Receive what you are: Chrysostom and Augustine in 1662

A Twitter exchange today led to this article by Schmemann.  Included in the article was a wonderful Chrysostom quote concerning the Eucharist:

He mixed Himself with us and dissolved His body in us so that we may constitute a wholeness, be a body united to the Head.

This, of course, is also a repeated theme in Augustine:

That bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive - Sermon 227;

And therefore receive and eat the body of Christ, yes, you that have become members of Christ in the body of Christ - Sermon 228b;

What you receive is what you yourselves are, thanks to the grace by which you have been redeemed - Sermon 229a.

This patristic celebration of the unity of the sacramental gift of the Lord's Body in the Eucharist and the Church's identity as the Body of Christ is also a key feature of both post-Communion prayers in the 1662 Holy Communion.  The Prayer of Oblation proclaims:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee.

The power of this deeply sacrificial language comes from the fact that it refers to "we, who are partakers of this Holy Communion".  We do indeed become what we receive, united to our Head - "a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice".

In the Prayer of Thanksgiving, we rejoice in this mystical communion, renewed in the Sacrament:

Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee, for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ ... and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people.

What is particularly significant is that this richly patristic theme receives much less prominence in contemporary Anglican Eucharistic rites, rather than being a focus of post-Communion thanksgiving as in 1662. 'Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory' falls very far short as an account of the transformative grace received in the Eucharist, whereas the 1662 post-Communion prayers embody a much deeper and more robust Christological and ecclesiological understanding of what it is to faithfully receive the Sacrament.  Consider the contrast, for example, between 'Send us out ...' and the closing petition of 1662's post-Communion Prayer of Thanksgiving:

And we most humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.

This is a reminder that while contemporary Anglican Eucharistic rites can claim to be more patristic in their shape, it is the content of the 1662 rite (and related rites) that is the more patristic.  Such patristic content is why the 1662 Holy Communion needs to be retained as an ongoing, lived part of the Anglican experience, giving prayerful expression to the teaching of Chrysostom and Augustine on what it is to receive and be the Body of Christ.