ORIGEN (homily 6), morally, of the threefold [food] by which the Israelites were fed, brings forth a beautiful exposition. “Three,” [he] says, “species of food are generally described. One indeed, by which we are fed going out of the land of Egypt — but this suffices for a small time. After this, however, manna succeeds. But the third [is that] by which now, from the holy land, we take fruit. In which differences (as my smallness of understanding attains) I think that [thing] is indicated — that the first food is [that] which, going out of Egypt, we carried with us: this small secular erudition, so that, even if perhaps someone has attained the knowledge of the liberal letters, [it] can help [in] some little [way]. But placed in the desert — that is, in this state of life in which we now are — we are fed [with] manna; by this, [which is] that we are instructed by the instructions of the divine law. But [he] who shall have merited to enter the land of promise — that is, to attain those [things] which by the Savior were re-promised — he eats fruit from the region of the palms. For truly [he] will find the fruit of the palm who, the enemy conquered, shall have arrived at the promised [things]. For [it] is certain that, however great those [things] are which now, in the law of God, or in the divine letters, we can understand or perceive, much more sublime and more excellent will those [things] be which — the enigma ceasing — face to face the holy [ones] shall merit to see; because ‘what the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor into the heart of man ascended, these has God prepared for those who love him.’ But if the law were to be understood only according to the letter, the sons of Israel would without doubt be found, when [they] used the better [foods] (for [they] were taking manna from heaven), to have received worse [things] from the re-promise — [they] to whom, [their] former Egyptian foods failing, a better food had certainly succeeded, manna from heaven. And how then will [it] be thought [that], the better food ceasing, worse had succeeded — unless because [there] is a greater and truer reasoning in the spiritual understanding than is caught in the text of the letter?” But scripture itself, and — more agreeably to the solid truth — the paschal lamb signified CHRIST JESUS, as [is] plain [from] John 1: “Behold the Lamb of God; behold [him] who takes away the sins of the world”; and ch. 19 v. 36, “these [things] are done, that the scripture might be fulfilled: a bone ye shall not break of it”; [and] 1 Corinth. 5, “Our pascha, CHRIST, is immolated.” To the same [thing it] seems to pertain, [that] which Isaias ch. [16]: “Send forth, O Lord, the Lamb, the ruler of the earth”; ch. 53: “As a lamb before the one shearing it, [he] shall be dumb, and shall not open his mouth.” Jeremias 11: “I, as an innocent lamb, and led to the sacrifice, knew not.” S. John (Apoc. 5): “I saw, and behold, in the midst of the throne, and of the four animals [living creatures], and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as [if] slain, having seven horns and seven eyes.” But in the paschal lamb, two [things] were foremost: the immolation and the eating [comestio] — [it was] a sacrifice, and a food. By that [aspect] by which [it] was immolated, [it] was a sacrifice — the whole [was] referred to the highest honor and worship of God. By that [aspect] by which [it] was eaten, [it] was also a food; of God indeed [it] contained the honor and worship too, but [it] also fed men, and — in the manner of the old sacraments — sanctified [them]; so that [it] was both a sacrifice and a sacrament, as S. Thom[as] rightly teaches—
(col. 625 — left column; printed “632”)
—[S. Thomas] (3rd part, quaest. 60); and Soarez [Suárez] notes (tome 3, disput. 1, section 1; & disput. 74, section 2). But since the Holy Catholic Church professes a twofold sacrifice of CHRIST the Lord — namely the bloody [one], on the cross, and the unbloody [one], in the Eucharist — similarly also the paschal lamb of CHRIST, by which twofold mode [it] is a sacrifice, [is] to be reckoned a figure and type; and thus, in a threefold manner, the lamb would have signified CHRIST the Lord. First, by that [aspect] by which CHRIST the Lord was the bloody sacrifice. Secondly, by that [aspect] by which [he was] the unbloody [sacrifice]. Thirdly, by that [aspect] by which [he was] the food and Sacrament of the Eucharist.
And to the first [point] — that is, the bloody sacrifice — our today’s heretics assent; and if [they] would deny [it], [they] could be refuted even from that one cited place of John (ch. 19). But for winning over the Jews to CHRIST himself, [that] can and ought [to be] of great avail which [is] upon Exod. ch. 12 [in] Eugubinus, and — from the Talmudic Tractate Rosh Hashanah — Masius reports, in this place, in these words (p. 92): “This one [thing] I will add, memorable indeed — which I have found written in the Talmud, where about the beginning of the year [it] is disputed: [that it] was a celebrated and old opinion among the ancient Jews, that the day of the turning of the Israelite year had been [the anniversary] of the Egyptian liberation; [and that] the same [day] would once [in future] be to them the beginning also of the liberty which [they] would receive with the coming of the Messiah. But how much this — beautifully — agrees with the doctrine of our religion, everyone sees. For they attained, in Egypt, liberty in the middle of the first month — that is, when the moon, set opposite from the adverse [side] to the sun, shone [with] its whole orb. CHRIST also, in that same month, and the moon similarly affected, gave to us, from the cross, liberty by his death.”
