(Updated July 15, 2025)
This Quote Archive collects pertinent quotes from the Church Father, St. Aphrahat the Persian.
Next to each quote are the topic-based Quote Archives in which they are included.
This Quote Archive is being continuously updated as research continues.
Demonstrations
St. Aphrahat the Persian, Demonstration 4: Of Prayer
O glorious mysteries, which Isaiah saw beforehand! For he said to them, “Your hands are full of blood” (Isa 1:15). What is this blood, which Isaiah foresaw, if not the blood of Christ which they took upon themselves and on their children [Matt. 27:25]; and the blood of the prophets whom they killed? This is the blood which turned red as scarlet and as crimson bespattered them and (so) they would not be cleansed unless they washed themselves in the water of baptism and partake (in) the body and blood of Christ. Blood is washed through the blood (of Christ) and body is cleansed through the body 94 | 95 (of Christ); sins are washed away in water, then prayer converses with the Most High.
St. Aphrahat the Persian, Demonstration 6: Of Monks
(§1) …Whosoever puts on the new man, let him keep himself from all filthiness. Whosoever has put on armor from the water (of baptism), let him not put off his armor that he may not be condemned…
(§14) …For from baptism do we receive the Spirit of Christ. For in that hour in which the priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it descends and moves upon the waters [Gen. 1:2]. And those that are baptized are clothed in it; for the Spirit stays aloof from all that are born of the flesh, until they come to the new birth by water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit. For in the first birth they are born with an animal souls which is created within man and is not thereafter subject to death, as he said: “Adam became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). But in the second birth, that through baptism, they received the Holy Spirit from a particle of the Godhead, and it is not again subject to death. For when men die, the animal spirit is buried with the body, and sense is taken away from it, but the heavenly spirit that they receive goes according to its nature to Christ…Whosoever guards the Spirit of Christ in purity, when it returns to Christ it thus addresses him: “The body into which I went, and which put me on from the water of the baptism, has kept me in holiness.” And the Holy Spirit will be earnest with Christ for the resurrection of that body which kept Him with purity, and the Spirit will request to be again conjoined to it that that body may rise up in glory. And whatever man there is that receives the Spirit from the water (of baptism) and grieves it, it departs from him until he dies, and returns according to its nature to Christ, and accuses that man of having grieved it.
St. Aphrahat the Persian, Demonstration 12: On Passover (344)
For our Savior ate the Passover with his disciples in the watch night of the fourteenth (Nisan). He constituted the sign of the Passover in truth for his disciples. After Judas went out from them, he took bread, blessed and gave to his disciples, and saying to them, “This is my body; take, eat, from it, all of you.” So also he said a blessing over the wine, and saying to them, “This is my blood, the new covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. Thus when you are gathered together you shall do for my memorial” (Matt. 26:26, 28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20). Our Lord was not yet seized. Our Lord said these things [at the Last Supper] and arose, from where He had celebrated the Passover sacrifice and had given His body to eat and His blood to drink, and He went out with His disciples to that place, where He was seized. For after He had eaten His body and drank His blood, He was counted with the dead. 23 | 24
Our Lord gave His body and by His own hands to eat. He gave His blood to drink before He was crucified…And He was among the dead in the night during which the fifteenth dawned, the night of Sabbath, the whole day and three hours in Friday, and in the night during which Sunday dawned, at the time He had given His body and blood to His disciples, He rose from the Sheol.
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