Annotation CXIII

”I will not drink of this fruit of the vine.” — Matthew 26:29

Whether wine — or water — alone is to be used in the sacred mysteries.

Chrysostom, homily 83, in the exposition of that sentence, brings forward these words: “For what reason did Christ drink, after the resurrection, not water, but wine? He wished to pluck up by the roots a certain pernicious heresy — [of those] who use water in the mysteries; so that he might show that, both when he delivered this mystery, he delivered wine, and when after the resurrection he used wine at the bare table of the mystery. And he says ‘of the fruit of the vine,’ which certainly produces wine, not water.” From these words, badly understood, the Armenian heretics used wine alone in the mysteries. Against whom the universal council — surnamed “in Trullo,” celebrated under Justinian — in canon 32 decrees thus: “Since we have learned that in the region of the Armenians they offer only wine on the sacred table, not mingling water with it — [they] who perform the unbloody sacrifice, pretexting the doctor of the Church, John Chrysostom, on account of these words in the interpretation of Matthew, ‘For what reason did Christ [drink] not water, but wine,’ etc.; by which words they think that Christ forbids the oblation of water in the holy sacrifice — [therefore], that these may be freed from [their] ignorance, we open up the mind of that father orthodoxly, saying that he wished to subvert the ancient and depraved heresy of the Hydroparastatae [water-offerers], who used water alone instead of wine in the sacrifice. If, therefore, any bishop or presbyter does not offer wine mingled with water in the sacrifice, let him be deposed.”