Life led Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, along unexpected paths. He was by temperament a missionary and a pastor of souls; his only concern was to preach the gospel in Gaul and to strengthen his community in faith and fidelity. If he wrote, it was not because he felt called to be a theologian, but because it was another way of teaching and of defending the orthodox faith against the obscure utterances of the gnostics.
One of the most dangerous of the gnostics, a man named Markos, had come to Lyons from Asia Minor. He led the people of Lyons astray with his thinking, as he played upon their emotionalism and their penchant for mysticism. Like his masters, he taught a radical dualism that set the world over against God. In various ways, the gnostics were always playing off the just God of the Old Testament against the good God revealed in Jesus Christ.
When confronted with this gnostic dualism and docetist idealism, Irenaeus sought to be only a witness to the faith that had been handed down, and to the living consciousness of the Church which was commissioned to guard the revealed deposit. Fidelity and unity are the foundation of all his teaching: unity of faith, unity of the plan of salvation that underlies the whole of history.
Far from opposing the Old Testament to the New and stripping Jewish history of its meaning, the Bishop of Lyons brought out the wonderful unity of the economy, or unfolding plan, of salvation, an economy in which mankind, shaped by the Son and the Spirit, those "two hands of God" moves forward slowly and gradually, achieves its liberation from sin, and advances toward its fulfillment.
In Christ, who is hidden at first but then revealed at the moment of his incarnation, God leads human history to the goal he has set for it. "The Father decides and commands, the Son carries out and forms, the Spirit nourishes and gives increase, and man advances little by little and ascends toward perfection, that is, he draws near to the Uncreated" (Adv. Haer. IV, 48, 3).
This splendid historical overview provides the framework within which we must read what Irenaeus has to say about the eucharist. He does not discuss the eucharist for its own sake but is concerned rather to situate the eucharistic mystery within his theology of history. In his eyes, the eucharist is the sacrament of the economy of salvation, and in it the Church finds its faith summed up.
Irenaeus disagreed with the gnostics: for him the creation that came forth from God's hands is good and has been blessed by him. It is even in a sense his fellow worker, since it serves the plan of salvation. Christ uses it to unveil the mystery he came to reveal, and he uses it as well to bring out the generosity of his Father. Irenaeus gives us an example of this interpretation of creation when he comments on the wedding feast at Cana, for this gives him an opportunity to explain the process of spiritual growth and progress. The miracle Jesus performed at Cana, like the multiplication of the loaves, announces and prefigures the institution of the eucharist.
"This wine was good, which the vine of God produced in accordance with the laws of creation and which the guests drank first at the wedding feast of Cana. None of those who drank it criticized it, and even the Lord himself took some of it. But better still was the wine, which the Word, in a simple, momentary action, made out of water, for the use of the invited guests.
"Although the Lord could have served wine and fed the hungry without using any preexistent matter, he did not do so. On the contrary, he took the loaves produced by the earth and gave thanks over them; so too did he change water into wine. Thus he fed those who were eating, and quenched the thirst of the wedding guests. He showed us thereby that the same God who created the earth and commanded it to bear fruit and who created the waters and made the springs flow, now, in these last times, gives the human race the blessing of good food and the gift of drink through his Son" (Adv. Haer. Ill, 11, 9).
At the beginning, there is the gift given by God the creator. Everything is ultimately the fruit of his creative act and of the created order as it follows the laws he has impressed upon it. Jesus accepts and uses bread and wine because they are gifts from the divine goodness. He makes them vehicles for his missionary purpose and his revelation that he is himself the "blessing and gift" which henceforth, in the new order of things, becomes the living sacrifice of the new worship.
What the Bishop of Lyons says briefly here he develops at greater length in Book IV of his Against the Heresies, to which we now turn.
The entire history of salvation leads up to the coming of Christ, who puts an end to the period of preparation and reveals the goal of all man's searching. The sacrifice of the new covenant fulfills and replaces the institutions of the old covenant: law, circumcision, sacrifices. In this context, Irenaeus sketches a theology of the eucharist as the sacrament of the entire recapitulation (or: renewal and completion) of everything in Christ the head.
