As in other matters, so in regard to the Eucharist the main lines of Eastern theology in later times follow the doctrine taught by St. John of Damascus and that implied in the Liturgies of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. But from time to time there are instances of teaching which it is well to notice either because of the witness they afford to the continuance of a tradition or because of some special feature.
The commentaries on the Acts and the Epistles by Œcumenius, who was Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly in the latter half of the tenth century, are to a large extent based on the Homilies of St. Chrysostom and often reproduce his language. In regard to the Eucharist he uses the phrase that in it our Lord “for our sakes endures that which He did not suffer on the cross (for it is said, a bone of Him shall not be broken) in being broken that He may unite us to Himself,” and lays stress on Christians being that which they receive. He follows St. Chrysostom also in his references to the different aspects of the one sacrifice of Christ, offered on the cross, in heaven, and on the altar of the Church.
“It is the property of a ministering priest to stand and minister, while to sit is the mark of God, to whom the priestly service is offered. But, as has been said, He mingles things lowly with things lofty, that He may show His Godhead by means of sitting and His care for us and His manhood by means of ministering as priest. And this work of priestly ministration and of offering sacrifice is to cleanse men from their sins and make them holy.… He died that He might offer the sacrifice, and He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven that He might have heaven as His dwelling-place, where He must offer sacrifice. And by offering sacrifice understand His intercession on our behalf.”
“As in the sacrifices which were offered for sin the blood was carried into the sanctuary by the high priest, and the body was burned outside the camp, so also the blood of Christ which was shed for the sins of the world cleansed all the world, and His body was hung on the cross outside the city of Jerusalem.… This blood then is brought in to our altar be our high priest.”
Theophylact was Archbishop of Bulgaria in the latter part of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century. He died in A.D. 1107. His chief writings consist of commentaries on the books of the New Testament and on some of the Minor Prophets. His indebtedness to St. Chrysostom is very great. His comments on the passages which refer to the Holy Eucharist supply clear indications of his belief about it. His teaching on the transformation of the communicant into Christ resembles that which Maximus the Confessor derived from the writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite. Like St. John of Damascus he repudiates the phraseology which be describing the consecrated elements as figures seemed to endanger the truth of the actual presence of Christ, and regards the elements as changed by means of the descent of the Holy Ghost at the consecration into the body and blood of Christ. Thus he describes Communion as “the mystic reception of the body” and “the flesh” “of the Lord.” says that “he who eats” Christ is “transformed” (μεταστοιχειούμενος) into Him, denies that the bread and the wine are an “antitype” of the body and blood of Christ, and asserts that they are “transmade” (μεταποιεῖται), and “changed” (μεταβάλλεται) “by means of the mystic blessing and the descent of the Holy Ghost” into that body and blood. Like St. Cyril of Alexandria he emphasises the life-giving character of the flesh which is received in the Eucharist because it is the flesh of Him who is God. In one passage, most of which is an expression of the ordinary teaching about the Sacrament, there are traces of a tendency to confuse the outward part and the unseen reality since Theophylact, following St. Chrysostom, there speaks of Christ Himself being broken in the Eucharist.
“Holding the cup of the Eucharist in our hands we bless and give thanks to Him who shed His blood on our behalf and bestowed on us ineffable good things. St. Paul said not participation but communion, that he might show something greater, that is most complete union. What he says is this, that what is in the chalice is what flowed from the side; and in partaking of this we hold communion with, that is we are united to, Christ.… That which the Lord suffered not on the cross (for not a bone of Him was broken) now He endures, being broken for our sake; for it is said ‘which we break’. And he said ‘is the communion of the body of Christ’ in the sense that, as that body is united to Christ, so we also are united to Him by means of this bread.… We are that body itself. For what is the bread? The body of Christ. And what do they who partake of it become? The body of Christ, not many bodies but one body.”
