Every three years, over the course of four weeks, the Church focuses on Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, with readings covering the passage called the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:22-71). The words of Jesus in this passage are at the heart of Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the teaching that through the words of Consecration spoken by the priest at Mass, the bread and wine become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Risen Christ. In the passage, Jesus also emphasizes the necessity of our eating and drinking his Body and Blood in order to have spiritual life.
However, Christian fundamentalist, who claim to read the Bible completely literally, assert that the words of Jesus in this passage are to be taken figuratively. After all, they say, Jesus uses various metaphors in the Gospels. For example, he calls himself a vine, a gate, and a shepherd. But he is not literally any of those. So, the fundamentalist argument goes, when Jesus says "my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink" (John 6:55), he is speaking metaphorically.
However, even a cursory examination of the Bread of Life Discourse would show the opposite.
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