SINCE the Word says, This is my body; let us both
confess and believe him, and let us behold him with the eyes of our mind. For
Christ gave us not sensible things, but altogether intelligible ones, although
disguised in sensible form. It is the same in baptism; the gift is given through
sensible matter, namely water, but it is birth and renewal that is intelligibly
effected. For if you were bodiless, he would have given you bodiless gifts. But
since your soul is joined to your body, he gives you intelligible things in a
sensible form. How many of you are saying, I wish I could see him in the flesh,
see his face, his clothes, his shoes! Lo, you do see him, you touch him, you
eat him. You want to see his clothes, while he indeed allows you not only to
see him, but more than that, to eat and to touch and to receive him within you.
THEN let and none draw near in a weak and sickly
draw manner: let all be ardent, all fervent and aroused. For if the Jews ate
the Paschal lamb with their shoes on their feet and their staff in their hand,
and in haste; how much more alert should you be! They indeed were about to set
out for Palestine, and therefore they behaved as travelers: but you must go
forth to heaven.
THEREFORE, be watchful in all things; for there is
no small punishment decreed for those who receive unworthily. Consider how you
are roused to indignation against the man who betrayed him, and against those
who crucified him: and then consider whether you yourself are guilty of the
body and blood of Christ. They killed his most holy body, but you receive it in
your polluted soul after so many benefits conferred. It was not enough for him
to be made man, to be beaten with rods and crucified; he even made himself one
with us: not only by faith, but truly in very deed he made us his own body.
WHO should he who be spotless than he who partakes
of such a sacrifice? And surely purer than a sunbeam should be the hand
distributing this flesh, the mouth filled with this spiritual fire, the tongue
reddened by this exceedingly awe-inspiring blood ? Consider what tremendous
honor is conferred upon you, at what table you are a guest. Angels tremble when
they see him, nor do they dare to look on him, because of the dazzling splendor
emanating from him; on him do we feed, to him we are united, and we are made of
one body and of one flesh with Christ. Who can express the noble acts of the
Lord, or shew forth all his praise? What shepherd feeds his flock with his own
blood? And why do I say shepherd? Many are the mothers who after the pains of
childbirth give their children to strangers to nurse: yet he would not suffer
this, but he feeds us with his own blood, and in every way unites us to
himself.
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