The teaching of Theophylact which bears on the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice is of very considerable interest. He evidently regarded the sacrifice of our Lord as one abiding action associated with His death on the cross, with His priestly work in heaven, and with the Eucharist on earth. He speaks repeatedly of the death on the cross as a sacrifice for sin. “Christ,” he says, “was offered,” that is in His death on the cross, “by Himself”; “besides being High Priest, He is also sacrifice and victim”; “His death was the equivalent for the destruction of all, and, so far as His act was concerned, He died on behalf of all”; “He died, bearing our offences, and offering sacrifice to the Father, that He might blot out the sins which caused His death” “Christ Himself offered one sacrifice, that is His own body, for our sins”; “completely did He free from sins those who are sanctified and anointed with His blood by being baptised into His death”; “through the offering of the body of Christ which took place once for all we were sanctified”. Christ “offered,” that is on the cross, “a sacrifice of such a kind and of so great power that by means of it He once for all cleansed the world”. But the priestly action of Christ is not regarded by Theophylact as ending with His death. “For our sake He entered in within the heaven that He might open for us the way”; He entered in “on our behalf, that is that He might intercede with the Father on our behalf, as also the high priest entered into the sanctuary once in the year, making propitiation on behalf of the people” “He entered in with a sacrifice that is able to appease the Father”; “He appears on our behalf because He entered in as High Priest, for His entrance took place because of our reconciliation”. “While it is true that He sits yet He has not on this account ceased to be High Priest”; being a priest, “He is not a priest without a sacrifice”; “this was nothing else than His own body”. “Because of His manhood it is said that He intercedes”; “He lives and is ever able to perform His high-priestly work on our behalf”; “that the Son bearing flesh should sit with the Father is intercession on our behalf, since the flesh makes supplication on our behalf to the Father”. His high-priestly work is associated with the Eucharist on earth as well as with His intercession in heaven. In the Eucharist “He offers Himself by means of His ministers,” “with priestly action He will perform (ἱερουργήσει) for us the more perfect and mystic rites, giving Himself to us for food and drink in a new fashion which surpasses all thought”. Carrying on the same conception Theophylact speaks of the Christian “altar” and “the bloodless sacrifice of the life-giving body,” and says that “our high priests, accomplishing the memorial of that sacrifice,” that is the sacrifice on the cross, “bring the blood of the Lord to our sanctuary and to the altar, as to heaven”. “To-day at the mystic Table it is He Himself who gives the mysteries”; while the “memorial” is in one of it aspects a reminder to Christians, it is also a “sacrifice” which they “received from Christ Himself”.
The writings of Euthymius Zigabenus, also called Zigadenus, are of slightly later date than those of Theophylact. He was a monk of Constantinople and flourished in the reign of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. He died about A.D. 1118. His most important works are his commentaries, on Holy Scripture and his Dogmatic Panoply of the Orthodox Faith.
In regard to the presence of the Christ in the Eucharist the teaching of Euthymius is much the same as that of St. John of Damascus and Theophylact. He lays stress on the effect of the descent of the Holy Ghost as making elements the body and blood of Christ, denies that they are symbols, and compares the consecration with the conception of our Lord by His virgin Mother. In the Dogmatic Panoply of the Orthodox Faith he quotes at length without comments of his own passages from the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of Damascus. In his comment on the record of the institution of the Sacrament he says:—
“He did not say, These are symbols of My body and of My blood, but, These are My body itself and My blood itself. It follows therefore that we must not look at the nature of the elements but at their efficacy. For, as He supernaturally added deity to the flesh which He took, so He ineffably transmakes (μεταποιεῖ) these also into His life-giving body itself and His precious blood itself, and into the grace of them. Yet the bread bears a certain resemblance to the body, and the wine to the blood. For the bread and the body are of the earth; and the wine and the blood are full of warmth. And as the bread gives strength, so also does the body of Christ, and moreover it sanctifies both body and soul. And as the wine gladdens, so also does the blood of Christ, and moreover it becomes a preservative.”
