Gospel reading: Jn 6:52-59
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
REFLECTIONS
My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink
We have reached the summit of Jesus’ discourse on the Bread of Life. In the preceding revelation, Jesus refers to his person as “bread.” His words are also “bread.” This can refer to Jesus as the source of life and communion with God.
“Communion” of this bread is believing in Jesus.
But Jesus makes a deeper and more controversial claim: “Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life in you.” This is not simply believing in Jesus but real partaking of his body and blood, though not in a cannibalistic way. Jesus makes this possible in the sacrament of the Eucharist where the consecrated bread becomes his body and the consecrated wine becomes his blood. Again this communion is not just symbolic; it is real.
Pope John Paul II teaches that one aspect of the Eucharist that, more than any other, makes a demand on our faith is the mystery of the “real” presence. He writes: “With the entire tradition of the Church, we believe that Jesus is truly present under the Eucharistic species. This presence – as Pope Paul VI rightly explained – is called “real” not in an exclusive way, as if to suggest that other forms of Christ’s presence are not real, but par excellence, because Christ thereby becomes substantially present, whole and entire, in the reality of his body and blood” (Mane Nobiscum Domine, 16).
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