, —

as if Mark (14, 23) repeats Plato.

"Demons imitate, μιμησάμενοι. The Eucharist in the sacraments of Mithras, where bread and a cup of water are offered to the initiated, you know... with what words," Justin Martyr is horrified, not quoting the words, probably because they are too similar to the words of the Eucharist he has just quoted. [815] The same "demons" suggested to people that "Dionysus found the vine" and "introduced wine into the Dionysian mysteries." [816] "I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman," Justin must have recalled. "What we call Christianity has always existed, from the beginning of the world to the appearance of Christ in the flesh," teaches Bl. Augustin. If Justin could agree with this, then his horror would perhaps become joy; he would have understood that he had confused the Spirit of God with the "spirit of demons," which, however, was too easy to do, because it is here, on the paths to the Eucharist, that these two Spirits fight, mixing as nowhere else.

XXI

In sacrifices, the most ancient, at least for the memory of mankind (perhaps in the most ancient it was different), man does not yet sacrifice to God at all, but devours him in an animal god or human sacrifice in order to become a god himself. The same thing happens in the later Dionysian mysteries, where "the Maenads, tormenting and devouring their god (the same word τρώγων, as in the sixth chapter of John), hunger to be filled with God, to become 'God-possessed',

Let us recall the testimony of Porphyry about the Dionysian tribe of the Bassars, who lived in the mountain gorges of Thrace, who, in a frenzy of human sacrifices and sacrificial tastes, attacking each other and devouring each other, destroyed themselves without a trace." [817]

It is as if people once knew the whole secret of Flesh and Blood, but then they forgot; They are looking in the dark, by feeling, and they are about to find them. No, they won't. Unquenchable, unquenchable thirst: they drink water as in a dream; they wake up, and thirst even more insatiably. Tantalus' hunger and thirst – this is the torment of all the ancient mysteries of flesh and blood, and especially of the Dionysian ones, who are closest to Christ.

The future Dionysus, the Bacchus of the Eleusinian mysteries, is not yet a body, not an image, but only a shadow, a sound, a cry in the silence of the night (Jakchos – from iakcho, "cry", "call"); The cry and call of all pre-Christian humanity: "I hunger, I thirst! I hunger for Thy flesh, I thirst for Thy blood!" [818] It is this hunger, this thirst, that is quenched in the Eucharist.

The eternal action of Christ in world history, eternal, in time, His "Coming-Presence", παρουσία; between the First and Second Comings the connecting thread – this is what the Eucharist is.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. (I Corinthians 11:26).

XXII

I do not leave you orphans; I will come to you (again).

… The world will no longer see Me, but you will. (John 14:18-19).