Matthew 26:26–27 with St. Irenaeus of Lyons
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.’”
In his famous work, Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus wrote against the heresy of Gnosticism, which denied the goodness of the material creation. To demonstrate the error of the Gnostics, Irenaeus turns to the Eucharist. First, he points out that Jesus gave “directions to His disciples to offer to God the first-fruits of His own, created things” so that “they might be themselves neither unfruitful nor ungrateful.” He goes on to explain: “[Jesus] took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, and said, ‘This is My body.’ And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, He confessed to be His blood.”
Further commenting on this passage, Irenaeus insists that the Church’s eucharistic celebration fulfills the oracle of the prophet Malachi: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering” (Mal 1:11). The eucharist—which employs material things—constitutes a “pure offering.”
For Irenaeus, then, Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist directly contradicts the false teaching of the Gnostics, since the sacrament underscores the inherent goodness of the physical world. As Irenaeus would say elsewhere, “Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.”[1]
