De immaculato corpore

Of the Same: Chapter on the Immaculate Body of Which We Partake. 1. The body of our Lord and God of which we partake, brethren, is that same body which he assumed from our substance, which he took from the Immaculate and Theotokos; for we do not assign two bodies to Christ; his body is one, and he offered one sacrifice for us to God and Father. For even if we frequently perform the mystical bloodless sacrifice, so that in every place and time every believer may partake of the divine body and blood, yet it is the same sacrifice; for we offer the same body, the same lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. For if that were one thing and this another, many sacrifices, and not one, would have been offered for us, as the divine Apostle has said in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "For such a high priest was fitting for us, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and having become higher than the heavens; who does not have need daily, like the high priests, first to offer sacrifices for his own sins, then for those of the people. For this he did once for all, offering himself." And after other things: "But Christ, having come as high priest of the good things to come through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, that is, not of this creation, nor through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered once for all into the holy of holies, having found eternal redemption." And after a little:

For Christ did not enter into man-made holy places, which are antitypes of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God on our behalf; nor did he do so in order to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the holy place each year with the blood of another; for then he would have had to suffer many times from the foundation of the world. But now, once, at the consummation of the ages, for the abolition of sin, he has been manifested through his sacrifice; and inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that judgment, so Christ, having been offered once, to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time without sin to those who await him for salvation. And again: Every high priest stands daily performing the liturgy, and often offers the same sacrifices, which are never able to remove sins. But this one, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down forever at the right hand of the Father, thereafter awaiting until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet; for by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit bears witness to us. For after having said, "This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days," the Lord says, "giving my laws upon their hearts, and I will inscribe them upon their minds, and I will no longer remember their sins and their iniquities." But where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

2. Just as an infant born from a woman is a complete human being, and by eating and drinking it grows, yet does not take on another body, and we do not speak of two or many bodies of it, but one—the body born from the mother—and nature accomplishes the growth through natural economy, so also now, since Christ is our head, and we have become his fellow members, and we are his body ever growing. We have become his fellow members through participation in his flesh and his blood: "For taking bread and a cup of wine and water, he gave thanks and blessed, and said, 'This is my body.'" And in place of natural economy, the bread and the wine with water have become, through his word, his body and blood. Just as his body before the resurrection from the dead was perishable, broken, eaten, and drunk, yet incorruptible—for why did he not do this after the resurrection, but before the resurrection? Because the incorruptible body through the resurrection is not broken, nor eaten, nor drunk; nor does the incorruptible body possess blood, nor would it rightly be called flesh, as Gregory the Theologian says in his discourse on baptism: "Believe that Christ, the Son of God, will come again with his glorious presence to judge the living and the dead.

ther—the same body that was born, so also the body of the Lord, which we partake of, is not another body, but the same body that was born from the Virgin, and suffered, and was buried, and rose again, and became incorruptible. For just as the increase of our body fulfills the entire natural economy of the original constitution of our body, so also the celebration of the holy mysteries fulfills the entire spiritual and supernatural economy of the incarnation of God the Word. 3. For in us, the seed of the father is a kind of beginning of the constitution of the infant's body; and nourishment is supplied from the mother's blood, and a transformation of the underlying material into an organic body takes place, according to the power given to nature by the Creator of our nature and power, and thus flesh and blood and bones and the rest of the members are constituted through attractive, retentive, and alterative, that is, nutritive power. Likewise, the addition through eating of the body, through nutritive, that is, attractive, retentive, and alterative power, effects the growth of the body. It was necessary, therefore, also in the increase of the Lord's body to contemplate the entire divine economy of his incarnation, and crucifixion, and burial, and resurrection, and incorruptibility. For the Lord's body was not incorruptible from the beginning, but corruptible and passible until the resurrection; after the burial it became incorruptible, through the divine power that raised it from the dead and made us co-incorruptible. 4. How then did this happen?

There was the holy Virgin, the table, containing the matter of the body; then, at the angel's word, the Holy Spirit came upon her. Then the power of the Most High overshadowed her, the divine Word, the divine hypostasis, and took flesh from her. And here it lies, as in the womb of the Virgin, on the mystical table, the matter of bread and the mixture of wine and water. For the mother was nourished from these, and supplied the matter of the body to the infant. The priest says, like the angel, "Let the Holy Spirit come and sanctify, and make this bread the holy body of Christ, and this cup the precious blood of Christ." And this happens not through natural economy, but through a supernatural one, for the augmentation of the Lord's body and blood into one body, and not two. 5. Then it is raised in the priest's hands as on a cross, and is distributed broken, and thus is buried in us, and makes us co-incorrupt. For this is the end of the economy. It is not corrupted in us, just as the Lord's body was not corrupted in the tomb. Until our reception, it undergoes all the things of corruption. And it is broken by us honorably and faithfully, and often dishonored and thrown about by lawless hands, and by mice and worms; but it is not corrupted, nor does it pass into non-being. For it is gathered invisibly into one body. For the Lord was circumcised, and on the cross

from the feet and hands and side poured forth blood, but it was gathered into one and the same; for the whole body rose entire. Christ said: "Do this in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Son of Man." But remembrance of death is corruption. For corruption is death, but not destruction. This passage was found on a very old, decayed piece of paper, sketched in his own hand in cipher-like letters; as far as possible, the surviving portions were collected, even if incompletely, so that they might not be utterly lost.