Then Jesus said unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
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Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
O amazing birth! O holy swaddling bands! The Word is all to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse. "Eat ye my flesh "He says, "and drink my blood."
The Jews therefore . . . strove, Greek, ε̉μαχόντο, i.e, fought, contended in words, quarrelled among themselves, some accusing Christ, others defending Him.
How: when the question enters in, how a thing is done, unbelief enters in at the same time, says S. Chrysostom. "For when it behoved them," says Cyril, "who by a miracle had perceived the Divine virtue of the Saviour, and the power of His miracles, readily to receive His words, and if any seemed too hard to seek for their solution, they did altogether the opposite. How can this Prayer of Manasseh , &c. S. Chrysostom says, "if thou inquirest this, why didst thou not say the same in the miracle of the loaves, as to how He so greatly increased them? For from that it ought to have caused this more easily to be believed. The expression how, therefore, is a Judaic word, and the question of unbelievers." Let the heretics hear this, who say, "How can so great a Christ be whole in so small a host?" Rather let them say, "How can an...
Efore, He says, that whoever shall eat of His bread shall live for ever; as it is manifest that those who partake of His body and receive the Eucharist by the right of communion are living, so, on the other hand, we must fear and pray lest any one who, being withheld from communion, is separate from Christ's body should remain at a distance from salvation; as He Himself threatens, and says, "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you.".
Moreover, He says in the same place: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you.".
Also in the same place: "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall not have life in you."
Long-suffering truly and of great mercy is Christ, as one may see from the words now before us. For in no wise reproaching the littleness of soul of the unbelievers, He again richly gives them the life-giving knowledge of the Mystery, and having overcome, as God, the arrogance of them that grieve Him, He tells them those things whereby they shall (He says) mount up to endless life. And how He will give them His Flesh to eat, He tells them not as yet, for He knew that they were in darkness, and could never avail to understand the ineffable: but how great good will result from the eating He shews to their profit, that haply inciting them to a desire of living in greater preparation for unfading pleasures, He may teach them faith. For to them that have now believed there follows suitably the power too of learning. For so saith the prophet Isaiah, If ye will not believe neither yet shall ye understand. It was therefore right, that faith having been first rooted in them, there should next b...
Because the Jews said it was impossible to give them his flesh to eat, Christ answers them by telling them, that so far from being impossible, it is very necessary that they should eat it. "Unless you eat "(St. Chrysostom)
It is not the flesh of merely a man, but it is the flesh of a God, able to make man divine, inebriating him, as it were, with the divinity. (Theophylactus) See Maldonatus.
This, he says, is what is spoken by the Saviour: "If ye do not drink my blood, and eat my flesh, ye will not enter into the kingdom of heaven; but even though "He says, "ye drink of the cup which I drink of, whither I go, ye cannot enter there.".
By the offence of the word which Christ spoke, "Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he is not worthy of me."
1. When we converse of spiritual things, let there be nothing secular in our souls, nothing earthy, let all such thoughts retire, and be banished, and let us be entirely given up to the hearing the divine oracles only. For if at the arrival of a king all confusion is driven away, much more when the Spirit speaks with us do we need great stillness, great awe. And worthy of awe is that which is said today. How it is so, hear. Verily I say unto you, Except a man eat My flesh, and drink My blood, he has not eternal life in him. Since the Jews had before asserted that this was impossible, He shows not only that it is not impossible, but that it is absolutely necessary. Wherefore He adds, He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood, has eternal life.
And I will raise him up at the last day. For since He had said, He that eats of this bread shall not die for ever John 6:50, not verbally quoted, and it was likely that this would stand in their way, (just as they before said, Abraham is dead,...
