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. As Jesus speaks in this passage, his audience challenges him precisely because they cannot accept the literal meaning of his words. At this point, Jesus could easily deflect the criticism by assuring this audience that he was just speaking metaphorically. But he does not do so. Instead, he doubles down and states the teaching even more strongly. Once again, his audience objects to the literal meaning of his words. Once again, he responds with an even stronger articulation of his teaching.
The cycle repeats one more time, until most of his audience leaves and only his inner circle remains behind. In fact, after this exchange, a number of his disciples stop following him altogether. All of that could have been avoided if Jesus had simply stated that he was speaking metaphorically, as he did in some other teachings. But he very much reiterates and reinforces the literal meaning of his words.
The Catholic Church has always believed in the literal meaning of the Bread of Life Discourse, as evidenced by the works of the earliest post-New Testament writers, where we find the same basic teachings expressed with regard to the Eucharist. As Catholic theology developed over the centuries, the Church gained deeper insights into the mystery of the Eucharist, but the teaching itself always stayed the same.
One such deeper insight has to do with the way in which we understand the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. On the one hand, as discussed in a previous reflection, the Eucharist is an inscrutable mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. On the other hand, philosophical reflection can help us gain some insights into the mystery. In the 13th century, the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas used the metaphysical system of Aristotle to help us understand the Eucharist more deeply. Aquinas worked out the theology of transubstantiation, which is based on the perspective that each object has what are known as essential qualities and accidental qualities.
For example, take an object like a table. We have many different tables – different shapes and colors and made out of different materials. Those variations are the accidental qualities of a table. But we also have something that all tables have in common, what makes them a table as opposed to other objects – their “tableness,” as we might say. The quality that makes a table different from all other objects is its essential quality.
The concept of transubstantiation means that the essential quality of bread and of wine is changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Risen Christ. Outwardly, in their accidental qualities, the consecrated host and wine will still seem like bread and wine. But in their essential qualities, they have been transformed into Christ. We should also add that both the consecrated bread and the wine are fully Christ. We do not receive less of Christ if we receive only the consecrated host or the consecrated wine, though it is a good spiritual and liturgical practice to receive both when we have the opportunity.
Jesus states categorically in the Bread of Life Discourse: "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you" (John 6:53). Receiving the Eucharist regularly is absolutely essential for our spiritual life, just as eating regular food is essential for our physical life. The Eucharist sustains us from day to day as we go through life, helping us to face the myriad vicissitudes that we are bound to encounter. As we saw in previous reflections, through the Eucharist, we receive eternal life, becoming partakers of the endless, infinite Divine Life of the Holy Trinity. Indeed, if we really understood the true meaning of the Eucharist, we would spend half our time preparing ourselves for our reception of Communion and the other half thanking God for his indescribable gift.
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The readings for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B are:
Prv 9:1-6
Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
Eph 5:15-20
Jn 6:51-58
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Synangogue at Capernaum, built on the floor plan of the first century synagogue where Jesus proclaimed the Bread of Life discourse (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.