There is a very close resemblance between the teaching of Euthymius on the Eucharistic sacrifice and that of Theophylact. There is the same central idea of the one sacrifice of Christ, offered be Him in His death and in heaven, and offered by Christians on earth. In the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane Christ was fulfilling the type of the Jewish high priest and was performing His office as “High Priest after the order of Melchizedek,” and “offered in His manhood prayers and supplications”. “Christ, who is king as God, became also priest as Man when He sacrificed Himself for the remission of our sins.” “He offered Himself as a sacrifice on our behalf when He delivered Himself up to death. The one same sacrifice then because of its supreme value availed for the remission of all the defilements of sin committed before the reception of Baptism.” “Once was He sacrificed, this one sacrifice availing and having power surpassing every other.” Consequently He does not leave heaven after His entrance at the ascension and return again and again; but it is sufficient that He has entered once with His “sacrifice” of “His sacrificed flesh”. “When He had made His offering once for all, He sat down as Lord.” None the less He continues to exercise His priestly office in heaven on our behalf. “Since He is an eternal priest He ever saves and He completely saves”; “even now also He is the representative, as Man, on behalf of our salvation”; “His manhood itself beseeches the Father on our behalf”. “In heaven He performs the priestly work of representation on our behalf”; “since He rose and ascended and lives, again He performs as priest a better and heavenly priestly office”; “being in heaven He has obtained a more lofty priestly work, accomplishing as priest His mediation with the Father on our behalf”. It is His present office “to make propitiation to the Father on our behalf as our High Priest”; “now in heaven He appears with His sacrificed flesh”. This one sacrifice of Christ is also offered in the Eucharist. The Eucharistic “memorial” is a reminder to Christians that our Lord “delivered up His body to death and shed His blood on our behalf” and also a “sacrifice,” even “the mystic sacrifice of the body of the Lord”.
“We ever offer the same sacrifice, even that which was then offered be Christ; for it is for a memorial of that: for He said. ‘Do this for My memorial’. As then it does not follow that there are many Christs because Christ in many places offers the bloodless sacrifice, but there is the same Christ everywhere; so also here it does not follow because we offer often that there are many offerings, but there is one and the same offering.”
In the middle of the twelfth century there was a controversy on the subject of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The Byzantine Rite of that date contained the words addressed to God the Son, “Thou art He who dost offer and art offered and dost receive the sacrifice”. It was contended by Soterichus Panteugenus the Patriarch-elect of Antioch and others that the sacrifice of the cross was offered only to the Father and the Holy Ghost, not to the Godhead of the Son who Himself offered it; and that to assert the contrary would inevitably imply the Nestorian heresy. Against this view it was maintained that, since the Son is a Person in the Holy Trinity, the sacrifice must necessarily have been offered to Him as well as to the Father and the Holy Ghost; and it was urged that this theological argument was supported by the assertion in the Liturgy that the Eucharistic sacrifice, which must correspond to the sacrifice of the cross, is offered to the Son. In these circumstances the controversy about the sacrifice inevitably involved discussions in regard to the Eucharist. A dialogue ascribed to Soterichus has been preserved by Nicetas of Chonae, a thirteenth century writer. This dialogue contains the following statement placed in the mouth of Soterichus:—
“If you say that the Saviour offers to the Father those who are saved by Him, and that He Himself is offered by means of the bloodless sacrifice which is for His memorial, and that He as God receives what we offer, we are in assent and concord with your argument. But, if you predicate these statements of the natures, and ignore the Person, and say that the nature which was taken offers what belongs to the flesh, and that the sacrifice of the flesh is offered, and that the Godhead receives the sacrifice, without knowing it you are weaving a rope out of the sand.… Further, who that is orthodox would wish to refer the reception of the offering to the sacrifice which took place at the passion? For the Apostle Paul cries out, ‘Christ died on our behalf once for all’; and again, ‘This He did once for all when He offered up Himself,’ and elsewhere, ‘For by one offering He hath perfected for ever those that contend’. When the Apostle says that His offering is offered once for all and is one, do you say that He offers Himself daily?”
To this contention of Soterichus the other interlocutor in the dialogue replies:—
“Yes, He offered Himself once for all; but He also now offers those who are saved by Him, as we said. Moreover, He is offered by means of the sacrifice that is supernaturally changed into His life-giving and saving body and blood. Do you not hear the priestly ministrants saying whenever the rite is offered, ‘The Lamb is sacrificed’.”
The answer represented as that of Soterichus is as follows:—
“This indeed is rightly said by them, since they celebrate the saving passion which was of yore as if it were present. For the memorial which the Saviour commanded us to make renews by way of representation, or rather by way of image, the things which happened long ago as if they were present, as the custom in the festival orations is to speak of thins which are past as though they were present on whatever day the celebration takes place. Wherefore also we say after the manner of a festival oration, Christ is born, and He is baptised. It is our custom also to celebrate the saving passion in this way.”
