For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 10:17 Go To 1 Corinthians 10
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. As one loaf is made out of many grains of wheat, so of many faithful is made one holy and living bread, the one mystical body of Christ, the Church. Not only generally and mystically, but properly and substantially, because all are really united to the body of Christ, and become one with it, in the Eucharist, just as food becomes one with him that eats it. Hence it may be rightly argued against Protestants that we all eat really the same body of Christ. They, however, say that in the Eucharist all Christians become one, because they eat the same sacramental bread, which is a type of the body of Christ. But who share in it one, merely because they sit at the same table and eat of the same bread? It would be a statement at once untrue and foolish. It Isaiah , however, true when applied t the body of Christ, because we all feed on what is numerically one, especially because this holy bread, as S. Augustine says, when eaten, is not changed into our substance, but rather changed us into its own, and unites us to itself and makes us like it, which ordinary bread does not do. Here Cyril of Alexandria (in Joan. lib. iv. c17) says: "As wax is incorporated into wax, and leaven permeated through bread, so do we become fused into the body of Christ." And Cyril of Jerusalem (Catachesis, 4) says: "In Holy Communion we become, not only bearers of Christ, but also sharers of the same body and the same blood as He." This is because we become one with Christ and Christ with us, because we are really blended with the flesh of Christ, and therefore with his Person, His244Godhead, and His omnipotence. Irenæus says the same (lib. iv. c34), and Hilary (de Trin. lib. viii.).
It is for this reason that the Eucharist is called Communion by the Fathers: it really unites us to the body of Christ, so that all become one in Him and with Him. "Communion," then, is the common union of the faithful, who, by feeding on the same true body of Christ in the Eucharist, are made one mystical body, the Church. So says Bede, following S. Augustine. Hence, too, the Council of Trent (sess. xii. c8) says: "This sacrament is the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the symbol of peace and concord," no doubt because, in a wonderful way, it signifies and perfects the unity of the body of Christ, i.e, of the faithful of the Church. For this reason, too, the Eucharist was formerly given to infants after their baptism, that they might be perfectly incorporated into Christ (vide S. John vi55). Again for the same reason the Eucharist was called by S. Dionysius, Synaxis, i.e, "congregation," because the faithful were in the habit of assembling in the church to receive the Eucharist. Tertullian even says (de Oratione, cap. ult.) that prayer should end when the body of the Lord has been received. The Apostle too, in the next chapter (ver20), says: "When ye come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord"s supper." For although the Church becomes the body of Christ through faith and baptism, yet this is done more truly and properly in the Eucharist.
Heretics raise the objection that therefore only the good and righteous are parts and members of the Church, for the Apostle says, "We are all one bread;" but bread, they say, is made from grains of wheat, not from chaff; therefore the Church is formed from the righteous, not from the wicked; for the righteous are the corn, the wicked are the chaff.
I reply (1.) that this does not follow, because a similitude is not bound to be in all points alike; (2.) that the major premiss is false, for often chaff, grains of sand, lentils are mingled with the wheat, and with it go to make up the bread. Hence S. Paul (c. xi29) says that even the wicked eat of this bread. But here he says that all who partake of this bread make up the one body of Christ, which id the Church: therefore the wicked, also, who eat of this bread are of the Church. Vide S. Cyprian (Ep. ad Magnum, lib. i.; Ephesians 6).
