The Eucharist, Part 6

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~

Today we continue our twenty part series on the Eucharist. In case you missed the first three, you can find them here. This is in keeping with Archbishop Etienne’s pastoral letter on the Eucharist that you can find here (in case you missed it). Enjoy.

May God Bless You,

Fr. Thomas Nathe

Trent Horn, 20 Answers – The Eucharist. Catholic Answers Press. 2015
Get your own copy from Catholic.com

Question #6:
Is the Bread of Life discourse in John 6 evidence for the Real Presence?

Unlike the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John’s Gospel does not contain a description of the Last Supper.  Instead, John offered a teaching of Jesus that complements what the other Gospels tell us in their depictions of the Last Supper.

John 6 takes place after Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 people.  The bread of life passage begins with a group of people following him because of this miracle.  Christ knows that they seek more bread, so he tells them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” (Jn 6:35).  They still question Jesus about who he is, which prompts him to answer, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51).

We could take Jesus to mean that his “bread” is the body he will offer up on the cross for the sins of the world.  But then Jesus makes his real point abundantly clear when the people ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  Jesus tells them:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me (Jn 6:53-57).

The original Greek here communicates an even more powerful message than what we read in English.  Earlier in the passage Jesus uses phago, a generic word for eating, but in these verses he switches to trogo, which means “to gnaw or chew.”  Likewise, Jesus uses the word sarx, which means the soft, fleshy substance that covers the body, and not soma, which just means “body.”  His word choice, as rendered in the Greek, underscores that he is talking about real, physical chewing and eating.

In response to this interpretation of the passage, some people say that Jesus was speaking symbolically.  Because in verse 35 Jesus said, “He who comes to me will never hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst,” these critics infer that by “eating” Jesus means to “come to him spiritually” and that by “drinking his blood” he means “believing in Jesus by faith.”  But the Bread of Life discourse is not only one section with one meaning.  Verses 1 to 47 are indeed symbolic in nature, with Jesus using earthly metaphors to teach the importance of believing in him.

But it doesn’t make sense to say that Jesus was being symbolic throughout the discourse.  In verse 35, for example, Jesus said that whoever believes in him will never thirst, which makes us think of water.  Jesus could have continued to refer to himself as a source of living water that we should drink, as he does in John 4:14 and John 7:37-38.  Instead, Jesus tells us to drink his blood, an act that had been forbidden since the days of Noah (Gn 9:4).  Furthermore, the Hebrew idiom “to eat one’s flesh” means to curse or revile someone (cf. Micah 3:3).  If Jesus were being symbolic and not literal, then his words “eat my flesh” would mean he wanted us to curse him and break God’s law in order to gain eternal life.

A more plausible explanation than the symbolic one is that Jesus was literally referring to manna, or heavenly food, throughout the entire discourse.  As Brant Pitre argues in his book Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, many ancient Jews expected a Davidic messiah who would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, but other Jews expected a Mosaic messiah who would inaugurate a new Exodus and lead Israel to a new heavenly promised land.  One of the signs of the Mosaic messiah would be his ability to produce manna, the miraculous bread that fell from heaven and fed the Israelites in the wilderness after they left Egypt (Ex 16).

In John 6:49, Jesus spoke of providing the people with bread that is superior to the old manna.  As Pitre says:

If the old manna was the miraculous “food of the angels,” could the new manna be just ordinary bread and wine?  If so, that would make the old manna greater than the new! . . . If Jesus had wanted his Jewish disciples to regard the Eucharist as ordinary food and drink, he would certainly never have identified it as the new manna from heaven.

Finally, John told us that, “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (Jn 6:66).  Even the disciples questioned Jesus’ teaching, but Jesus did not reassure them that he was being symbolic.  He had done this on another occasion, when the disciples thought Jesus was talking about literal food when he was actually speaking metaphorically about doing the Father’s will (Jn 4:32-34).  In the case of the Bread of Life discourse, Jesus reaffirmed the difficulty of this teaching, and the disciples continued to follow him, because they knew he had, as Peter said, “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68-69).