In connection with this teaching of Soterichus a council was held at Constantinople under the Emperor Manuel Comnenus in January, 1156. At this council it was unanimously agreed that—
“The precious blood of the Only Begotten was offered not only to the Father but also to the Son and the Holy Ghost, the one Godhead”;
a representative statement of those made at the discussions was to the effect that—
“The life-giving sacrifice, neither at the first when it was offered by the Saviour Christ nor at any time since to the present day, has been offered and is offered only to the Father of the Only Begotten, the Source of all things, but also to the Word who became incarnate, and the Holy Ghost is not left out in so divine an honour; and the oblation of the mysteries, which is consecrated on each occasion by the power of the Trinity, has been made and is made in general to the Godhead in the Trinity of Persons, which is known to us as united and one, sharing in the same nature and coeternal”;
and condemnations were passed on the statements that the sacrifice of the cross was not received be God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, that the sacrifice in the mysteries was not offered to the Holy Trinity, and that the memorial in the mysteries is by way of representation or by way of image. At a later session of the council in May, 1156, it was affirmed that on the cross our Lord “offered Himself in His manhood, while as God He together with the Father and the Spirit received the sacrifice,” and that “the bloodless sacrifices” are offered to and received by the Trinity. Soterichus was with difficulty induced to make a statement that he assented to the teaching of the council that the sacrifice offered on the cross and that now offered in the Church are one and the same. In spite of this statement he was declared to be unfit to be consecrated Patriarch of Antioch.
The works of Nicolas, Bishop of Methone in the Peloponnesus, about the Eucharist have the interest that they were written to defend the current doctrine against attacks. They include two short treatises written in 1157 in connection with the controversy raised by Soterichus Panteugenus. In these treatises the opinion of Soterichus is very strongly condemned, and is represented as necessarily involving heresy, since the tendency of it is to divide the one Person of Christ, to make a division in the Holy Trinity, and to deny to the Son equal glory with the Father. The positive teaching of Nicolas in regard to the sacrifice in the Eucharist does not differ from that found in Theophylact and other Greek writers. The death of our Lord on the Cross was the sacrifice in which “once for all” Christ offered Himself a “living sacrifice”. There is an “abiding presentation” of “the blood of salvation” on “the heavenly altar”. Herein is exercised our Lord’s priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. This “abiding presentation” in heaven is closely connected with the sacrificial action of the Church on earth, whereby in the Eucharist our Lord “as Man offers and is offered,” and “as God, together with the Father and the Spirit, receives His own sacrifice”. There is one sacrifice, which was offered “once for all” on the cross, is offered on earth in the Eucharist “in relations of time,” and is offered “abidingly” in heaven.
The same treatises contain incidental allusions to the presence of Christ in the consecrated Sacrament, and to the gift bestowed and received in Communion. The bread and wine are said to be “transelemented (μεταστοιχειουμένων) by the operation of the Holy Ghost” into the body and blood of Christ; and the Holy Ghost makes “those who receive these in faith to be of one body with Christ and partakers of Him”.
The subject of the presence of Christ is treated more fully by the same writer in his book Against those who doubt, and say that the consecrated bread and wine are not the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. He describes the Eucharist as “the mystic and bloodless priestly rite in which we believe that the bread and the cup on being consecrated are transmade (μεταποιεῖσθαι) into the body and blood of the Lord”. The “object” and “end” wherewith it was instituted are “participation of Christ, and the eternal life of those who have share in Christ,” who are granted “reception of the divine nature” (ἐκθέωσις) in becoming “the body of Christ” through receiving it. The supernatural “change” (μεταβολή) of the elements into the body of Christ is analogous to the facts “transcending nature and reason and mind and thought” in the birth of our Lord from a virgin, His resurrection, His ascension, and the other wonders of His life. Nicolas ends his treatise with the prayer:—
“Deliver, Lord, by Thy mercy from such deceit and madness all those who do not rightly acknowledge that the bread and wine which are consecrated by us are the perfect body and precious blood of Thy Christ.”
The Mystic Contemplation of Germanus II. who was Patriarch of Constantinople from 1221 to 1239, explains in elaborate detail the mystical meaning of the various parts of the Eucharistic rite, and incidentally alludes to doctrine which does not differ from that already noticed in many writers. Germanus refers for instance, to—
“the holy Table” “on which is set forth the true and heavenly bread, the mystic and bloodless sacrifice, who being sacrificed has given to the faithful His flesh and blood for food and drink of eternal life”;
and writes:—
“The altar is the mercy seat on which offering was made for sin according to the holy memorial of Christ, on which altar also Christ offered Himself a sacrifice to God the Father, through the offering of His body, as a Lamb slain, and as High Priest and Son of Man, offering and being offered, sacrificed for a mystic and bloodless sacrifice and reasonable service for the faithful, by which we have been made partakers of eternal and immortal life.”
