The Eucharist

   Protestant attacks on the Catholic Church often focus on the
   Eucharist. This demonstrates that opponents of the Church--mainly
   Evangelicals and Fundamentalists--recognize what central sacramental
   is. What's more, the attacks also show that Fundamentalists are not
   always literalists. This is seen in their interpretation of the key
   biblical passage, chapter six of John's Gospel, in which Christ speaks
   about the sacrament that will be instituted at the Last Supper. This
   tract examines the last half of that chapter.
   
   John 6:30 begins a discussion which took place in the synagogue at
   Capernaum. The Jews asked Jesus what sign he could perform so that
   they might believe in him. As a challenge, they noted that "our
   ancestors ate manna in the desert." Could Jesus top that? He told them
   the real bread from heaven comes from the Father. "Give us this bread
   always," they said. Jesus replied, "I am the bread of life; whoever
   comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never
   thirst." At this point the Jews "murmured at him, because he said, 'I
   am the bread which came down from heaven.' They said, 'Is not this
   Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he
   now say, "I have come down from heaven"'?" (John 6:41-42).
   
    Does this offend you?
    
   To underscore his point, Jesus first repeated what he said, then
   summarized it: "'I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if
   any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which
   I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.' The Jews then
   disputed among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh
   to eat?'" (John 6:51-52).
   
   His listeners were stupefied because now they understood Jesus
   literally--and correctly. He again repeated his words, but with even
   greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about drinking his
   blood. Jesus told 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" (John 6:53-56). Notice that Jesus made no attempt
   to soften what he said, no attempt to correct "misunderstandings," for
   there were none. Our Lord's listeners understood him perfectly well.
   They no longer thought he was speaking metaphorically.If they had
   thought he was speaking metaphorically, if they mistook what he said,
   why no correction? On other occasions when there was confusion, Christ
   explained just what he meant (cf. Matt. 16:5-12). Here, where any
   misunderstanding would be fatal, there was no effort by Jesus to
   correct. Instead, he repeated himself for greater emphasis.
   
   In John 6:60 we read: "Many of his disciples, when they heard it,
   said, 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?'" These were his
   disciples, people who were used to his remarkable ways. He warned them
   not to think carnally, according to what their human judgment would
   tell them, but according to the power of God's Spirit: "It is the
   Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I
   have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:53; cf. 1 Cor.
   2:12-14). Then Jesus eyed them and asked a simple question: "Does this
   offend you?" He made it clear that his hearers had to conform
   themselves to his teachings, not the other way around. His hearers may
   have been bothered by this teaching--even to the
   
   But he knew some did not believe, including the one who was to betray
   him. (It is here, in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell
   away; look at John 6:64.) "'But there are some of you that do not
   believe'" . . . After this, many of his disciples drew back and no
   longer went about with him" (John 6:66).
   
   This is the only record we have of any of Christ's followers forsaking
   him for purely doctrinal reasons. If it had all been a
   misunderstanding, if they erred in taking a metaphor in a literal
   sense, why didn't he call them back and straighten things out? Both
   the Jews, who were suspicious of him, and his disciples, who had
   accepted everything up to this point, would have remained with him had
   he said he was speaking only symbolically.
   
   But he did not correct these protesters. Twelve times he said he was
   the bread that came down from heaven; four times he said they would
   have "to eat my flesh and drink my blood." John 6 was an extended
   promise of what would be instituted at the Last Supper--and it was a
   promise that could not be more explicit. Or so it would seem to a
   Catholic. But what do Fundamentalists say to this?
   
    Merely figurative?
    
   They say that in John 6 Jesus was not talking about physical food and
   drink, but about spiritual food and drink. They quote John 6:35:
   "Jesus said to them, "'I am the bread of life; he who comes to me
   shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.'"
   
   They claim coming to him is bread, having faith in him is drink. Thus,
   eating his flesh and blood merely means believing in Christ.
   
   But there is a problem with that interpretation. As Fr. John O'Brien
   explains, "The phrase 'to eat the flesh and drink the blood,' when
   used figuratively among the Jews, as among the Arabs of today, meant
   to inflict upon a person some serious injury, especially by calumny or
   by false accusation. To interpret the phrase figuratively then would
   be to make our Lord promise life everlasting to the culprit for
   slandering and hating him, which would reduce the whole passage to
   utter nonsense." For an example of this use, see Micah 3:3.
   
   Fundamentalist writers who comment on John 6 also assert one can show
   Christ was speaking only metaphorically by comparing with verses like
   John 10:9 ("I am the door") and John 15:1 ("I am the true vine"). The
   problem is that there is not a connection to John 6:35, "I am the
   bread of life." "I am the door" and "I am the vine" make sense as
   metaphors because Christ is like a door--we go to heaven through
   him--and he is also like a vine--we get our spiritual sap through him.
   But Christ takes John 6:35 far beyond symbolism by saying, "My flesh
   is true food, my blood is true drink" (John 6:55).
   
   He continues: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the
   Father, so he who eats me will live because of me" (John 6:57). The
   Greek word used for "eats" (trogon) is very blunt and has the sense of
   "chewing" or "gnawing." This is not the language of metaphor.
   
