Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil; thinking on our Head, and on the love which He has shown for us.… Our Lord says: “But I feed you with My own flesh, desiring that you all be nobly born, and holding forth to you good hopes for the future.… I have willed to become your Brother, for your sake I shared in flesh and blood, and in turn I give out to you the flesh and the blood by which I became your kinsman.” This blood causes the image of our King to be fresh within us, produces beauty unspeakable, permits not the nobleness of our souls to waste away, watering it continually, and nourishing it.… This blood, if rightly taken, drives away devils, and keeps them afar off from us, while it calls to us angels and the Lord of angels. For wherever they see the Lord’s blood, devils flee, and angels run together. This blood poured forth washed clean all the world.… This blood cleansed the secret place, and the Holy of Holies. And if the type of it had such great power in the temple of the Hebrews, and in the midst of Egypt, when smeared on the door-posts, much more the reality. This blood sanctified the golden altar; without it the high priest dared not enter into the secret place. This blood consecrated priests, this in type cleansed sins. But if it had such power in the types, if death so shuddered at the shadow, tell me how would it not have dreaded the very reality? This blood [of Christ] is the salvation of our souls, by this the soul is washed, by this is beautiful, by this is inflamed, this causes our understanding to be more bright than fire, and our soul more beaming than gold. This blood was poured forth, and made heaven accessible.
John Chrysostom, Homilies on John 46.3
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