I AM the bread of life.

[qamidalash]

 Did the Early Church believe that the Eucharist was the Body of Christ?
Let’s take a look at what the early Church Fathers had to say about the Eucharist:

• “They [the Docetics, a heretical group] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His goodness, raised up again.” -St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6, 2 (around 100 A.D.)
  
  
• “I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the Bread of God, which is the Flesh of Jesus Christ…and for drink I desire His Blood, which is love incorruptible.” -St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans 7, 3 (around 100 A.D.)
  
  ...for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ.
• “We call this food Eucharist; and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true… For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is both the Flesh and the Blood of that incarnate Jesus.” -St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66, 20 (around 150 A.D.)
  
  
• “He [Jesus] has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be His own Blood, from which He causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, He has established as His own Body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.” -St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5, 2, 2 (around 195 A.D.)
  
  
• “[T]he bread over which thanks have been given is the Body of their Lord, and the cup His Blood...” -St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV:18, 4 (around 200 A.D.)
  
  
• “Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ.” -St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures: [Mystagogic 4], 22, 6 (350 A.D.)
  
  
• "‘And she [Wisdom] has furnished her table’ [Prov. 9:2] . . . refers to his [Christ’s] honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-memorable table of the spiritual divine supper [i.e., the Last Supper]" - St. Hippolytus, Fragment from Commentary on Proverbs (217 A.D.)
  
  
• “You ought to know what you have received, what you are going to receive, and what you ought to receive daily. That Bread which you see on the altar, consecrated by the word of God, is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what the chalice holds, consecrated by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. Through those accidents the Lord wished to entrust to us His Body and the Blood which He poured out for the remission of sins.” -St. Augustine, Sermons, No. 227 (around 405 A.D.)

These are just a few of the writers from the first 400 years of Christianity that refer to the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church has faithfully maintained that Jesus is truly present in the Holy Eucharist; it isn’t something that we made up, God set it up that way.

-Joe Cady, www.lifeteen.com