Cristo, sacrificio y manjar
Little attention is normally paid by scholars to Frag. 12 of Heracleon. Yet, despite its brevity, it reveals, when analyzed, an interesting pattern of thought. On the one hand, there is the Lamb of God, that in Jesus which is capable of being immolated, the mystery of His Passion and death; on the o...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | Italian |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Ed. Pontificia Univ. Gregoriana
1985
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| In: |
Gregorianum
Year: 1985, Volume: 66, Issue: 2, Pages: 185-239 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | Little attention is normally paid by scholars to Frag. 12 of Heracleon. Yet, despite its brevity, it reveals, when analyzed, an interesting pattern of thought. On the one hand, there is the Lamb of God, that in Jesus which is capable of being immolated, the mystery of His Passion and death; on the other, there is the Son of God constituted the Eucharist of the perfected recipient, the food of eternal life. The mystery of the cross is subordinated to that of the eternal Eucharist. Through His immolation the Son of God liberates Himself from all that is alien, so as to give Himself as banquet food to the spiritual Church dwelling within the Pleroma. Flesh and blood sui generis, that is, entirely spiritualized, and Logos/Pneuma comprise the Eucharist of divinized recipients. Just as the salus carnis is absurd, so is the idea that the Eucharist of the common flesh and blood of Jesus is accessible to the ordinary recipient. Clement and Origen also distinguish between the spiritual Flesh-Blood of Jesus and the common flesh-blood of humanity. They indeed wish to preserve the mysteries linked to the cross: immolation and food. Yet, faithful to their anthropology, they do not know what efficacy to attribute to the carnal Body of Jesus on Calvary. They emphasize His divine to the neglect of His human nature, and, in order to orientate the cross and the Eucharist to the salvation of the soul, they describe the true Flesh-Blood as that of the Logos/Pneuma, food of souls. Irenaeus alone recognizes that the Eucharist contains the common flesh and blood of Jesus. In contrast to the Valentinians, he identifies the Lamb immolated on the cross with the Lamb given as food. The same Jesus who on Calvary was sacrificed secundum carnem changed Himself into the food of those for whose salvation (= salus carnis) He came into the world. The two mysteries symbolized by the Paschal Lamb, immolation and food, are actualized in the human Sarx of the Saviour in harmony with the "carnal" sign of the economy. The sacrifice and the eating involve only one protagonist (in opposition to Heracleon), since the same Jesus immolates Himself and gives Himself in the sacrament. The protagonist is not the Son of God composed of Logos/Pneuma (= divine flesh-blood), but the Son of Man composed of common flesh-blood (in opposition to the Alexandrians). According to Heracleon, by means of the sacrifice of the cross, the Son of God redeems Himself and is made the food of spiritual persons, that is, He becomes the Pneuma, the sacrament of the pneumatics. According to Clement and Origen, by virtue of the immolation of the cross, the Logos/Son of God renders Himself nutritorium animarum, the Eucharist (in a spiritual sense). According to Irenaeus, the Word of God, immolated on the cross secundum carnem, converted Himself into the food of common persons. This occurs through the substance of the Sarx which has been doubly divinized: by personal communion with the Logos and by dynamic unity with the Pneuma. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Gregorianum
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