The Catholic Church alone, and not the heretics, can offer to God the sacrifice that pleases him and was foretold in prophecy, especially in the prophecy of Malachi. The latter assures men of the coming of the pure sacrifice proper to the new covenant; he foretells the eucharistic sacrifice.
Like Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana, the Church uses the bread and wine which creation produces, for, contrary to what the gnostics think, creation is good. The Church consecrates this bread and wine by means of Christ's words, which have been passed on to her by the tradition. The history of the seed that is put into the ground, rises up as wheat, becomes bread, and is eventually turned into the body of Christ, expressively sums up the history and mystery of Christ.
"The Jews no longer offer sacrifice; their hands are full of blood, for they have not accepted the Word through whom men offer sacrifice to God. The same is true of all the assemblies of the heretics. . . . How could they have the certainty that the bread over which the thanksgiving is spoken is the body of the Lord and the cup his blood, when they do not acknowledge that he is the Son of the Creator, that is, the Creator's Word by which the tree bears fruit, and the springs flow, and 'the earth produces the blade, then the ear, and then the wheat in the ear'" (Adv. Haer. IV, 18, 4).
The supreme blessing for creation is to become eucharist, that is, the body and blood of Christ, and thereby the vehicle of grace, life, and incorruptibility. "The Church has received this sacrifice from the apostles and throughout the entire world offers it to God who gives us for our nourishment the first fruits of his gifts under the new covenant," that is, his own Son (IV, 17, 5). This sacrifice is the one that Malachi predicted the whole world would offer.
"The oblation which the Lord commanded the Church to offer throughout the entire world is a pure sacrifice in God's sight and pleasing to him. It is pleasing to him not because he needs a sacrifice from us but because the one who offers it is glorified by his gift if it is accepted. .. . The Church alone offers this pure sacrifice to the Creator, offering to him with thanksgiving what comes from his own creation" (IV, 18, 1. 4).
The Church offers the sacrifice of the new covenant, which completes and recapitulates all the sacrifices of the past. In her offering she gives expression to her faith, her gratitude, and her expectation. Irenaeus makes his own the theme of the interior worship by which the Christian completes the eucharistic sacrifice by the sacrifice of his life. "We ought to offer our sacrifice to God and be grateful in everything to God our Creator, by offering him the first fruits of his own creation with a pure disposition, sincere faith, firm hope, and ardent love" (IV, 18, 4).
The gnostics made a demiurge responsible for creation, and regarded matter as hostile to man. The body was taken to be a manifestation of man's fall and therefore incapable of sharing in man's future blessedness. Thus did the dichotomy between soul and body, so dear to Platonic philosophy, lead to a denial of the resurrection of the flesh. But the doctrine of the eucharist enabled Irenaeus to refute the gnostic claims. He develops his thought at length in the final book of the Adversus Haereses, where he spells out his ideas on the subject and shows the place of the eucharist in the plan of salvation.
As Irenaeus sees it, the entire man, body as well as soul, shares in salvation, because the entire man has been redeemed and saved by the blood of Christ and is now nourished by the eucharistic offerings, that is, the body and blood of Christ in which we participate.
"If the flesh cannot be saved, then neither did the Lord redeem us with his blood, nor is the cup of the eucharist a participation in his blood, nor the bread we break a participation in his body. For blood comes only from veins and flesh and the rest of that human substance which the Word of God assumed so as to become man and truly redeem us. As his apostle says: 'In him we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins through his blood.'
"We are his members and we are nourished by his creation. He himself gives us that creation as he makes his sun rise and his rain fall at his good pleasure. The cup which comes from his creation he declared to be his blood that mingles with ours, and the bread which comes from his creation he asserted is his body which gives growth to our bodies" (Adv. Haer. V, 2, 1-2).
Here we see the marvelous continuity of God's plan: creation serves our bodily life; it receives its supreme consecration in becoming the body and blood of Christ and thus the food that renders man incorruptible. "For, as the bread that comes from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God is no longer ordinary bread but the eucharist which comprises two elements, an earthly and a heavenly, so our bodies which participate in the eucharist are no longer corruptible, since they now have the hope of resurrection" (Adv. Haer. IV, 18, 5).
