake as of the body and blood of Christ. On the Mysteries, Fourth Lecture
Juvenius, a native of Spain, and a priest, who flourished under Constantine the Great, about the year 329, has left us the life of Christ in hexameter verse, where speaking of the institution of the eucharist, he says, "Christ taught his disciples, that he delivered to them his own body "and when he gave them the chalice, "he taught them that he had distributed to them his blood: and said, this blood remits the sins of the people: drink this, it is mine. "(Bibl. Max. P. P. T. iv. p. 74) Discipulos docuit proprium se tradere corpus, Edocuitque suum se divisisse cruorem. Atque ait: Hic sanguis populi delicta remittit: Hunc potate meum.
Paul reminds us that the Master gave up everything, including himself, for us, whereas we are reluctant even to share a little food with our fellow believers. But if you come for a sacrifice of thanksgiving, do not do anything unworthy of that sacrifice. Do not dishonor your brothers or neglect them in their hunger, do not get drunk, and do not insult the church. When you come, give thanks for what you have enjoyed, and do not cut yourselves off from your neighbors.
Wherefore does he here make mention of the Mysteries? Because that argument was very necessary to his present purpose. As thus: Your Master, says he, counted all worthy of the same Table, though it be very awful and far exceeding the dignity of all: but you consider them to be unworthy even of your own, small and mean as we see it is; and while they have no advantage over you in spiritual things, you rob them in the temporal things. For neither are these your own.
However, he does not express himself thus, to prevent his discourse becoming harsh: but he frames it in a gentler form, saying, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread.
And wherefore does he remind us of the time, and of that evening, and of the betrayal? Not indifferently nor without some reason, but that he might exceedingly fill them with compunction, were it but from consideration of the time. For even if one be a very stone, yet when he considers that night, how He was with His discip...