Eucharistic Realism

The fourth Mystagogical Catechesis is the locus classicus of patristic eucharistic realism: its insistence that the consecrated gifts are not bread and wine but the very Body and Blood of Christ, received not by the testimony of the senses but by the assurance of faith. Cyril grounds the claim in the Lord’s own words and in the works of Christ recorded in the Gospels, and he sets it within the same “no longer mere X” pattern by which he describes the chrism. This file expounds that theology and locates Cyril among the great witnesses to the real presence.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

“Do Not Regard Them as Bare Bread and Wine”

The fourth Mystagogical Catechesis (Mystagogical Catechesis 4; hereafter MC) is, with the corresponding passage of the fifth, the single most quoted patristic statement of eucharistic realism from the fourth century. Its governing exhortation is unmistakable: “Wherefore with full assurance let us partake as of the Body and Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Wine His Blood… that so having partaken of the Body and Blood of Christ, thou mayest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him” (MC 4.3; trans. NPNF II/7). Against any reading of the gifts as ordinary food, Cyril issues the command that gives this theology its name: “Contemplate therefore the Bread and Wine not as bare elements, for they are, according to the Lord’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ; for though sense suggests this to thee, yet let faith establish thee. Judge not the matter from the taste, but from faith be fully assured without misgiving, that thou hast been vouchsafed the Body and Blood of Christ” (MC 4.6).

The lecture is transmitted under Cyril’s name within a corpus whose authorship — Cyril or his successor John II — is debated and treated on its own terms elsewhere in the repository (see The Authorship Question); the present file speaks of “Cyril” while bracketing that question. What matters for doctrine is that this is a Jerusalem text of the later fourth century, expounding the faith of the mother church to the newly baptized (see The Five Mystagogies).

The Change Effected by the Spirit’s Invocation

For Cyril the realism is not a static fact about the elements but the result of an act: the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts. The argument of MC 4 leans directly on the epiclesis expounded in the companion lecture: “For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the Bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ” (MC 4.1 in conjunction with MC 5.7; trans. NPNF II/7). The decisive language belongs to the fifth lecture, where the Spirit is asked to “make the bread the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched, is sanctified and changed” (MC 5.7; see The Jerusalem Anaphora).

The verbs are strong and they are pneumatological. What the Spirit touches is “sanctified and changed”; the elements are “no longer” what they were. Cyril does not offer a metaphysical theory of how — the later vocabulary of substance and accident is not yet his — but he is unambiguous that a real change has been effected, and that its agent is the Holy Spirit invoked in the prayer (see Pneumatology). This binding of the real presence to the consecratory work of the Spirit is one of Cyril’s most influential contributions, and it stands behind the developed eucharistic theology of the Orthodox East (see Divine Liturgy).

The Appeal to Christ’s Word and Christ’s Works

Cyril’s warrant is twofold: the word of Christ and the works of Christ. The word is the dominical declaration at the Supper. “Since then He Himself has declared and said of the Bread, This is My Body, who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has affirmed and said, This is My Blood, who shall ever hesitate, saying, that it is not His Blood?” (MC 4.1, citing Matthew 26.26–28). The realism rests, for Cyril, not on what the communicant perceives but on what the Lord has said; the elements are the Body and Blood “according to the Lord’s declaration” (MC 4.6).

The works are the Gospel signs that show Christ’s sovereignty over the substance of created things. Cyril appeals above all to the miracle at Cana: “He once in Cana of Galilee turned the water into wine, akin to blood, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?” (MC 4.2, citing John 2.1–11). The argument is a fortiori: the Christ who transformed water into wine can surely transform wine into His Blood. To this Cyril joins the discourse on the Bread of Life — “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me, and I in him” — drawing on John 6 to confirm that the gift is truly flesh and blood, the food of eternal life (MC 4.4–5, citing John 6.53–56). Word and work together close off any merely figurative reading.

