Tag Archives: Eucharist

Spiritual Milk

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Madonna di San Gugliemo, 12th century (Sienna, Italy). This depiction of the “Madonna Lactans” (Nursing Madonna) is a eucharistic image as much as it is an image of a mother caring for her child. Read more about this type of image here and see more examples here.

And I, brothers and sisters, was able to speak to you not as spiritual people but only as carnal people, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not substantial food, because you were not yet capable, nor are you capable until now, for you are fleshy people. (1 Cor. 3:1-3)

In the ancient world, milk-blood-semen were all thought to be the same liquid but warmed to differing temperatures by different internal organs. Blood was the coldest of these and the basic, most natural form of this liquid. Milk was blood, warmed and made frothy in a woman’s breasts. Semen was blood, made even warmer and frothier in a man’s testes. According to this biological idea, when a mother was nursing her child, she was feeding the baby with her own blood.

Because blood and milk were identical, the correspondence of the Virgin’s milk and Christ’s blood was important to early and medieval Christians. The Virgin’s blood becomes milk in her breasts; she nurses Christ, feeding him her warm and frothy blood; he drinks this frothy blood, which becomes the blood in his own veins. Medieval images of the Nursing Madonna (Madonna lactans) are fundamentally eucharistic images, celebrating the identity of the Virgin’s milk with Christ’s blood; she feeds him with her body which becomes his Body and he feeds the Church with his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

There is no more vivid and elaborate exposition of 1 Corinthians 3 in early Christian literature than that found in Clement’s Paedagogus 1.6…. By combining Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 3, Clement sets the foundation for his argument that all Christians are already spiritual…and, as a result, milk-drinking infants cannot be viewed as equivalent to “carnal” Christians. Rather, milk is the food of all Christians who “seek our mother, the church.”

John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk

Not only did a mother’s milk (blood) provide sustenance to her baby, the infant received religious and ethnic formation as well by ingesting his/her mother’s identity via the milk-blood. This is why receiving Holy Communion was so important: to receive Christ’s blood was to be shaped and formed by his identity, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Discover more about this fascinating subject in Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity by John David Penniman (Yale University Press, 2017).

The Lamb and the 144,000

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Page from a famous illuminated manuscript painted by an unknown artist, depicting the 144,000 from Revelation 7, from a copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Saint Beatus of Liébana

Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. (Apocalypse 14:1-3)

SO much to say about such a brief passage! Modern commentaries often claim that the 144,000 are the Messianic Jews who accept that Jesus is the Messiah but in the early Church there was no such distinction between ethnic Jews and Gentile Christians. Classic commentaries by church Fathers interpret the 144,000 as emblematic of the perfected Church–12x12x1000 being the 12 apostles x 12 tribes of Israel x 1000 (perfection). That is also why the 1,000 year reign of Christ is an emblem of history perfected, not a literal 1,000 years as we know the cycle of 365 days x 1000.

The new song of the new day of salvation grows out of the song of deliverance sung by Israel on the shore of the Red Sea after the Exodus. (Have I told y’all about this already? I think I have.) The new song is also the Sanctus (“Holy! Holy! Holy!”) sung by the angels as they stand around the Throne of God and which we join them singing during the celebration of the Eucharist. During the Eucharist, we stand with the 144,000 before the Throne–together with the elders (presbyters) and four living creatures; together, we sing the Sanctus and give thanks for all that the Holy Trinity have done for us.

The saved are marked with the name of the Lamb and his Father, just as the followers of the Beast are marked by the diabolic number. But the classic commentary on the Apocalypse by Tyconius has something very different to say: according to Tyconius, the diabolic mark of the Beast is not described in Chapter 13. Rather, the number at the end of Chapter 13 is “616” and is “the number of a [certain] man,” i.e. the Son of Man, the Lamb of God. The number 616 is the total of alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and refer to Christ. It is also the total of the letters XIS, the first and last letters of “Christ Jesus.” Therefore, Tyconius understands the numbers 616 to indicate the famous Chi Rho emblem of Christianity. It is this emblem which is described as marked on the 144,000 at the beginning of Chapter 14.

Other early commentators say that the sign marked on the 144,000 is the cross drawn in chrism-oil by the bishop with his thumb when converts were baptized.

How’s that for a totally unexpected set of ideas about the 666 that we discussed last week?!

The Seven Seals

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The Lamb of God and the book/scroll sealed with the seven seals, a popular motif embroidered on a variety of vestments and altar linens. Note that most depict the seven seals still unbroken although occasionally the seals are already open.

I watched as the Lamb broke the first of the seven seals and …. as I watched, there was a pale horse. Its riders name was Death and Hades followed with him. (Apocalypse 6:1-8)

The book/scroll with the seven seals is among the most well-known images from the Apocalypse. Even if people don’t know the biblical source of the image, they at least know about the last, the Seventh Seal, from the famous movie by Ingmar Bergman. The seals and the riders or other visions that are revealed as each seal is broken have appeared many times in books and movies, whether in Agatha Christie mysteries or horror-fantasies or even comedies.

The seals reveal aspects of the liturgy–such as the relics of the martyrs contained in the altars on which the Eucharist is celebrated–as well as aspects of life that are judged by liturgical participation throughout history. Famine, plague, pestilence, and misery are constants throughout human experience. Many expect these to become especially intense just before the world ends; because of this, when these experiences have become intense in the past, many people expected that the world was about to come to an end.

Everyone loves to calculate and predict when exactly the End will come. Even St. Augustine has to tell his congregation, “Give your fingers a rest!” when they spend too much time and energy doing complicated math problems, trying to figure out when exactly the apocalypse will come. (Full disclosure: I still depend on my fingers to do even simple math problems!)

But it has not yet come to an end.

But the world does come to an end each time we celebrate the Eucharist and take our places in the eternal Kingdom of God. The apocalypse happens every time we proclaim, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The apocalypse happens every time we lift up our hearts.

The apocalypse happens every time we ask the Father to send down the Holy Spirit on us and on these Holy Gifts of bread and wine.

The apocalypse happens every time we say, “Our Father… thy kingdom come.”

The apocalypse happens every time because the Holy Spirit lifts us up from earth to heaven to see Christ revealed in all his glory.

When will the seals be broken? They are always being broken, throughout time (during what we call “secular” history) and eternally (in the celebration of the Eucharist).