Quotes & Sayings About The Body And Blood Of Christ

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction — Saint Augustine

Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. Within Thy wounds hide me. Permit me not to be separated from Thee. From the wicked foe defend me. At the hour of my death call me. And bid me come to Thee. That with Thy saints I may praise Thee For ever and ever. Amen. — Ignatius Of Loyola

...it is for me in the flesh to acknowledge that Jesus Christ was a letter written in blood to the lost, weak, and forsaken of the world, to the hungry and despised, that announced that the Reign of God is coming and it is coming for the ones to whom the mutilated body of the crucified opens in invitation. — Craig Keen

[Christ's] mission and work it is to help against sin and death, to justify and bring life. He has placed his help in baptism and the Sacrament [i.e., communion/Eucharist/Lord's supper], and incorporated it in the Word and preaching. To our eyes Baptism [capitalized in original] appears to be nothing more than ordinary water, and the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood simple bread and wine, like other bread and wine, and the sermon, hot air from a man's mouth. But we must not trust what our eyes see. — Martin Luther

Q. What is your only comfort in life and death? A. That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, wherefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him — Zacharias Ursinus

On the altar you are looking at the same thing as you saw there last night. You have not heard, however, what this is, what it signifies, or about the greatness of the reality of which it is a sacrament. Your eyes are looking at bread and cup. This is the evidence before your physical sight. But your faith must be instructed concerning it- this bread being Christ 's Body and the cup containing His Blood. Though perhaps these words may be enough to initiate faith, faith must be further instructed in accordance with the Prophet's words: 'Believe that you may understand' — Saint Augustine

Jesus Christ was the only one capable of performing the magnificent Atonement because He was the only perfect man and the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. He received His commission for this essential work from His Father before the world was established. His perfect mortal life devoid of sin, the shedding of His blood, His suffering in the garden and upon the cross, His voluntary death, and the Resurrection of His body from the tomb made possible a full Atonement for people of every generation and time. — Cecil O. Samuelson

The effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive. ~ — Scott Hahn

The Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord's continuing passion in the members of his mystical body, the church in every age. — Pope Benedict XVI

When a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as a man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and his body. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Here is also to be noted, that the cause of the institution was to be a memorial, to testify that Christ's body was given, and his blood shed for us. — William Tyndale

This fits the pattern of how God responds to human suffering: We come looking for answers; God sends a hot meal through a warm body. WE come looking for reasons for our hunger; God sends provision to feed us. We come looking for a sermon that will explain the complexity of the cosmos to us and satiate our desire for understanding; Christ responds with, "This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you."
People try to offer us an explanation; God offers us a Eucharist. — Jonathan Martin

His intercession was not only solidarity but identification with us: he bears all of us in his Body. And thus his whole life as a man and as Son is a cry to God's heart; it is forgiveness, but forgiveness that transforms and renews. I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me; he suffered and suffers for me; he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought, not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. — Pope Benedict XVI

This is a real presence which includes every dimension of who Jesus is: body and blood, human soul and divine person. The consecrated Eucharistic species are the Lord and therefore command our adoration. We do not adore ourselves, nor the ordained priest, nor the Bible, even though these are vehicles for Christ's spiritual presence; we do adore the Eucharist, this blessed sacrifice made really present sacramentally. — Francis George

Before Butch knew what was doing, V grabbed his forearm, bent down, and licked the cut, sealing it up quick.
Butch yanked out of his roommate's hold. "Jesus, V! What if that blood's contaminated!"
"It's fine. Just f-" With a boneless lurch, Vishous gasped and collapsed against the wall, eyes rolling back in his head, body twitching.
"Oh, God ... !" Butch reached out in horror-
Only to have V cut the seizure off and calmly take a drink from his glass. "You're fine, cop. Tastes perfectly okay. Well fine for a human guy which really ain't my 'tail of choice, you feel me?"
Butch hauled back and nailed his roommate in the arm with his fist. And as the brother cursed, Butch popped him another one.
V glared and rubbed himself. "Christ, cop."
"Suck it up, you deserve it. — J.R. Ward

Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. — Divine

He who receives Communion is made holy and Divinized in soul and body in the same way that water, set over a fire, becomes boiling ... Communion works like yeast that has been mixed into dough so that it leavens the whole mass; ... Just as by melting two candles together you get one piece of wax, so, I think, one who receives the Flesh and Blood of Jesus is fused together with Him by this Communion, and the soul finds that he is in Christ and Christ is in him — Cyril Of Alexandria

Yes, we're all on a journey here. We're not perfect. We all struggle. We can tell from the fatigue we feel and the stiffness in our spiritual joints that we haven't always taken good care of ourselves. But prayer wakes us up with mercies from God that are "new every morning" (Lam. 3:23). Prayer is how we start to stretch and feel limber again, feel loose, ready to take on the world. And when we start applying prayer to particular muscle groups - like our confidence in Christ and His victory over our past - our whole body and our whole being start to percolate with fresh energy, with the blood-pumping results of applied faith. — Priscilla Shirer