Irenaeus returns once again to the image of the wheat and the vine. What happens to these illustrates not only what happens in the eucharist, but also the hope that the body buried in the earth will rise up for eternal life. "The vine that is planted in the earth bears fruit in its season, and the grain of wheat that falls into the soil and cracks open there rises up multiplied by the Spirit of God who holds all things together; the bread and wine are wisely put to man's use, and when they receive the word of God they become the eucharist, that is, the body and blood of Christ. So too our bodies that are nourished by the eucharist are placed in the earth and dissolve into it, but they shall rise when their time comes, for the Word of God will make them rise for the glory of God the Father, who clothes this mortal body in immortality and gives this corruptible body an unmerited incorruptibility, since the power of God is made perfect in weakness" (V, 2, 3).
Paul uses the image of the seed to explain the resurrection of the body (1 Corinthians 15:35-38). Irenaeus here applies it to the eucharistic mystery which is the bond linking Christ's resurrection to ours. Our salvation is illustrated by the history of bread from seed to loaf and is sacramentalized in the eucharist, which is the pledge and prophetic anticipation of our integral resurrection and incorruptibility. Even before St. Irenaeus, St. Ignatius of Antioch had spoken of the "bread which is a remedy bestowing immortality, an antidote preventing death and giving life in Jesus Christ forever."
Such are the chief statements Irenaeus makes about the eucharist. Their context is the unfolding economy of salvation, in which God's single plan is being worked out, amid the forward movement of history, as a universal recapitulation. Now that we have seen these various texts we can sketch an outline of Irenaeus' teaching on the eucharist.
The gnostic vision of man and history was essentially a vision of descent. It described a process of degradation: the fall of an angel, or the snaring of a spirit in matter. Man was thought of as a spirit, which discovers that it is in a prison and has been degraded by the flesh in which it is robed. In such a vision of things, salvation requires a return to an ideal world; it requires liberation from matter and the body.
Irenaeus reverses the entire perspective and describes an ascending curve; his vision is one in which man, an indissoluble unity, is an animated body, not an embodied spirit. Irenaeus understands the story in Genesis of God breathing a "breath of life" into clay (Genesis 2:7) to be a story of humble beginnings, with man being meant to develop to his perfect state.
Men enters upon the scene of creation as part of a history that has already begun. God takes earth, a lowly but innocent material (neither evil nor sin have as yet touched it) and breathes his own life into it. This marks the beginning of man's existence, but also of his call from God and his ascent to perfection. The journey will be a slow one, for man is still a child who must learn through painful experience to use the royal gift of freedom.
God who shapes the clay uses his own Son for the model, since he is the first to achieve the perfect "image and likeness." He is the true Adam, the firstborn of creation. In him we see in fullness what we saw in an embryonic form in the first human beings. Thus he is also the new Adam, the archetype of Christian man (cf. Adv. Haer. Ill, 21, 10-22, 2. 3. 4).
Christ is the center and focal point of history. Being linked to matter through the virginal body he received from his virginal mother, he is part of the line of human beings; he shares the history of mankind with its wretchedness and sinfulness. He has entered into the human condition in order to assume it in its entirety and save it.
"The Word, our Savior, became what lost man was, thus establishing in himself a communion with man in order to win man's salvation. What was lost possessed flesh and blood, for God had formed man out of the muddy earth, and it was for this man's sake that God determined the entire manner of the Lord's coming. The Lord, too, therefore, possessed flesh and blood, in order that he might recapitulate in himself, not some other work, but the one the Father had formed in the beginning, and that he might in this way seek out what was lost" (Adv. Haer. V, 14, 2).
Being at the heart of the universe, of which he was a part by reason of his body and blood, Christ brought that universe through the test of death to resurrection. The power of God or of the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, so that his bodily resurrection is the "first fruits of our own resurrection." What the head experienced, the entire body will also experience. Our body "is sown in corruption but rises up incorrupt" (1 Corinthians 15:42, as cited in Adv. Haer. V, 7, 2).
