De azymis

Of Saint Athanasius, On the Azymes. The Jews celebrated Passover with three materials and with three virtues, and with three witnesses according to the order of the Law. The three materials were the lamb, the azymes, and the bitter herb; the three virtues were being girded, having sandals on the feet, and holding a staff in the hands. The three witnesses were scribes standing at the table, precisely knowing the waning of the moon, by means of a certain cup being shaken and signaled; the priest immediately blowing the trumpet that it is the Passover of the Lord; and thereafter, after hearing the sound of the trumpet, they made the leaven without bread for seven days. But before the sign of the cup and the trumpet, they had no authority to prepare for seven days a lamb, or azyme, or bitter herb; for thus also the great David says: Blow the trumpet at the new moon. Our Lord Jesus Christ on the fifth day made the tradition of the holy mysteries at the seventh hour of the night; but the entry of the azyme-eaters occurred on the evening of the Preparation after the Lord was buried. For this reason the four evangelists say that the Lord handed over complete bread in the holy mysteries and not azyme; so that he might confirm that it is a complete body from the holy Virgin; I mean ensouled and endowed with mind; and not as the heretic Apollinarius said, that he assumed only a body; but we say that bread perfected is that which consists of flour and leaven and salt; just as in the body the spiritual and mind; for a body without breath is dead; and the azyme alone, not having leaven, is dead and not living bread.

the leaven gives life to the dough and unity, just as the spirit does to the body, and salt to the mind, and for this reason we celebrate the mystery with perfected bread, so that we may not fall into the blasphemy of the impious Apollinarius. The waning of the moon occurs in fourteen and a half days and three hours; but for the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, it passed the sixteenth day, so that it might bear witness that he is true and eternal life. It must be known, therefore, that no Church received the custom of eating or offering the fine flour of the Azymes in the time of Christ and his holy apostles. Since neither did Christ himself eat the legal Passover at the time of his passion, listen to John the Evangelist saying: Before the feast of Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father,... and after supper, the Devil having already cast into the heart of Judas Simon Iscariot to betray him; and when, he says, the hour came, that is, when the time for betraying him arrived, the twelve apostles also reclined with him; and he said to them: I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. You see, he says, Before I suffer. Since, therefore, he was to suffer on the day of the legal Passover, on which the lamb was also sacrificed by the Jews, and the passion was to take place at the hands of the deicides on the day of Preparation, as John again says:

Since it was Friday, for that great day of the Sabbath was the one on which the fourteenth of the moon happened to fall, according to the first month, in the five hundred and thirtieth year, so that, not having been betrayed, he might not arrive in time to deliver his own Passover to his disciples, having reclined at the supper late, and slowly toward the night at the evening, clearly of the fifth day, he ate, but his own Passover before the feast of the Azymes; and this is clear from his having reclined; for it was not prescribed, since the law commanded the Jews to eat the Passover standing, girded, shod, and with haste, holding the staff in their hands; he abolished the legal Passover in the times of his own proclamation, and delivered his own through the supper; therefore after supping, taking bread and breaking it, he delivered to the apostles the mystery of his New Testament and Liturgy; clearly in the night of the fifth day, on which he was betrayed. And it is to be known that at the same hour at which the deicides crucified the Lord of glory, at that same hour, having sacrificed the lamb, they ate the legal Passover; and this is clear from the evangelist John saying that they did not enter the Praetorium to avoid being defiled, but to eat the Passover; so that on one day Christ was sacrificed together with the lamb; but what does Luke say? He said that Christ took bread and not azymes; for it was not yet, since it was the fifth day at that time; the moon was still at the thirteenth, and there were no azymes, because they had not yet been made; for it was prescribed to eat the azymes on the fifteenth of the moon.

On the fourteenth the lamb alone was to be sacrificed; therefore the law calls the fourteenth of the first month of the moon Passover, and the fifteenth it first calls Sabbath. If then Christ was sacrificed on the fourteenth of the moon on the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was the feast of the Azymes, when did he eat the azymes? And when did he deliver these to the apostles in the New Testament? For the imitators of the Jews say that we received the azymes from the apostles to make. For Christ did not even have time to eat the legal Passover at that time. And that this is the truth, for confirmation of what has been said, hear also the legislation of Moses which he enacted concerning Passover and the Azymes: "These," he says, "are the feasts called holy to the Lord, which you shall call in their seasons. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, between the evenings, Passover to the Lord. And on the fifteenth day of this month, feast of the Azymes to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat azymes." Behold, you learn even from the legislation of Moses that the azymes were not; for after the supper on the fifth day Christ delivered the mystery of the New Testament through the breaking of the bread, since azymes were not on that day...