Of the consecration he says:—
“The divine gifts are signed that by the descent and glorious presence of the Holy Ghost He may change and make them, the bread the precious body itself of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that which is in the cup the precious blood itself of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which was poured out for the life and salvation of the world; and that to those who partake of it, it may be for remission of sins and eternal life.”
Of the presence of the whole body of Christ in each fragment of the consecrated bread he writes:—
“After the elevation the division of the divine body is made. Yet, though it is divided, it remains undivided and unsevered, being known and found to be whole in each part of the separated pieces.”
The doctrine of the Eucharist is treated with great fulness by Nicolas Cabasilas, who was Metropolitan of Thessalonica in the middle of the fourteenth century. A large part of his lengthy treatise On Life in Christ is taken up with an exposition of the benefits of Communion and the completeness of the union with Christ which results from the reception of it. In another treatise, the Explanation of the Holy Liturgy, he deals more fully and systematically than any earlier writer with the sacrificial aspects of the Eucharist. This latter book also contains incidental allusions to the doctrine of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Thus, the effect of consecration is said to be “the change (μεταβολή) of the gifts into the divine body and blood”; Christ is described as “sanctifying the gifts changing (μεταβάλλων) them into His body and blood”; it is affirmed that “God takes these gifts to be His own in such a way that He makes them the body and blood of the Only Begotten,” and “receives our bread and wine and gives back to us the Son Himself”. Cabasilas writes in strong reprobation of the Western view that the consecration is effected by the recital of the words of institution, and in the following passage connects the consecration with the invocation of the Holy Ghost and describes its results:—
“When” the priest “has made mention of that awful supper, and how” the Lord “delivered it to His holy disciples before His passion, and that He received the cup and took bread and hallowed the Eucharist, and that He spoke the words by which He manifested they mystery, and when he in turn has uttered the same words, he bows down and prays and implores God, applying those divine words of His only begotten Son, our Saviour, to the gifts offered on the altar, that they receiving His all-holy and almighty Spirit may be changed, the bread into His precious and holy body itself, and then wine into His stainless and holy blood itself. And, when this has been said, the whole of the priestly rite has been accomplished and completed, and the gifts have been consecrated, and the sacrifice has been perfected, and the great sacrifice and victim, which was slain for the sake of the world, is seen to lie on the holy Table; for the bread is no longer a figure of the Lord’s body, nor a gift which bears an image of the real gift or which brings in itself some representation of the saving sufferings as in a picture, but the real gift itself, the body itself of the all-holy Lord, which really received all the shame, the insults, the scourging, which was crucified, which was slain, which witnessed before Pontius Pilate the good confession, which was beaten, which was reviled, which endured the spitting, which tasted the gall. In like manner also the wine is the blood itself which leapt out from the slain body, this body, this blood, which was conceived by the Holy Ghost, which was born of the holy Virgin, which was buried, which rose on the third day, which ascended into heaven, which sitteth on the right hand of the Father.”
In explanation of the attitudes of worship adopted at the time of the Great Entrance, when the as yet unconsecrated gifts are carried with much pomp to the altar, Cabasilas writes:—
“The people sing and fall down before the priest with all reverence and devotion, begging that he will remember them in the offering of the gifts. He goes on accompanied by lights and incense, and so approaches the altar.… It is right that the gifts with which the sacrifice is to be offered should be brought in and placed on the altar; and that this should be done with all possible dignity and solemnity.… This rite can also be regarded as signifying the last manifestation of Christ, in which He greatly kindled the envy of the Jews, when He took His journey from His own country to Jerusalem, where He was to be sacrificed, when He entered the city riding, accompanied by many and greeted with singing. Also it is right that we should fall down before the priest and beg him to remember us in those prayers.… If some of those who fall down before the priest when he comes in with the gifts worship and speak of the gifts which are brought in as the body and blood of Christ, they are misled by the entrance of the pre-sanctified gifts, being ignorant of the difference between this rite and that. For in this entrance the gifts are still unsacrificed and have not yet been consecrated; but in that case they are complete and have been consecrated and are the body and blood of Christ.”
