Sermons

Dearly-beloved, utter this confession with all your heart and reject the wicked lies of heretics, that your fasting and almsgiving may not be polluted by any contagion with error: for then is our offering of the sacrifice clean and our gifts of mercy holy, when those who perform them understand that which they do. For when the Lord says, “unless you have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man, and drunk His blood, you will not have life in you,” you ought so to be partakers at the Holy Table, as to have no doubt whatever concerning the reality of Christ's Body and Blood.

For that is taken in the mouth which is believed in Faith, and it is vain for them to respond Amen who dispute that which is taken. But when the Prophet says, “Blessed is he, who considers the poor and needy,” he is the praiseworthy distributor of clothes and food among the poor, who knows he is clothing and feeding Christ in the poor: for He Himself says, “as long as you have done it to one of My brethren, you have done it to Me.” And so Christ is One, True God and True Man, rich in what is His own, poor in what is ours, receiving gifts and distributing gifts, Partner with mortals, and the Quickener of the dead, so that in the “name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father,” living and reigning with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

Amen.