Annotatio CXX

”The breast also that is offered, you shall eat in a most clean place.” — Leviticus 10:14

Origen, in the seventh homily on Leviticus, running out into an allegory of this passage, pronounces two things which Hermann Bodius, in his Collectanea, brings forward to undermine the truth of the Eucharist.¹ The first is, that the flesh and blood of Christ are nothing else than the discourse and doctrine of Christ. The next to this is, that that sentence of the Savior — “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you,” etc.² — is to be understood figuratively of the doctrine of Christ, and not according to the letter, of the real body and blood of Christ. For these are Origen’s words: “Our Lord and Savior says, ‘Unless you eat my flesh, and drink my blood, you shall not have life in yourselves: my flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.’ Jesus, therefore — because he is wholly clean from the whole — his whole flesh is food, and his whole blood is drink: because every work of his is holy, and every word of his is true; therefore his flesh too is truly food, and his blood is truly drink. For with the flesh and blood of his Word, as with clean food and drink, he gives drink and refreshes the whole race of men.” And a little after he adds: “Recognize that the things which are written in the divine volumes are figures; and therefore examine them as spiritual, and not as carnal, and understand the things which are said. For if you follow according to the letter that which was said, ‘Unless you eat my flesh, and drink my blood’ — this letter kills.” To the same [sense] he seems to allude in homily 9 on Leviticus, where, discussing that [passage], “And he shall put incense upon the fire in the sight of the Lord,” etc., he says: “You, who have come to Christ, the true high priest — who by his blood made God propitious to you and reconciled you to the Father — do not cling to the blood of the flesh, but learn rather the blood of the Word, and hear him saying to you, ‘For this is my blood, which shall be shed for you unto the remission [of sins].’” of sins: he knows [this], who is imbued with the mysteries, and [knows] the flesh and blood of the Word of God. Let us not, therefore, dwell on these things, which are both known to those who know, and cannot lie open to the ignorant.” To this opinion Augustine has [something] not unlike, on the third Psalm, and in book 3 On Christian Doctrine, chapter 16 — with whom Thomas Cajetan agrees, in the commentaries on the sixth [chapter] of John. The right understanding of these propositions you will be able to attain in Annotation 196 of book 6.