Communion between God and his creatures was established once and for all in Christ, where it is sealed by the Spirit. In Christ and through Christ the Spirit rests upon the work of the divine hands, the human race. From the head this communion is passed on to all his human brothers, with whom he forms the body that is the Church. Irenaeus cites Paul's Letter to the Ephesians. "We are the members of his body, of his flesh and blood" (Adv. Haer. V, 2, 2, citing Ephesians 5.30).
This solidarity between Christ and the Church makes ethical demands on the Christian and the Church. More than that, it establishes a continuity, a parallelism, and a mutual involvement between head and members. The unfolding of the divine plan in history through the old covenant into the new is itself also compared to a sowing of seed that finally yields its harvest when Christ makes our flesh his own. "What was begun in Abel and proclaimed by the prophets was accomplished in the Lord, and the same will be accomplished in us, for the body follows the head" (Adv. Haer. IV, 34, 4).
Irenaeus developed his thinking about the solidarity of Christ with men in the parabolic image of the lost sheep (Adv. Haer. Ill, 19, 3). Christ came to look for the lost sheep, that is, the creature he had formed with his own f hands; having found it, he took it up to the heights to present and return it to the Father. Thus the whole body will share in the resurrection of Christ, for Christ is the first fruits of mankind.
For Irenaeus, the eucharist is the sacrament of the economy, or unfolding divine plan, as revealed to us in the person and work of Christ. Faith and eucharist, eucharist and faith are inseparable and reciprocal: "Our manner of thinking is conformed to the eucharist, and the eucharist confirms our manner of thinking" (Adv. Haer. IV, 18, 5). The eucharist is the center and content of faith, and contains the whole economy of the Son of God.
In response to the heretics, Irenaeus sums up this economy:
"The Savior redeemed us with his blood and gave his soul for our soul, his flesh for our flesh; he poured out the Spirit of the Father, in order to effect union and communion between God and man by making God descend to man through the Spirit and man ascend to God through the incarnation. By his coming he surely and truly bestowed incorruption upon us through our communion with God' (Adv. Haer. V, 1, 2).
The history of the bread, which is the fruit of the earth but even prior to that is the fruit of the divine generosity enables us to understand the changes proper to the economy. Once the products of the created world have become through consecration the body and blood of Christ, they are vehicles of grace, salvation, and incorruptibility. In them and by means of them the Church offers God the new sacrifice throughout the world. The offerings, transformed now by the presence of Christ, convey to God the earth's most marvelous fruit, the Son of the Virgin Mary, whom God has given to men as the first-born of creation and first fruits of the new earth whereon the future kingdom will be established.
The eucharist expresses gratitude for the long roll-call of God's blessings, but it is also the anticipated ingathering of scattered mankind whom the Spirit brings together in union and communion. In the eucharist the Christian already possesses the blessings promised to him and the happiness to which he is called.
In his discussion, Irenaeus reminds us of the interior dynamism associated with the eucharist; it calls for the personal effort of each communicant and for love received and shared: "If we fail to help others in their need, we deny the love of the Lord." The first fruits, which we offer imply our own commitment. The love bestowed upon us must bear fruit, and by that fruit we will be judged.
The eucharist, which is bread for our journey, teaches us at each moment to welcome "the Spirit who perfects us and prepares us for incorruptibility and gradually accustoms us to receiving God" (Adv. Haer. V, 8, I). Mankind is advancing on a long road; as it goes, the Spirit does not destroy it but transfigures it, and the earth itself even now participates in the banquet of God. With all his being, man is caught up in this universal ascent. He offers its first fruits in the eucharist; he offers his very self by making himself wholly a part of the sacrifice which comes from the Father and returns to its Creator. Man advances slowly and steadily to his perfection, to the encounter with God that will make him incorruptible. "All who have the Spirit of God are led to the Word, that is, the Son, and the Son accepts them and offers them to his Father, and the Father bestows incorruptibility on them."
Such is the truth and meaning of the eucharist of St. Irenaeus of Lyons.