Concerning the second — that is, the unbloody sacrifice — the heretics litigate. Concerning the third — that is, the food and Sacrament of the Eucharist — nearly the same [heretics] assent, even the Sacramentarians, as Calvin in some manner [does] on this very [place] of Joshua 5 (fol. 20), and perspicuously Lavater (on 2 Paralip. [Chron.] ch. 30, fol. 184). And, if [they] would deny [it], [it] could be proved, however copiously, from the Fathers — from Tertullian (bk. 4 against Marcion); from Chrysostom (homily On the betrayal of Judas, & on 2 Corinth. homily 11); Isichius [Hesychius] (on ch. 23 of Leviticus); Jerome (on Matt. 26); Cyprian (book On the unity of the Church); Augustine (bk. 2 against the letters of Petilianus, ch. 37); S. Leo (sermon 7, On the passion of the Lord); S. Gregory (homily 22 on the Gospel).
But that second [point they] therefore deny, because, namely, [they] think [there] is no true unbloody sacrifice in the Church. For if [they] thought [so], what would be more apt than that, in as many modes as possible, and most-perfectly, that old lamb would signify the truth [as] a figure — [that old lamb] which was CHRIST the Lord, and by which [he] is the true food of souls, and by which [he] is the true victim, bloody and unbloody, to the celestial Father? But indeed [it] would behoove [them] not to think, but to believe, [that there] is a true victim of this kind, without the effusion of blood, which indeed then is made. “The celebrated [Passover] being kept,” says the Tridentine Synod (session 22, ch. 1), “the old Passover, which the multitude of the sons of Israel immolated in memory of the exodus from Egypt — [a] new [Passover] CHRIST the Lord instituted: himself, to be immolated by the Church through the priests, under visible signs, in memory of his passage [transitus] from this world to the Father, when, through the effusion of his blood, [he] redeemed us, and snatched [us] from the power of darkness, and translated [us] into his own kingdom.” Similar [things, in] ch. 2. But because [those] obstinate and degenerate sons of Joshua—
(col. 626 — right column; printed “633”)
—spurn this Synod [Trent], let them hear [him] to whom [they] profess to subscribe [themselves]: the Ephesine [Council of Ephesus], in the declaration of the 11th Anathematism (p. 510, Roman edition, against Nestorius): τὴν ἁγίαν ζωοποιὸν καὶ ἀναίμακτον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις … θυσίαν … ἐξ ἑνὸς τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀνθρώπου κοινῇ σῶμα πιστεύοντες εἶναι τὸ προκείμενον [tēn hagian zōopoion kai anaimakton en tais ekklēsiais … thysian … ex henos tōn kath’ hēmas kai anthrōpou koinēi sōma pisteuontes einai to prokeimenon], etc. — that is: “We in the Churches make a sacrifice holy, and life-giving, and unbloody — believing [it] to be not the body of one of those who are similar to us, nor of a common man, but the very body set forth, and similarly the blood, as [it were] the proper body and blood of the Word who vivifies all [things].” [So] that meanwhile I may now omit S. Ignatius (in Theodoret, dialogue 3); Irenaeus (bk. 4, ch. 32); Tertullian (On prayer, ch. 14); Cyprian (epistle 63, to Caecilius); Eusebius (in the Life of Constantine, bk. 4); Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis on the mysteries); S. Gregory of Nyssa (oration 1, On the resurrection of the Lord); S. Ambrose (epistle 33; on Psalm 38; On the sacraments, ch. 6); Optatus of Milevis (bk. 6); Epiphanius (Epistle to John of Jerusalem, which is 60th among the epistles of S. Jerome); S. Jerome (against Vigilantius; & bk. 2 against the Pelagians); S. Augustine (bk. 3 On the soul and its origin; bk. 9 Confessions, last ch.; the book On heresies, in [the heresy of] Aerius; bk. 20 against Faustus, ch. 21; bk. 10 On the city [of God], ch. 20; bk. 22, ch. 8; & sermon 32 On the words of the Apostle). Nay indeed, if [they] would for a little while take on the persona of attentive and more modest men, [they] could, from this very [thing] — the immolated lamb — come into the knowledge and faith of the Eucharistic sacrifice. First: because [it] is established [that], if the food of a figure be sacred, much more [is] the food of the truth sacred — and indeed [with] greater sanctity, or at the least, certainly, equal. But the food of the old lamb was sacred, because [it] was, after its immolation, a victim, or immolated flesh. Therefore also the Eucharistic food of the new lamb ought to be [more] immolated [sacrificial]. Otherwise the figure would be more sacred than the truth. Nor [is there] a greater reasoning of sanctifying than when, through a sacrifice, some thing is offered to God. But now, in the last supper — when, before [he] would offer himself on the cross to the Father, the Lord ate that true Paschal food, and gave [it] to the Apostles to eat — was [it] a sacred food, or not? “Sacred,” you will say. By what sanctity, I ask? By the sanctity of the blessing and prayer of CHRIST the Lord? But, from its own kind, blessing and prayer [is] less than a sacrifice; and