Thursday, April 28, 2022

Eucharistic Theology the Demonstrations of Aphrahat (Aphraates)

12:6-7

 

6. Our Saviour ate the Passover sacrifice with his disciples during the night watch of the fourteenth. He offered to his disciples the sign of the true Passover sacrifice. After Judas left them, he took bread and blessed [it], and gave [it] to his disciples. He said to them, “This is my body. Take and eat from it, all of you.” He also blessed the wine as follows, saying to them, “This is my blood, a new testament, which is shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. Keep doing this in memory of me when you gather together.” Our Lord said these things before he was seized. He stood up from where he had offered the Passover sacrifice and given his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, and he went with his disciples to that place where he was seized. Whoever eats his body and drinks his blood is counted with the dead. By his own hands our Lord gave his body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood to be drunk. He was seized on the night of the fourteenth and judged before the sixth hour. At the sixth hour, they condemned him, raised him up, and crucified him. When they were judging him he did not speak, and he gave no reply to his judges. He could have spoken or replied, yet [on a deeper level] it was impossible for one who was counted with the dead to speak. From the sixth hour to the ninth there was darkness, and at the ninth hour he handed over his Spirit to his Father. He was among the dead during the night of the dawn of the fifteenth, the night and the whole day of the Sabbath, and three hours on Friday. During the night of the dawn of Sunday, at the [same] time that he had given his body and blood to his disciples, he rose from among the dead.

 

7. Now show us, O sage, what these three days and three nights were in which our Saviour was among the dead! We see the three hours on Friday, and the night when the Sabbath dawned, and the whole day, and [then] during the night of the first [day] of the week he rose. Define for me what they are, these three days and three nights! Take note that although the day and the night were completed, our Saviour spoke truly when he said, “Just as Jonah son of Mattai in the stomach of a fish for three days and three nights, so too will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.” Thus, from the time when he gave his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, there were three days and three nights. It was night when Judas left them, and the eleven disciples ate the body of our Saviour and drank his blood. Now take note: [this was] one night, when Friday was dawning. And take note [that the time] up to the sixth hour, when they judged him, [was] one day and one night. [Then] there were three hours that were dark, from the sixth hour to the ninth, and there were [also] three hours after the darkness. Take note [that this makes] two days and two nights. [Then] the night when the Sabbath dawned was completed, as well as the whole day of the Sabbath. Thus our Lord completed three days and three nights among the dead, and during the night of Sunday he rose from among the dead. (Adam Lehto, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage [Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 27; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2010], 282-83)