In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
Welcome again, my beloved, now to the second part of the sixth and final lecture. If you have been following with us, we’ve been discussing the Eucharist in a great amount of detail by deep-diving into the Eucharistic theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria. So far, we have been discussing things like how it is that the Lord desires for us to go from a state of corruption to a state of incorruption. We've been speaking about how it is that we lost what it means to be truly alive, because of our alienation and separation from God. And now the Lord wants to restore us back so that we can have life within us.
And now, this last portion of our series is really focused on understanding how it is that we were always created to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and to be united to God. We've spoken about how it is that He created us for Him, that we are His and He is ours. And now, we're going to focus very much on this idea if how it is that the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit are what unite us to the Lord our God and so union can be achieved through the participation of the Holy Eucharist. Let's go ahead and take a look...
And now he says something that's very provocative. And it's beautiful. He says that the Eucharist can supply us with this life-giving Spirit within us. Listen to what he says here. He says:
''But finally the bread from heaven, that is, Christ, nourishes us to eternal [love] both by supplying us with the Holy Spirit and by participation in His own flesh,...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
Let's read that again to make sure we all understood this. According to St. Cyril, the bread from heaven, which is the Lord Jesus Christ (He is the bread of life), nourishes us to eternal life both by supplying us with the Holy Spirit and by participation in His own flesh,...
''...placing into us participation with God and destroying death that comes from the ancient curse.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
So what is he saying here? By receiving Christ in the Eucharist, by making ourselves one with Him who is the only begotten Son, Him who is the incarnate Word of God, who has taken on flesh, by having Him become one with me, I have now the capability of being supplied with the Holy Spirit and I have participated in His very own flesh. I have participation with God, he says.
My beloved, the mystery of the Eucharist is very slowly revealing itself to us to being something that is extremely, extremely powerful. And here, St. Cyril says that union through the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist work together. Listen to what he says. He says:
''It was fitting therefore for Him to be in us both divinely by the Holy Spirit, and also, so to speak, to be mingled with our bodies by His holy flesh and precious blood:...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Volume 2)
What is he saying here? To be mingled with our bodies by His flesh and His precious blood. He becomes one with us, the same way that what we eat becomes a part of us, and nobody would argue this. Biologically, physiologically, what we eat becomes one with us. We take from its energy. We take from its source. If it's something that is bad, it will have a negative effect on us. If it is something that is healthy, it will have a healthy effect on us. What we eat becomes one with us. And so, by taking in the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, He mingles with our bodies by His flesh and precious blood.
''...which things also we possess as a life-giving Eucharist, in the form of bread and wine...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Volume 2)
So he says in the form of this bread and wine and by the Holy Spirit, He now becomes a part of us. He... he says it is fitting therefore for Him to be in us. And then, St. Cyril says:
''And do not doubt that this is true,...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Volume 2)
Do not doubt that this is the way that He becomes one with us, that He can be made available to us through bread and wine. He says:
''(...) Do not doubt that this is true, since He Himself plainly says, ''This is My body: ''This is My blood:'' but rather receive in faith the Saviour's word; for He, being the Truth, cannot lie.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Volume 2)
He is not a liar, my beloved. When He says take, eat of it all of you, this is My body, this now becomes His body. Now, some people might say: But how? If I put it under a microscope, will I see blood vessels? Will I see this or that? My beloved, the Church has never cared to explain how. We've always called it a mystery and we know that is a mystery. We know that it is both bread and we also know that it has become His body. Because God forbid that the human being should think that somehow what he is chewing on is actual meat!
This is why we call it a bloodless sacrifice even though we believe that right there, that bread, though when the Holy Spirit descends on... upon it, and through the institution of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ that are spoken, the mystery allows for the bread to become His body and the wine and the water to become His blood. This mystery, St. Cyril says, is not something
we should doubt in, but rather, we are supposed to receive in faith the Saviour's word, for He speaks the truth; He is not a liar.
St. Cyril continues and he says we are united to Him through His flesh. It is through the participation of His flesh that He becomes one in us and we become in Him. He says:
''And since the flesh of the Savior has become life-giving (in that it has been united to that which is by nature (...), namely, the Word of God), when we taste of it, then we have life in ourselves, since we too are united to that flesh just as it is united to the Word who indwells it.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
The same way that the Word of God incarnate indwells that flesh that He has taken on His own, when we take it in ourselves, we are now also united to Him: we too are united to that flesh just as it is united to the Word who indwells it.
Now, there is something very interesting in all of this. While all of this is happening, when we speak of unity with the Lord Jesus Christ, St. Peter comes along in his second Epistle and he says a very provocative sentence. He says:
'' 4 ...by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.'' (2 Peter 1:4)
What does it mean to say that we can become partakers of the divine nature? And remember the word partake and the word participate are very similar in their linguistic understanding. So, when we talk about participating in the life and we say we partake of the divine nature, they're very synonymous in this sense. They're very similar. And so, here, how are we to understand that we partake of the divine nature? Now, St. Cyril, he has a Eucharistic understanding to this. Listen to how St. Cyril brings in the Eucharist into this conversation. He says that when we partake of divine nature, what we are doing here is participating in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says:
''...As they partake in the blessing that is from him...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
And here, the blessing, the ευλογία (evloyía), is the Eucharist. He says:
''...As they partake in the blessing that is from him, they may now be made participants of the divine nature and thus be raised to incorruptibility and life and be remolded into the original form of our nature.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
Do you remember how we said the only way to go back to union is to go back to that original nature, that original form? Well here, St. Cyril is completing the cycle. He's saying that when we participate in the Eucharist, we can now be participants of the divine nature and we can now be remoulded into the original form of our nature.
You see what is happening here, my beloved? When I receive the Lord Jesus Christ within me, He becomes the antidote to the poison of sin and death that is within me. He raises me to a state of incorruptibility. And because I have taken Him within me, I can now be united to Him again.
And when all of these things happen, when I have found a solution to death, when I have found a solution to corruption, when I have found a solution so I can now be reunited to the Lord my God, then I have gone back to being exactly in that first state where God created me to be: in His image and likeness. And this is where I become everything that the second Adam is. See, I no longer have to be like the first Adam who lives in corruption and death and alienation. I can become like the second Adam, our Lord, our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. How? In and through and with Him. And all of this is accessible to me through the Eucharist.
Now, St. Paul... We've mentioned St. Peter, so let's mention St. Paul. St. Paul talks about how it is that when we participate in one bread, we become one body. So, what does he say in 1 Corinthians? He says, in chapter 10:
'' 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? [And] The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.'' (1 Corinthians 10:16-17) - [New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised]
Now, let's try to understand this idea of the sharing in the blood of Christ and the sharing in the body of Christ. We become one, because we participate or we partake, all of us, of the one bread, he says. Now, this sharing in is extremely important, because when I share in the blood of Christ, when I share in the body of Christ, I am now becoming one with that body and blood. To Him who belongs the body, to Him who belongs the blood is now in me and I in Him. Listen to what St. Cyril says:
''Let anyone interpret this for us...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 2)
And here, he is speaking of the verse that we just read from 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. He says:
''Let anyone interpret this for us and teach us what it means without reference to the power of the mystical blessing. [He's basically saying here: try to explain this to me without
pointing to the Eucharist. Of course it has to do with the Eucharist, he says.] Why do we receive it within ourselves? [Why do we take in the Eucharist? Why do we take in the body and the blood of the Lord?] Does it not make Christ dwell in us bodily by participation and communion with his holy flesh?'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 2)
He could not be more clear, my beloved: it makes Christ dwell in us. We are now completely reunited to the Lord our God through participation in the holy and life-giving flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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