Accessing the Texts & Translations
The texts and translations on this site can be freely copied and used in any manner the user desires. Nothing is copyrighted. We would appreciate, however, an acknowledgement of the source from which you have obtained the text. It would help spread the word to a wider audience. Our desire is for these texts to be used far and wide.
It is important to remember that no church father ever wrote a treatise specifically on the Eucharist in the centuries covered by this site (1-8). The first such treatise was written in the ninth century. The texts in centuries 1-8 are all the more important because they were embedded in other themes and texts. Taken together, they demonstrate the profound faith of the church in the Eucharist during these first eight centuries.
The texts can be accessed by author, text name, or date range. For example, if you wish to have all of Augustine’s eucharistic texts, you simply type his name in the search box (or click on his name in the list of Latin fathers). If you know the name of a specific texts like The Confessions or Commentary on John, you may type it into the search box. If more than one author wrote a work by that title, all of them will appear. If you wish to have all the works in a specific time frame, say 300-450, type in the dates and all the fathers in both languages (Greek and Latin) will appear.
All Results:
Sermon 5, On the Pascha
For the invisible priest converts visible creatures into the substance of his body and blood by the secret power of his word. He says, “Take and eat; this is my body.” After the sanctification is repeated, “Take and drink; this is my blood.” So, the heights of heaven,...
Sermon 2 (Mystagogical on the Passover)
1. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So however many of us call on the Lord, we received salvation once the Egyptians died, let us learn to eat the Passover not as the foolish Jews who still follow a shadow after the advent of the truth as each one...
Homily on Blessed Philogonius (PG 48: 753-756)
[Excerpt 1]: Because of this I greet and love this day [of Christ’s birth] and I put love front and center that I may make you sharers of this love-charm. For this reason, I beg and entreat you all to be here with all diligence and readiness for each should empty his...
On the Priesthood, 3:4 (excerpt 1)
The priesthood exercises itself on earth but possesses an array of heavenly orders. This is very fitting. It is not a man, not angel, not an archangel, not any other creature, but the Advocate (Paraclete) himself who has commanded this arrangement. He impelled those...
On the Priesthood, 3:4 (excerpt 2)
Picture Elijah with your eyes, and a boundless crowd standing around with the sacrifice lying on the stones, and all the rest of the people in quiet and silence with only the prophet praying. Then suddenly a flame descends from heaven upon the sacrificial animal....
On the Priesthood, 3:4 (excerpt 3)
When you see the Lord sacrificed and lying there and the priest standing with the sacrifice praying along with all who have become red with that precious blood, then do you still think you are among men and standing on earth? Rather, aren’t you immediately transported...
On the Priesthood, 3:5-6
Away with madness! For madness clearly overlooks such a great foundation (ἀρχή) without which we have neither salvation or obtain the good things proclaimed to us. For if no one can enter the kingdom of heaven except he is born again through water and the Spirit, and...
On the Priesthood, 6:4 (excerpt 1)
For I think that the boldness of Moses and of Elijah are not ever sufficient for such a great supplication. As he was entrusted with the whole world, and himself the father of all, so he [the priest] is attached to God to beg for the cessation of wars everywhere, for...
On the Priesthood, 6:4 (excerpt 2)
But when he calls on the Holy Spirit and completes that awesome sacrifice, he lays hold of the one who is the common Master of all. In what order shall we place him? Tell me. How much purity and piety shall we demand of him? Ponder what kind of hands a priest should...
Apotheosis: lines 355-359
Are you so foolish so as not to realize that you are representing our Paschal mysteries and that, when you smear doorposts with lines of the old law, you are in every way portraying the sacrament that is safeguarded by the true victim’s death, the sacrifice that...