C. The Eucharist: its significance and efficacy

Note: This list is a work in progress, and may change at any time both in the selection of quotations and the content of the annotations. In the meantime, feel free to offer any suggestions.

IGNATIUS

“I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.” (Epistle to the Romans, chap. 7)

“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again.” (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chap. 7).1

  1. While too generic to provide any clue regarding the real presence (spiritual or bodily) of Christ in the elements, this quotation and the previous are at least sufficiently clear in their protrayal of the communication of grace in the Eucharist to put Ignatius at odds with the pure memorialism of the Anabaptist/Zwinglian traditions.

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