Annotation XXI

”Whoever shall say, ‘Thou fool,’ shall be liable to the fire of Gehenna.” — Matthew 5:22

On the Eucharist.

The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 11, seems to allude to the heresy of those who deny the true [body] of Chri- [those who deny the true body] of Christ to be in the sacrament of the altar — when he says: “To transfer sanctified vessels to private uses is a sin and a danger, as Belshazzar teaches us, who, drinking from the consecrated cups, was cast down from his kingdom and from his life. If, then, to transfer to private uses these sanctified vessels — in which is not the true body of Christ, but the mystery of Christ’s body is contained — is so dangerous, how much more [to profane] the vessels of our body, which God prepared for himself as a dwelling.” Nor does he diverge from this opinion when, in homily 17, not long before the end, he calls the Eucharist “blessed bread”; and in homily 19, almost at the beginning, calls [it] “the sacrifice of bread and wine.”