St. John Chrysostom’s Timely Contribution by Fr. Gus George Christo
Chrysostom’s greatest and most timely contribution to the strengthening of our faith in God is his biblical teaching on the paschal mystery and our connection to its saving power through the Church, Christ Himself, the greatest of all mysteries. The blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side while suspended upon the Cross, representing the holy Eucharist and sacred Baptism respectively, are the cornerstones of our redemption and inclusion in the life of the Holy Trinity. “But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe” (John 19:34-35).
There is no doubt that Chrysostom is an eminent witness to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and its sacrificial character. His statements to that effect are numerous, clear, positive and detailed. He would have this sacrament approached with awe and devotion and calls the Eucharist “a table of holy fear, an awe-inspiring and divine table, the frightful mysteries, the divine mysteries, the ineffable mysteries, the mysteries which demand reverence and trembling.” The consecrated wine is “the cup of holy awe, the awe-inspiring blood, and the precious blood.” Moreover, the Eucharist is “an awe-inspiring and terrible sacrifice, a fearful and holy sacrifice, the most awe-inspiring sacrifice.” Pointing to the altar, he says: “Christ lies there slain, His Body lies before us now. That which is in the Chalice is the same as what flowed from the side of Christ. What is the bread? The Body of Christ. Reflect, O man, what sacrificial flesh you take in your hand. To what table you will approach. Remember that you, though dust and ashes, do receive the Blood and the Body of Christ.”
The divine power of the Eucharist transfigures each human recipient into the very Church of God because it flowed down from the cross and from the Master’s immaculate side. The one Church is seen in the many and the many in the one. Chrysostom says:
Since the symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist flowed from His side, it was from His side that Christ fashioned the Church, as He had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!” As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from His side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after His own death. (Baptismal Catechesis 3)
By this sacred communication in Christ, the participant becomes the bride of Christ the Bridegroom. An intimate spiritual union beyond comprehension and admittance into the heavenly bridal chamber are achieved. Chrysostom states:
By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with His own blood those to whom He Himself has given life. (Baptismal Catechesis 3)
According to Chrysostom, the power of Christ’s blood was prefigured in the Old Testament by the smearing of blood on the lintel of the Jewish houses in order for the angel of death to pass over them. The holy father notes:
If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguring in Egypt. “Sacrifice a lamb without blemish,” commanded Moses, “and sprinkle its blood on your doors.” If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors, he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ. (Baptismal Catechesis 3)
When the celebration of the Divine Liturgy occurs, “when [we] see the Lord immolated and lying upon the altar, and the priest bent over that sacrifice praying, and all the people empurpled by that precious blood,” the Church in heaven and on earth unites and is one and the same. “When the priest conducts the divine service, angels station themselves about him and in a choir they chant a hymn of praise in honor of the victim who is sacrificed.” Chrysostom assures:
Christ is present. The one [Christ] who prepared that table [long ago] is the very one who now prepares this table. For, it is not a man who makes the sacrificial gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, but He that was crucified for us, Christ Himself. The priest stands there carrying out the action, but the power and the grace is of God [Homilies on the Treachery of Judas 1:6].
There is one Christ everywhere, complete both in this world and in the other. [There is] one Body. As then, though offered in many places, He is but one Body, so there is but one Sacrifice...We offer that now which was offered then; which is indeed inconsumable...We do not offer a different sacrifice as the high priest [of the Jews] formerly did, but always the same.
Believe that there takes place now the same banquet as that in which Christ sat at table, and that this banquet is in no way different from that. For, it is not true that this banquet is prepared by a man while that was prepared by Himself. Today as then it is the Lord who works and offers all. We assume the role of servants; it is He who blesses and transforms. It is not man who causes what is present to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The priest is the representative when he pronounces those words, but the power and the grace are those of the Lord. “This is my Body,” he says. This word changes the things that lie before us; and as that sentence “increase and multiply,” once spoken, extends through all time and gives to our nature the power to reproduce itself; even so that saying “This is my Body,” once uttered, does at every table in the Churches from that time to the present day, and even till Christ’s coming, make the sacrifice complete.
He continues, saying:
You envy the opportunity of the woman who touched the vestments of Jesus, of the sinful woman who washed His feet with her tears, of the women of Galilee who had the happiness of following Him in His pilgrimages, of the Apostles and disciples who conversed with Him familiarly, of the people of the time who listened to the words of grace and salvation which came forth from His lips. You call happy those who saw Him…But, come to the altar and you will see Him, you will touch Him, you will give to Him holy kisses, you will wash Him with your tears, you will carry Him within you like Mary Most Holy.