therefore, [with] a lesser sanctity, this food would have been holy than that old one, which [was] sanctified [by a sacrifice]. Lest, therefore, we be forced to say this — which [is] most absurd — [it] must rather be believed [that] this our Passover [was] true, in the last supper, when — before the bloody immolation of CHRIST the Lord himself — [it] was eaten, [and] was already truly immolated and sanctified. But [it] was not [immolated] bloodily. Therefore unbloodily. Then: CHRIST the Lord for this cause subjoined to the old paschal lamb the Eucharistic lamb, in the same place [ilico]. Why? [Was it that he] could not have done it in another both time and place? No one will say [so]. But [he] did it in that time and place, namely, that [he] might show the lamb to respond to the lamb, [the] immolation to the immolation, [the] food to the food; and might abolish the old shadow by the truth itself of the thing. And this is confirmed, thirdly: because, when the Lord gave this new paschal food, [he] either discharged the office of a priest, or not. If [that] of a priest — therefore—
(col. 627 — left column; printed “634”)
—[if of a priest] — therefore [he] then immolated it. If not — then, by reason of office and efficiency (for I do not compare the person of CHRIST the Lord with those old priests), the ancient food would have been more excellent, as [is] plain from the [things] said (quaest. 21). Fourthly, let us weigh also the circumstances. On the 14th day of the first month, toward evening, the old Lamb was immolated and eaten. On the same day too, toward evening, the new [one] was eaten. [Was it] not therefore also immolated? Within the Jerusalem city the old lamb was immolated and eaten. Within the same [city] the new [one] was eaten. [Was it] not therefore also immolated? And in the temple indeed that [old one] was immolated; but because [it] had to be destroyed — cut off with its own sacrifices, and new temples everywhere raised — the first temple of the Christian sacrifice the Lord consecrated by his presence and by his sacrifice: namely, that house in which [he] then reclined. The old lamb, at the first time, was immolated and eaten in the passage [transitus] — [as] a signification now of that future [passage] by which the striking Angel would pass over them, [rather] than [of] that by which they themselves would cross from Egypt into the promised land. But at the other time, and thenceforth always afterward, the same rite was kept in memory of the past crossing of both. So also the new [lamb]. For in the last supper — in the future passage, by which the Lord would cross from this world to the Father, and by which too we all would cross from the servitude of the devil into true liberty — [it] was instituted; but afterward, in memory of both past crossings, [it] was perpetually celebrated in the Church. Finally, the old lamb could and had to be eaten by men of whatever kind, sex, and condition — provided, however, [they] were circumcised, and clean and holy; and the cause was, because [it] was a sacred food from a sacred sacrifice. But the new lamb can be eaten by men of every kind, sex, and condition — yet [they] first ought to be baptized, clean of the filth of sins, and holy (1 Cor. 11) — namely, because [they] feed on the victim of the most holy sacrifice. For if we speak of the bloody victim of CHRIST alone, someone can eat it before baptism, and before the expiation and condonation of sins, by faith. For faith — and baptism, and justification, of which a part and inchoation is the expiation and condonation of sins — precedes. [It is] manifest, therefore, from the accurate consideration of the old lamb, [that one may] understand the true immolation and sacrifice of the true lamb in the sacred Eucharist. Which the holy Fathers too handed down to us. “When,” says St. Ambrose (on Luke 1), “we sacrifice, CHRIST is present, CHRIST is immolated. For our pascha, CHRIST, is immolated.” Gaudentius (tract. 2 on Exod.): “The same [one]” (namely, the one lamb, CHRIST) “through the individual houses of the Churches, in the mystery of bread and wine, refreshes [when] immolated, gives life [when] believed, sanctifies the consecrators [when] consecrated. This [is] the flesh of the lamb, this the blood.” Rupert (bk. 2 on Exod., ch. 6): “At last,” [he] says, “on the fourteenth day, toward evening, when [he] ate that pascha of the old lamb with his disciples, then [he] himself — the lamb of the new sacrifice, at once to be taken and led to be immolated, now agonizing in the anguish of the passion — first, with his own hands, immolated himself to God the Father, taking bread and wine, and—
(col. 628 — right column; printed “635”)
—[with] a wondrous and ineffable power of sanctification, transferring [it into] the sacrament of his body and blood.” But most beautifully and most weightily [does] the holy Apostle Andrew [speak of it], as I cited [in my work on] the Apostles. [It] is permitted to repeat the earlier q. 33 — or rather that same [author] who [was] there cited — [and] to consult Bellarmine.