Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Anything Less Is Not The Eucharist, And Hardly A Sacrament

“The Fathers, and again St. Cyril of Alexandria in particular, refer us to the Holy Eucharist. Here we come in contact with the entire spiritualized Body of the Lord, which bears in Itself the source of all life. Here we eat the Bread of eternal life, which makes us one body and blood with Christ; here we are verily lifted to the fountain of life, one body with the Body of the God-Man. ‘He that eateth My flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life’ (John 6:55). In virtue of the fact that the Body of the Lord, animated by the life-spirit of God, saturates our body and soul with the fullness of the divine life and Spirit, we are placed within the wondrous orbit of the inner life of the Trinity. As St. Thomas says, in the Eucharist we drink God’s life as it were from the very source. We are now no longer far from God. We have come quite close to Him; God in His very substance is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

-Julius Tyciak in Life in Christ.

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