On the subject of the sacrifice this treatise of Cabasilas follows much the same lines as those in the Mystic Contemplation of Germanus II. He expounds in detail the mystical meaning of the various ceremonies in the Liturgy. The idea already familiar in Greek theology, that before consecration the elements are an image of the body and blood of Christ although they cease to be such an image on actually becoming the body and blood at the consecration is worked out so as to depict the ceremonies as a representation in mystery of the successive moments of the human life of Christ and to show the rite itself as setting forth the whole Incarnation. Thus—
“In the sacred rite of the Eucharist the whole Incarnation of Christ is written in the bread as on a writing tablet; for as in a figure we behold Him as a babe, and led to death, and crucified, and pierced in His side; then also the bread itself changed (μεταβαλλόμενον) into that all-holy body which really endured this, and rose from the dead, and was taken into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.”
“The consecration of the gifts, the sacrifice itself, proclaims His death and His resurrection and His ascension, because God changes (μεταβάλλει) these precious gifts into the body of the Lord itself, which received all these, since it was crucified and rose and ascended into heaven. But the parts of the rite which precede the sacrifice are those before the death, namely the coming, the showing forth, the perfect manifestation. And the parts of the rite after the sacrifice are the promise of the Father, as He said, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, the conversion and union of the Gentiles to God through them.”
“He commanded us to make the memorial of Him in the things which seem to signify weakness, the cross, the passion, the death.… This the Lord Himself showed when He delivered the mystery. For when He said, ‘This is My body,’ ‘This is My blood,’ He did not add miracles to these by saying. ‘I raised the dead,’ ‘I cleansed lepers’. What did He add? Only His passion and His death, ‘That which is broken on your behalf,’ ‘That which is poured out on your behalf’.”
“Let us observe how often and where this memory of the priestly rite takes place. For it takes place twice, first at the beginning, when the oblation of the gifts is made, secondly when the sacrifice of them is offered.… What in the second place is indicated by the memory of the cross and of the things which followed the cross, this in the first place is the memorial of the Lord.”
This memorial of Christ, thus mystically set forth in the stages of the Eucharistic rite, is regarded by Cabasilas as the act in which the Church keeps alive among Christians the memory of Christ, and presents before God the commemoration of His human life. Through the whole exposition runs the thought of the oneness of Christ’s sacrifice.
“This sacrifice is not an image and figure of a sacrifice but a real sacrifice, and that which is sacrificed is not bread but the body of Christ itself, and moreover the sacrifice of the Lamb of God is one and took place once for all.”
That the sacrifice of Christ was offered once for all does not impair the reality of His abiding sacrificial action.
“In offering and sacrificing Himself once for all He did not cease from His priesthood, but He exercises this perpetual ministry for us, in which He is our advocate with God for ever, for which reason it was said of Him, ‘Thou art a priest for ever’.”
“He is the mediator through whom all the good things given to us by God have come, or rather they are ever being given. For He did not once for all mediate and deliver to us all for which He mediated and then depart but He is ever a mediator, not by words and supplications, as are ambassadors, but by act. And what is the act? It is His uniting us to Himself and His bestowing on us through Himself His own gifts according to each one’s desert and the measure of his cleansing.… He it is who alone reconciles to God, who makes this peace, apart from whom there is no hope for those who are at enmity with God to receive any of His good things.… What is it which reconciles God to the nature of men? Assuredly that He sees His beloved Son as Man. So also He is reconciled to each individual man, if one wears the form of the Only Begotten, and bears His body, and is seen to be one spirit with Him.… If then we must believe that some refreshment is granted to the souls from the prayer of the priests and the offering of the holy gifts, we must first believe that this also happens in this way in which alone it is possible for man to obtain refreshment. In what way has been said, namely by being reconciled to God and not being at enmity with Him. And how is this? By being united to God and becoming one spirit with the Beloved, in whom alone the Father is well pleased. But this is the work of the holy Table, which is common, as has been shown by what has been said, to both living and dead alike.”
Elsewhere Cabasilas explains that the sacrifice of the Eucharist, which is thus one with the sacrifice offered on the cross and the high priestly work of Christ in heaven, is presented in prayer for the living and the departed, and in thanksgiving for the saints, especially the blessed Mother of God; and that it sanctifies by way of intercession both the dead and the living, by way of Communion the living only. Following the doctrine affirmed in the condemnation of Soterichus Panteugenus, Cabasilas teaches that the sacrifice is offered to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; and that in it our Lord offers the sacrifice of Himself, and is offered as a sacrifice, and receives the sacrifice, “offering and receiving as God, being offered as Man”.
