DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
St. John 6:48-54 (5/16) CHRIST IS
RISEN! Gospel for
Friday of the Myrrhbearers
The Body and Blood of Christ:
Father Anthony Coniaris
disabuses all notions that stray in the direction of reducing the bread and
wine to allegories, emblems, representative symbols, or a “pure,”
immaterial, spiritual substance. He
exhorts us to be forthright: “The bread and the wine that are received at
Communion are literally His Body and Blood. They are not merely symbols. For Jesus Himself said, ‘For My
flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink
indeed’” (Jn. 6:55). These words of the Lord stand as the
touchstone of the Faithful when we receive Holy Communion.
We are always correct in referring to the Holy
Gifts as the “Mysteries” of Christ’s immaculate Body and
precious Blood. Likewise, the
Church steadfastly resists using feeble human words to define precisely how the
elements of Bread and Wine are the Body and Blood of Christ. The account of Uzzah’s
destruction serves as a warning against all attempts to touch the holy things,
to depend solely on human ideas to clarify what faith knows about Holy
Communion. That sad man, thinking
he could save the ark of God from falling when the oxen stumbled “reached
forth his hand” to steady it.
For that act, he was stricken dead because of presumption (2 Kgs. 6:6,7).
On the other hand, we are not wrong to reflect
upon what the Lord says in these verses from
Notice in this passage that the Lord
distinguishes sharply between Himself as “the Bread which comes down from
Heaven” and the food which the fathers “ate... in the
wilderness...” (vss. 50,49). Both surely should be categorized as
“miraculous” food.
Similarly may we understand the rich wine made from water at the wedding
feast at Cana (Jn. 2:11) or the bread multiplied by
the Lord by fiat on the mountain by the
The manna, the wedding wine, and the
multiplied bread were time-limited.
One ate or drank of them, and they nourished, but only for a
moment. When we partake of the
Lord’s Body and Blood we partake of eternity, that
we “may eat of it and not die” (vs. 50). To Commune is to trust in the
Lord’s promise that “Whoever eats My flesh
and drinks My blood has eternal life...” (vs. 54). All other “miraculous” foods
are like all foods that we receive from the hand of God, but they remain as
types and shadows of the true life-giving Bread of Eternity, come down to us.
Let us agree with St. John Chrysostom and
“be blended into that flesh.
This is effected by the food which He hath freely given us....He hath
mixed up Himself with us; He hath kneaded up His Body with ours, that we might
be a certain One Thing, like a body joined to a head.” Christ Himself is received. We are united to His glory and become a
terror to the demons.
As I am become Thy Tabernacle through the
reception of the Holy Communion, may all evil and all passion flee away from me
as from fire, O my Creator.