• “Having learnt these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to the 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: and that of this David sung of old, saying, ‘And bread strengthens man’s heart, to make his face to shine with oil’ (Ps 103:15), strengthen your heart by partaking thereof as spiritual, and make the face of your soul to shine.” ~St. Ambrose: Catechetical Discourses, 22, 9.
• “The word of Christ could make out of nothing that which was not; can it then not change the things which are into that which they were not? For to give new natures to things is quite as wonderful as to change their natures.” ~St. Ambrose: On the Mysteries, 9, 52.
• “In that sacrament [of the Eucharist] is Christ, because it is the Body of Christ, it is therefore not bodily food but spiritual. Whence the Apostle says of its type: ‘Our fathers ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink’ (1 Cor 10:3, 4). ~St. Ambrose: On the Mysteries, 9, 58.
• “‘My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink’ (Jn 6:56). You hear Him speak of His Flesh and of His Blood, you perceive the sacred pledges (conveying to us the merits and power) of the Lord’s death, and you dishonor His Godhead? Hear His own words: ‘A spirit has not flesh and bones’ (Lk 24:39). Now we, as often as we receive the Sacramental Elements, which by the mysterious efficacy of holy prayer are transformed into the Flesh and the Blood, ‘do show the Lord’s Death’ (1 Cor 11:26).” ~St. Ambrose: To Gratian, On the Christian Faith, 4, 10.
• "Now we, as often as we receive the Sacraments, which by the mystery of holy prayer are transformed (transfigurantur) into Flesh and Blood, proclaim the Lord's death." ~St. Ambrose: Concerning Faith, 4, 124.
• “You say perhaps, ‘My bread is of the usual kind.’ But that bread before the words of the sacraments; when consecration has been added, from bread it becomes the Flesh of Christ. Let us therefore prove this. How can that which is bread be the Body of Christ? By consecration. But in what words and in whose language is the consecration? Those of the Lord Jesus.” ~St. Ambrose: On the Sacraments, 4, 4, 14.
• “He washes us from our sins daily in His Blood, when the memory of His blessed passion is repeated at the altar, when the creature of the bread and wine is transferred into the sacrament of His Flesh and Blood by the by the ineffable sanctification of His Spirit: and thus His Body and Blood is poured out and killed, not by the hands of infidels unto their destruction, but is assumed by the mouth of the faithful unto their salvation.” ~St. Bede the Venerable: Homilies, 1, 14.
• “Just as in nature the bread by the eating and the wine and the water by the drinking are changed into the body and blood of the eater and drinker, and do not become a different body from the former one, so the bread of the altar (prothesis) and the wine and water are supernaturally changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of Christ, and are not two but one and the same.” ~St. John Damascene: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13.
• “The bread and the wine are merely figured of the Body and Blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified Body of the Lord itself, for the Lord has said: This is My body, not, this is a figure of my body; and My blood, not, a figure of my blood.” ~St. John Damascene: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13.
The Victory of Eucharistic Truth over Heresy, by Peter Paul Rubens.
Oil on panel, c. 1626; Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Oil on panel, c. 1626; Museo del Prado, Madrid.