Peter, the biggest failure of them all, became the preacher that day. It was no homiletical masterpiece, to be sure. But people were deeply convicted - "cut to the heart," according to Acts 2:37 - by his anointed words. Three thousand were gathered into the church that day. Which church? Baptist? Presbyterian? Pentecostal? There were no such labels at that time - and in God's view of things, there still aren't. He ignores our categories. All he sees when he looks down is the body of Christ, made up of all born-again, blood-washed believers. The only subdivisions he sees are geographical - local churches. Other distinctions are immaterial. I — Jim Cymbala

For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church. — Maggie Gallagher

I was raised as a Catholic and received the body and blood of Jesus Christ every Sunday at communion until I was thirty years of age, when I became a vegetarian. — Joe Queenan

How is it possible," an educated Mohammedan asked a missionary bishop, "that bread and wine should become the Flesh and Blood of Christ?" The bishop answered, "You were tiny when you were born. You grew big because your body transformed the food you ate into your flesh and blood. If a man's body is able to change bread and wine into flesh and blood, then God can do this far more easily. — Stefano M. Manelli

The assurance of His total forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ means we don't have to play defensive games anymore. We don't have to rationalize and excuse our sins. We can call sin exactly what it is, regardless of how ugly and shameful it may be, because we know that Jesus bore that sin in His body on the cross. — Jerry Bridges

Since Christ Himself said in reference to the bread: "This is My Body," who will dare remain hesitant? And since with equal clarity He asserted: "This is My Blood," who will dare entertain any doubt and say that this is not His Blood? ... You have been taught these truths. Imbued with the certainty of faith, you know that what seems to be bread is not bread but the Body of Christ, although it seems to be bread when tasted. You also know that what seems to be wine is not wine but the Blood of Christ although it does taste like wine. — Cyril Of Jerusalem

He whose heart is divinely touched with the magnet of God's Spirit, will endeavor to attract those who are near him to Christ. The heathen could say, "We are not born for ourselves only." The more excellent anything is, the more diffusive it is. In the body every member is diffusive: the eye conveys light; the head, spirits; the heart, blood. A Christian must not move altogether within his own circle - but seek the welfare of others. To be diffusively good makes us resemble God, whose sacred influence is universal. And surely it will be no grief of heart, when conscience can witness for us that we have brought glory to God in this matter by working to fill heaven. Not that this is in any way meritorious, or has any causal influence on our salvation. Christ's blood is the sole cause - but our promoting God's glory in the conversion of others is a signal evidence of our salvation. — Thomas Watson

I think that at the supper I neither receive flesh nor blood, but bread and wine; which bread when it is broken, and the wine when it is drunken, put me in remembrance how that for my sins the body of Christ was broken, and his blood shed on the cross. — Jane Grey

Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used his own body to utter his love on earth; his perfectly real body, with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our bodies to express his love on earth, our humanity. A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul ... Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice. — Caryll Houselander

I beg you to show the greatest possible reverence and honor for the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things, whether on earth or in heaven, have been brought to peace and reconciled with Almighty God — Francis Of Assisi

For 2,000 years, the Church has been the cradle in which Mary places Jesus and entrusts Him to the adoration and contemplation of all peoples. May the humility of the Bride cause to shine forth still more brightly the glory and power of the Eucharist, which she celebrates and treasures in her heart. In the sign of the consecrated Bread and Wine, Christ Jesus risen and glorified, the light of the nations, reveals the enduring reality of His Incarnation. He remains living and real in our midst in order to nourish the faithful with His Body and Blood. — Pope John Paul II

That to fancy the words of consecration perform what the papists call transubstantiation, by converting the wafer and wine into the real and identical body and blood of Christ, which was crucified, and which afterward ascended into heaven, is too gross an absurdity for even a child to believe, who was come to the least glimmering of reason; and that nothing but the most blind superstition could make the Roman Catholics put a confidence in anything so completely ridiculous. — John Foxe

Everyday I encounter well-meaning Christians who call out to God to save them from a demon who has long since been defeated. It's time for the body of Christ to recognize what the blood of Jesus has done and stop running from his attacks in fear. It's time for us to realize that every attack from the enemy is an attack on the blood of Jesus. It's a form of rebellion from a defiant demon that is skilled in using the power of fear to intimidate Christians into giving up on their blood-bought rights. — Jesse Duplantis

[It is appropriate that the Body and Blood of Christ be truly present in this Sacrament] because of the perfection of the New Covenant. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant contained the true sacrifice of Christ's Passion only in symbol ... Therefore it was necessary that the sacrifice of the New Covenant, instituted by Christ, have something more, namely, that it contain Christ Himself who has suffered and contain Him not only in symbol but in reality. — Thomas Aquinas

The flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ that the soul may be fattened on God — Tertullian

What is the mark of a Christian? That he be purified of all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit in the Blood of Christ, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God and the love of Christ, and that he have no blemish nor spot nor any such thing; that he be holy and blameless and so eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood; for 'he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgement to himself.' What is the mark of those who eat the Bread and drink the Cup of Christ? That they keep in perpetual remembrance Him who died for us and rose again. — Saint Basil

Thomas Cranmer in his 'Homily of Salvation' explained that three things had to go together in our justification: on God's part 'his great mercy and grace', on Christ's part 'the satisfaction of God's justice', and on our part 'true and lively faith'. He concluded the first part of the homily: 'It pleased our heavenly Father, of his infinite mercy, without any our desert or deserving, to prepare for us the most precious jewels of Christ's body and blood, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied.'15 — John R.W. Stott