Jesus is the Bread of Life, His Blood is Real Drink

I believe the Scriptural support for the Catholic belief that in Communion the bread and wine really do become the body and blood of Christ is very strong. Yet, John chapter 6 was exactly where my parish priest took me when I was leaving the Catholic Church, and it didn’t convince me. After God led me back to the Catholic Church, I studied John 6 and thought, “How could I have missed that? What standard am I holding Jesus to if I’m not going to accept His words ‘My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink’ as literal? What would He have had to say? How could He put it any more bluntly?”

Read John chapter 6 and pay attention to the questions posed by the crowd. At one point, they say “How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven.’?”

Jesus replies in v. 51: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

Then they argue among themselves, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat.” Notice that they are taking Jesus literally in vs. 52. But Jesus doesn’t correct them and explain that He was only referring symbolically to His sacrifice on the cross, or in belief in His words. Rather, He reiterates even more strongly:

53 - 55. Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

After that, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed him. They understood Him to be speaking literally, and they couldn’t accept it.

Check out 1 Corinth 10:16 & 1 Corinth 11:23 – 29 (especially vs. 27)

John 6:55-56 & 1Corinth 11:27 both talk about the body & the blood of Christ. Some other verses could easily be symbolic instead of literal, since the Church is the Body of Christ, the Word of God is the bread of life that we could feed on, etc. But here, Jesus not only says to feed or ‘chew’ on His flesh, which could be symbolic of Scripture – His Word, but He also says to drink His blood. I am not familiar of any similar metaphors or symbolism for the blood of Christ.

Also, the context of 1 Corinth 11 is indeed the problem of some believers taking more than their share during Communion and others are left without. Verses 33-34 bear that out quite clearly. However, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that they were not only sinning against each other (the Body of Christ in one sense), but also against the Body and Blood of Christ present in the wine and the bread. The double meaning makes more sense to me, because St. Paul does not only accuse them of sinning against the body of the Lord, but also the blood of the Lord in vs. 27. It’s clear that there is more going on here than just lack of consideration for other believers.

The Road to Emmaus

A beautiful connection between Scripture and the Catholic Mass is shown in Luke 24, the encounter with Christ on the Road to Emmaus. vs. 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. …. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

In a Catholic Mass, the Scriptures are always opened in the first half of the liturgy, the Liturgy of the Word. We always begin in the OT and move into the NT to point to Christ. The second half of the Mass is the Liturgy of the Eucharist (or the Liturgy of Thanksgiving, since Eucharist means thanksgiving). In vs. 30, it mentions that Jesus gave thanks. So the pattern of the Mass follows the pattern of the encounter on the road to Emmaus. It’s also informative that exactly when their eyes were opened and they recognized him, He disappeared from their sight. That was immediately following Jesus giving them the bread. It helps explain a lot about why Jesus related to them the way He did (hiding Himself) and then disappearing. He was showing that now He was “hidden” in the bread.

God With Us
A beautiful thought was shared with me soon after I returned to the Catholic Church by another convert. I may have asked why we would need the presence of Christ in the Eucharist when as a Christian, we are a temple of the Holy Spirit and God is always with us. He observed that the Holy Spirit is God’s way of being with us spiritually, and the Eucharist is God’s way of coming close to us physically. We are spirit and body, and God relates to us that way.

Idolatry?

To a non-Catholic Christian, the thought that God could become present in a piece of bread, or that the bread can become the flesh of Jesus seems blasphemous. However, it occurred to me that 1^st Century Jews thought the exact same thing about the Incarnation. It’s not that human flesh was worthy of Christ, but Jesus redeemed humanity by lowering Himself. It is certainly God’s prerogative if He chooses to use something even lower in importance to become present to us, and Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John seem to indicate that is the choice He has made. And just as no human can have faith that Jesus is God without the God revealing it to them, so also, one cannot believe that the bread in Holy Communion becomes the Body of Christ unless the Holy Spirit gives us that faith.

Recently, I was spending time in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. I thought about the possibility of idolatry. If the Catholic Church is wrong on this teaching, than what I was doing was certainly idolatry, just as the golden calf in Exodus, or money, sports, technology or sex have become idols today. So I compared the fruits of those other idolatrous activities to the fruits I see in the lives of Catholics who spend time praying to our Lord in Eucharistic Adoration. I see the fruits of the Holy Spirit manifested more in my life when I pray in such a way, and in the lives of other adorers. I have found that it is a path to becoming more Christ-like.

This Is My Body

Jesus didn’t say, “this represents my body” and one might argue that doesn’t prove the Catholic position, and it doesn’t. That’s why I included everything above! Better than my reasoning from Scripture though, is the reasoning of the early church. Sacred Tradition is clear that this was the orthodox belief of Christianity from the very beginning. It wasn’t doubted until the 1500’s. Perhaps another day I will add a post on some of that evidence.