    Their main argument
    
   For Fundamentalist writers, the scriptural argument is capped by an
   appeal to John 6:63: "It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is
   of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life."
   They say this means that eating real flesh is a waste. But does this
   make sense?
   
   Are we to understand that Christ, who had just commanded his disciples
   to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless? Is that
   what "the flesh is of no avail" means? "Eat my flesh, but you'll find
   it's a waste of time"--is that what he was saying? Hardly.
   
   The fact is that Christ's flesh avails much! If it were of no avail,
   then the Son of God incarnated for no reason, he died for no reason,
   and he rose from the dead for no reason. Christ's flesh profits us
   more than anyone else's in the world. If it profits us nothing, so
   that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are of no
   avail, then "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then
   those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Cor.
   15:17b-18).
   
   In John 6:63 "flesh profits nothing" refers to mankind's inclination
   to think on a natural level, using only what their natural human
   reason would tell them rather than what God would tell them. Thus in
   John 8:15-16 Jesus tells his opponents: "You judge according to the
   flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true,
   for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me." So
   natural human judgment, unaided by God's grace, is unreliable; but
   God's judgment is always true.
   
   And were the disciples to understand the line "The words I have spoken
   to you are spirit and life" as nothing but a circumlocution (and a
   very clumsy one at that) for "symbolic"? No one can come up with such
   interpretations unless he first holds to the Fundamentalist position
   and thinks it necessary to find a rationale, no matter how forced, for
   evading the Catholic interpretation. In John 6:63 "flesh" does not
   refer to Christ's own flesh--the context makes this clear--but to
   mankind's inclination to think on a natural, human level. "The words I
   have spoken to you are spirit" does not mean "What I have just said is
   symbolic." The word "spirit" is never used that way in the Bible. The
   line means that what Christ has said will be understood only through
   faith; only by the power of the Spirit and the drawing of the Father
   (cf. John 6:37, 44-45, 65).
   
    Paul confirms this
    
   Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is
   it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we
   break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Cor.
   10:16). So when we receive communion, we actually participate in the
   body and blood of Christ, not just eat symbols of them. Paul also
   said: "Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord
   unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord . .
   . For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats
   and drinks judgment on himself" (1 Cor. 11:27, 29). "To answer for the
   body and blood" of someone meant to be guilty of a crime as serious as
   homicide. How could eating mere bread and wine "unworthily" be so
   serious? Paul's comment makes sense only if the bread and wine became
   the real body and blood of Christ.
   
    How did The first Christians understand this passage?
    
   Anti-Catholics also claim the early Church took this chapter
   symbolically. Is that so? Let's see what some early Christians
   thought, keeping in mind that we can learn much about how Scripture
   should be interpreted by examining the writings of early Christians.
   
   Ignatius of Antioch, who had been a disciple of the apostle John and
   who wrote an epistle to the Smyrnaeans about A.D. 110, said, referring
   to "those who hold heterodox opinions," that "they abstain from the
   Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the
   Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which
   suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up
   again" (6:2; 7:1).
   
   Forty years later, Justin Martyr, wrote, "Not as common bread or
   common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior
   was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for
   our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been
   made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and
   by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, . . . is both
   the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology
   66:1-20).
   
   Origen, in a homily written about A.D. 244, attested to belief in the
   Real Presence. "I wish to admonish you with examples from your
   religion. You are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so
   you know how, when you have received the body of the Lord, you
   reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall and lest
   anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves
   guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through
   negligence" (Homilies on Exodus 13:3).
   
   Cyril of Jerusalem, in a catechetical lecture presented in the
   mid-300s, said: "Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as
   simply that, for they are, according to the Master's declaration, the
   body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the
   other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste,
   but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed
   worthy of the body and blood of Christ" (Catechetical Discourses:
   Mystagogic 4:,22:9).
   
   In a fifth-century homily, Theodore of Mopsuestia seemed to be
   speaking to today's Evangelicals and Fundamentalists: "When [Christ]
   gave the bread he did not say, 'This is the symbol of my body,' but,
   'This is my body.' In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood
   he did not say, 'This is the symbol of my blood', but, 'This is my
   blood,' for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements],
   after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit, not
   according to their nature, but to receive them as they are, the body
   and blood of our Lord" (Catechetical Homilies 5:1).
   
    Unanimous testimony
    
   Whatever else might be said, the early Church took John 6 literally.
   In fact, there is no record from the early centuries that implies
   Christians doubted the constant Catholic interpretation. There exists
   no document in which the literal interpretation is opposed and only
   the metaphorical accepted.
   
   Why do Fundamentalists and Evangelicals reject the plain, literal
   interpretation of John 6? For them, Catholic sacraments are out
   because they imply a spiritual reality--grace--being conveyed by means
   of matter. This seems to them to be a violation of the divine plan.
   For many Protestants, matter is not to be used, but overcome or
   avoided.
   
   One suspects, had they been asked by the Creator their opinion of how
   to bring about mankind's salvation, Fundamentalists would have advised
   him to adopt a different approach. How cleaner things would be if
   spirit never dirtied itself with matter! But God, quite literally,
   loves matter--he loves it because he created it--and he loves it so
   much that he comes to us under the appearances of bread and wine.
   
   
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      Last modified May 25, 1996.