Faith Over Sense

The corollary of the realism is an epistemology: in the Eucharist the senses must yield to faith. Cyril returns to this insistently. The communicant is “not to judge the matter from the taste, but from faith”; though “sense suggests” bread and wine, “let faith establish thee” (MC 4.6). The point is repeated as the lecture closes: “having learned these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ… strengthen thine heart, partaking thereof as spiritual, and rejoice” (MC 4.9). The appearance is real as appearance — it genuinely tastes of bread and wine — but it is not the truth of the thing. Faith, formed by the word and works of Christ, perceives what the palate cannot. This is not a denial of the senses but a subordination of them: the same lesson Cyril draws when he teaches the neophyte to receive the gifts with the reverence due to gold, hollowing the hand into a throne for the King (MC 4.6; cf. MC 5.21–22). Belief governs reception.

The Parallel to the Chrism: A “No Longer Mere X” Pattern

Cyril’s eucharistic realism is not an isolated assertion but one instance of a pattern that runs through his whole account of the mysteries. In the third Mystagogical Catechesis he says of the holy myron exactly what he says of the bread and wine: “But beware of supposing this to be plain ointment. For as the Bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is mere bread no longer, but the Body of Christ, so also this holy ointment is no more simple ointment, nor (so to say) common, after the invocation, but the gift of Christ, and by the presence of His Godhead it causes in us the Holy Ghost” (MC 3.3; trans. NPNF II/7). The very comparison shows Cyril’s mind: the chrism and the gifts are understood by the same logic. In each case the element, after the invocation of the Spirit, is “no longer” what it was — no longer simple ointment, no longer bare bread and wine — but the bearer of a divine reality (see Chrismation and the Seal).

This “no longer mere X” formula is the signature of Cyril’s sacramental realism across the board: the font is no longer simple water, the chrism no longer common ointment, the gifts no longer bare bread and wine, because in each the Holy Spirit invoked has sanctified and changed them (MC 3.3, 4.1–9, 5.7). The consistency is itself an argument: Cyril’s eucharistic doctrine is of a piece with his whole theology of the Spirit’s sanctifying work, and cannot be read down as rhetorical exaggeration without dismantling his account of baptism and chrismation along with it.

Cyril Among the Witnesses to the Real Presence

Cyril’s testimony takes its place among the great fourth-century witnesses to the real presence — alongside the eucharistic preaching of Saint John Chrysostom, the catecheses of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and the writings of Ambrose of Milan — but it is distinguished by its setting and its directness. It is addressed to the freshly baptized, in the week of their first communions, at the holy places themselves; it is therefore not polemic but mystagogy, the plain disclosure of what the Church believed it was doing at the altar (Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem, Routledge 2000; see the eucharistic preaching of Saint John Chrysostom). Scholars have long noted that the realism of MC 4 is among the most uncompromising in the patristic record, precisely because it is catechetical rather than controversial: Cyril is not arguing a thesis against opponents but handing on a received conviction (Mazza, Mystagogy, Pueblo 1989; Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem, Ashgate 2007).

For the Orthodox tradition, Cyril’s lectures became a touchstone of eucharistic faith. The two convictions they bind together — that the gifts are truly the Body and Blood of Christ, and that they are made so by the invocation of the Holy Spirit — are exactly the two convictions that the developed Byzantine Liturgies of Basil and Chrysostom would carry forward and that Orthodox theology continues to confess (see Divine Liturgy). In the genealogy of the doctrine of the real presence, the Jerusalem mystagogies are an early, unembarrassed, and abidingly authoritative voice.

References

Cyril of Jerusalem (attrib.). Mystagogical Catecheses (Catecheses mystagogicae) 3–5. PG 33; critical edition Auguste Piédagnel, ed., Catéchèses mystagogiques, Sources Chrétiennes 126. Paris: Cerf, 1966.
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford. NPNF Series 2, Vol. 7 (NPNF II/7).
McCauley, Leo P., and Anthony A. Stephenson. The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Vol. 2. Fathers of the Church 64. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970.
Yarnold, Edward. Cyril of Jerusalem. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2000.
Mazza, Enrico. Mystagogy: A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Age. New York: Pueblo, 1989.
Day, Juliette. The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem: Fourth- and Fifth-Century Evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.