The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
Vers. 23, 24. — That the Lord Jesus the same night , &c. Five actions of Christ are here described: (1.) He took bread; (2.) He gave thanks to the Father ; (3.) He blessed the bread, as S. Matthew also says (xxvi. 26) ; (4.) He brake it ; (5.) He gave it to His disciples, and in giving it, He said, “ Take, eat ; this is My body.” These are the words of one who gives as well as of one who consecrates.
Hence there is no foundation for the argument of Calvin, who says that all these words “ took,” “ blessed,” “ brake,” “ gave,” refer to bread only, and that therefore it was bread that the Apostles took and ate, not the body of Christ. My answer is that these words refer to the bread, not as it remained bread, but as it was changed into the body of Christ while being given, by the force of the words of consecration used by Christ. In the same way Christ might have said at Cana of Galilee, “ Take, drink ; this is wine,” if He had wished words to change the water into wine. So we are in the habit of saying, Herod imprisoned, slew, buried, or permitted to be buried, S. John, when what he buried was not what he imprisoned : he imprisoned a man ; he buried a corpse. Like this, and consequently just as common, is this way of speaking about the Eucharist, which is used by the Evangelists and S. Paul.
Notice too from Christ’s words, “ Take, for this is,” &c. that He seems to have taken one loaf, and in the act of consecration to have broken it into twelve parts, and to have given one part to each Apostle, and that each one seems to have received it into his hand. Hence the custom existed for a long time in the Church of giving the Eucharist into the hands of the faithful, as appears from Tertullian (de Spectac .), from Cyril of Jerusalem ( Myst . Catech. 5), from S. Augustine ( Serm . 44). Afterwards, however, it was put into the mouth to prevent accidents, and out of reverence.
This is My body . Heretics say that this is a figure of speech, a metonymy, or something of the sort, and that the meaning is, “ This is a figure of My body,” “ This represents My body.”
But that this is no mere figure of speech is evident (1.) from the emphasis on the word “ This,” and from the words, “ My body and My blood,” as well as from the whole sentence, which is so clearly expressed that it could not have been put more plainly. Add to this that the words were used on the last day of Christ’s life, at the time that He left His testament, instituted a new and everlasting covenant with His unlettered and beloved disciples, and also instituted this most sublime sacrament, at once a dogma and a Christian mystery, all which things men generally express as they ought to do in the clearest terms possible. Who can believe that the great wisdom and goodness of Christ would have given in His last words an inevitable occasion for false doctrine and never-ending idolatry?— which He surely did if these so clear words, “ This is My body,” were meant to be understood merely as a figure of speech. If this is indeed true, then the whole Church, for the last 1500 years, has been living in the most grievous error and idolatry, and that too through Christ’s own words, which Luther thought so clear that he wrote to the men of Argentum : “ If Carlstadt could have persuaded me that in the sacrament there is nothing but bread and wine, he would have conferred a great kindness upon me ; for so I should have been most utterly opposed to the Papacy . But I am held fast : there is no way of escape open ; for the text of the Gospel is too apparent and too convincing , its force cannot well be evaded , much less can it be destroyed by words or glosses forged in some brain-sick head.” And Melancthon (ad Fred. Myconium) says : “ If you understand ‘My body’ to mean ‘a figure of My body,’ what difficulty is there that you will not be able to explain away ? It will then be easy to transform the whole form of religion.” With Servetus, you will be able to say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are but three names of the one God, not Three Persons ; that Christ took flesh, but only in appearance ; that He died and suffered, but only as a phantasm, as the Manichaeans teach. In short, in this way who will not be able to say that the Gospel is the Gospel, Christ is Christ, God is God figuratively, and so come, as many do, to believe nothing at all ? Observe how the Sacramentaries open here a door to atheism. Cardinal Hosius most truly prophesied that heretics would in course of time become atheists, and that the end of all heresy is atheism. When they fall away from Catholic truth into heresy, and find in that nothing fixed, or firm, or durable, what remains for them but to abjure their heretical opinions and believe nothing, and become that of which the Psalmist sings (xiv. 1), “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God ? ” Would that we did not daily see the truth of this.
Again, not only Paul, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the institution in the same way and in the same words : “ This is My body ; this is My blood.” Not one, then, can say it is a figure of speech, or maintain that one explains the other where he is obscure. Erasmus was convinced by this argument, and replied to the attempts of Conrad Pellican to convert him to Zwinglianism : “ I have always said that I could never bring my mind to believe that the true body of Christ was not in the Eucharist, especially when the writings of the Evangelists and S. Paul expressly speak of the body as given and of the blood as shed. . . . If you have persuaded yourself that in Holy Communion you receive nothing but bread and wine , I would rather undergo all kinds of suffering, and be torn limb from limb, than profess what you do ; nor will I suffer you to make me a supporter or associate of your doctrine ; and so may it be my portion never to be separated from Christ. Amen.”
2. If in the Eucharist bread remains bread, then the figure of bread has succeeded to the figure of the lamb. Who is there that does not see that it is wrong to say that that can be ? The lamb slain under the Old Law was a plainer representation of Christ suffering than the bread in the New Law. Again, the lamb would have been a poor type of the Eucharist if it is, as Calvin says, bread and nothing else. Any one would rather have the lamb, both for itself and as a figure of Christ, than the bread.
3. This is still more evident in the consecration of the cup : “ This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for you ” — words which are clearest of all in S. Luke xxii. 20 — “This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you.” The relative in this verse undoubtedly refers to “cup.” S. Luke, therefore, says that the cup, or the chalice of the blood of Christ, was poured out for us; therefore, in this chalice there was truly the blood of Christ, so that, when this chalice was drunk from, there was poured out, not wine, which was before consecration, and, as heretics say, remains after consecration also, but the blood of Christ, which was contained in it after consecration ; for this is the meaning of “ the cup of My blood which is poured out for you.” Otherwise it was a cup of wine, not of blood, that was poured out for us, and Christ would have redeemed us with a cup of wine, which is most absurd.
This will still more plainly appear from the next verse. Nor can it be said, as Beza does, that the text is corrupt, for all copies and commentators read it as we do, and always have so read it.
4. All the Evangelists and S. Paul explain what “this body” means by adding, “which is given for you,” or, as S. Paul says, “which is broken for you.” But it was not the figure of the body, but the true body of Christ that was given and broken for us; therefore it was the true body of Christ that Christ gave to His Apostles. Moreover, S. Paul says : “ Whosoever shall eat this bread . . . unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” Therefore there is here really “ the body and blood of the Lord,” and he who handles and takes it unworthily does it an injury.