An instance of like treatment of the Eucharist to that of Cabasilas may be given from the early part of the fifteenth century in the writings of Symeon, who was Metropolitan of Thessalonica from 1410 to 1429. Symeon’s Dialogue against all heresies and on the Faith of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ and on the sacred rites and all the mysteries of the Church contains sections which deal at length with the rites and the liturgy. Doctrinal teaching occurs only incidentally. Of Communion Symeon says that it “unites to the Lord Himself, and we really partake of His flesh and blood”. Of the consecrated Sacrament he says that it—
“is Christ, really His body and blood itself, which He consecrated for the sake of us His peculiar people, and allows and desires us to taste and see and touch.”
The detailed ceremonies of the liturgy are regarded as a mystical representation of the events in the passion of Christ, and the whole rite is viewed as the Church’s presentation of Christ’s sacrifice in mystery before God. In his Exposition of the Holy Sanctuary Symeon says that at the consecration “the bread and the cup become the body and blood of Christ”; that the consecration is effected by the invocation of the Holy Ghost; and that—
“it is Christ Himself who acts through the priest together with the Father and the Spirit, and it is He who offers and is offered, who consecrates and is consecrated, who receives the sacrifice and is distributed.”
Explaining the attitudes of worship at the Great Entrance, he writes:—
“All the faithful fall down before the priests, and rightly, partly asking for their prayers and begging for their remembrance in the rite, partly honouring the holy gifts. For, although they are still unconsecrated, yet they have been dedicated to God in the prothesis, and the priest there offered them to God and prayed that they might be received on the heavenly altar. Therefore, although they are still unconsecrated, yet they have been prepared for consecration, and are an offering to God and antitypes of the Lord’s body and blood.… The holy images are worthy of veneration as representations of the realities; so also are the gifts that are dedicated to God and offered that they may become the body and blood of Christ. If then we ought to assign honour and veneration to the holy images, much more ought we to do so to the gifts themselves, which are antitypes, as great Basil says, and are offered that they may become the body and blood of Christ.”
The Definition of the Council of Florence, which was accepted by the representatives of the Eastern Church in 1439, contained incidental statements that “the body of Christ is really consecrated,” and that “the holy sacrifices” benefit the departed.
At the time of the Council of Florence George Scholarius, then a layman, who was afterwards known as Gennadius, was eager for union between the East and the West, and inclined to go a long way to meet Western ideas in order to promote that union. Later in his life he became much more hostile to the West, and in the period immediately preceding the fall of Constantinople in 1453 he displayed great enmity against the Westerns. In 1453 he was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople. His Homily on the Sacramental Body of our Lord Jesus Christ is of interest because in it Gennadius, while maintaining the positive teaching of the traditional Eastern theology, introduces phraseology and lines of thought which by this time had become current in the West. This may have been due partly to Western influence at one time in his life, and partly to his study of and affection for the Aristotelian philosophy. He uses the word Transubstantiation (μετουσίωσις). He speaks of the change (μεταβολή) of the substance (οὐσία) of the elements into the substance (οὐσία) of the body and blood of Christ; of the accidents (συμβεβηκότα) of the bread and wine remaining unchanged; of the body of Christ being without its appropriate accidents (χωρὶς τῶν αὐτῷ πρεπόντων συμβεβηκότων), while the bread retains its accidents (συμβεβηκότα) without its own substance (οὐσία); and of the outward state (τῆς ἔξωθεν διαθέσεως) of the elements being preserved in view of the repugnance which communicants might otherwise feel. He maintains that the body of Christ is not in the Sacrament naturally (φυσικῶς) but after the manner of a Sacrament (μυστηριωδῶς), and therefore is not in it as in a place (καθάπερ ἐσκηνωμένον ἔν τινι τόπῳ), and is not under the dimensions of the real body (ὑπὸ ταῖς ἰδίαις ταῖς τοῦ ἀληθινοῦ σώματος διαστάσεσιν) but under the dimensions of the bread only (ὑπὸ ταῖς τοῦ ἄρτου διαστάσεσι μόναις). He says that each fragment is the whole body of Christ, and that the body of Christ in heaven and on every altar on earth is one and the same, being that body which was born of the Virgin, was once on the cross, and is now in heaven.