Indeed:
You see that same Body, not in a manger, but upon the altar; not carried in His Mother’s arms, but elevated in the priest’s hands. Let us, therefore, be roused, and tremble, and bring with us more devotion to the altar than those eastern kings did to the manger, where they adored their newborn Savior.
With affection Chrysostom adds:
Because of this Body I am no longer earth and ash, no longer a prisoner, but free. Because of this Body I hope for heaven, and I hope to receive the good things that are in heaven, immortal life, the lot of the angels, familiar conversation with Christ. This Body, scourged and crucified, has not been fetched by death…This is that Body which was blood-stained, which was pierced by a lance, and from which gushed forth those saving fountains, one of blood and the other of water, for all the world…This is the Body which He gave us, both to hold in reserve and to eat, which was appropriate to intense love. [Homilies on Corinthians 8, 1(2); 24, 2(3); 24, 2(4); 24, 4(7).]
Some of his expressions are yet stronger. He does not hesitate to declare:
Not only ought we to see the Lord, but we ought to take Him in our hands, eat Him, set our teeth upon His Flesh and most intimately unite ourselves with Him. What the Lord did not tolerate on the Cross [i.e., the breaking of His legs], He tolerates now in the sacrifice through the love of you. He permits Himself to be broken in pieces that all may be filled to satiety.
Because of Christ’s concrete presence in the Eucharist, Chrysostom requests all attendees to the Eucharistic celebration to be properly disposed and behaved. He says:
What are you doing, O man? When the priest says: “Let us lift up our mind and our hearts,” why do you not affirm and say: “We lift them up to the Lord?” You are not afraid? You are not ashamed of being found a liar at this terrible moment? Bless me, what a wonder! The Mystical Table is prepared, the Lamb of God is sacrificing Himself for you, the priest is struggling on your behalf, spiritual fire is gushing forth from the undefiled Table, the Cherubim are standing by and the Seraphim are flying, the six-winged creatures are covering their faces, all the bodiless powers together with the priest are interceding on your behalf, the spiritual fire is descending, the blood from the Immaculate Side is emptying into the vessel for your purification, and you are not afraid, you do not blush, and you are found a liar at that terrible moment? The week has 168 hours and God set aside for Himself one hour only, and you spend it in worldly and ridiculous affairs and in company? With what boldness do you later approach the Mysteries? ... Do not see it as bread, neither think that it is wine, for the body does not eliminate them in a toilet like other food. Neither say this nor think it! Just as a burning candle does not leave a trace and nothing remains of itself, likewise believe in this case that the Mysteries are spent inside the body together with its essence. For this reason while you approach, do not think that you partake of the Divine Body from a man; rather, believe that you partake of the Divine Body from the very seraphim with the fiery spoon that Isaiah saw; and when we partake of the Saving Blood, let us believe that our lips touch the very Divine and Immaculate Side. Therefore, for this reason my brethren, let us not be absent from the Churches, and inside them let us no longer occupy our time in conversations. Let us stand with fear and trembling, with our eyes lowered and the soul elevated, with silent sighs and loud shouts of the heart…I will not cease telling you these things until I see you become corrected. When we come to the Church, we must enter in accordance with God’s liking, having no malice in the soul, nor praying to our detriment when we say: “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12). For this statement is terrible, and he who says it is exclaiming to God something like this: “I remitted; Master, you remit. I loosened; you loosen. I forgave; you forgive. If I retained, you retain. If I did not forgive my neighbor, then do not annul my sins. With the measure I used to measure, let me be measured as well.” [Homily 9 on Repentance]
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). From a brief sample of his writings, St. John Chrysostom reveals to us that, just as the Lord appeared to His Apostles in the Upper Room after His glorious Resurrection over 2,000 years ago and communicated them in the Mysteries of His Body and Blood, He concretely manifests Himself in the sacred Eucharist during every Divine Liturgy so we may commune in the very life of the Holy Trinity and sit with Him at the right hand of the Heavenly Power. Through His undefiled and incorrupt Humanity, we are redeemed and deified. According to Chrysostom, this is the unchanging faithfulness of Christ toward the members of His Church:
“Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For, my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever (John 6: 53-58).
Likewise, our faithfulness to God must also be unchanging in all circumstances, as Chrysostom explained at the end of his tenth homily on the Gospel of St. Matthew:
To this alone should we train ourselves: to bear all trials with courage, and not inquire as to the how or why of them. It is God’s affair alone to know when our sufferings will come to an end. It is our duty to bear with gratitude the affliction which God ordains for us...So let us put all discouragement aside, and give glory in all things to God, who directs all things for our best good.
His banner of life, “Glory to God for all things,” reveals that the faith and practice of a true Orthodox Christian must be “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
