The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
They Judeans quarreled because they began to realize that Jesus was suggesting something more the mere metaphor, more than, say, profoundly internalizing his wisdom and his teaching. The Torah nourished, and in this sense it could be bread. But Flesh?
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.
If they had been following along to this point the crowd may now have felt as though the ground shifted underneath them. They may well have recognized the inherent sacrificial overtones of the words flesh and blood. But they understood well what such terminology meant when applied to animals, what it meant to eat the flesh of animal sacrifices. They had no sense for how this was to apply to the one the Baptizer had called the "lamb of God". They certainly had no sense that the very death which many of them would go on to insight and champion would be the occasion for that sacrifice. Even his chosen twelve did not immediately grasp Jesus meant, but decided to nevertheless hold fast to their trust in the one who had the words of eternal life.
"For the life of the flesh is in the blood ... Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood" (see Leviticus 17:12).
The animals of the Old Testament sacrificial economy were offered in some sense so that human life could be spared. The flesh of the sacrificial animal was consumed to bring together in communion those who received it together. But what could this mean for Jesus, even if he was to be a sacrifice somehow? This was to be something above and beyond any previous sacrifice, in proof of which was his teaching that his Blood was true drink. For in all previous sacrifices the blood was reserved for God himself, containing as it did the "life" of the animal. We were not to debase ourselves by trying to build ourselves up with the power of animal spirits, nor of human conquests, as some pagans were known to do. But for Jesus himself things were different. He was not offering merely food and drink, not merely dead flesh and lifeless blood. Rather, he was offering himself as a means for receiving divine life. His life was in the blood and it was this very life that he intended to give.
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.
Jesus did die the death we were meant to die. But his sacrificial banquet did not end at the slaughter of the lamb. It would not, will not, be complete until we are all restored to communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, until we are filled with life.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
Jesus offered wisdom and a teaching, but also more than that. Those who believed that he alone had the words of everlasting life would continue with him even when faced with a "difficult teaching" that caused many who had previously followed him to turn aside. Embracing his Word would thus be consummated and completed by receiving his Body and Blood. And this, as we know, describes the Mass exactly.
On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus,
a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
In the Eucharist we encounter Jesus himself. Because this is so he can reorient us and give us new direction even as he did for Saul. He can make of those formerly the most guilty of persecution and destruction into chosen instruments, ready and willing to suffer for the sake of the Name. Indeed, for us, it is only when we truly realize what we have been given, especially in the Eucharist, that we are able to count all else is loss as Saul learned to do.
Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes
and he regained his sight.
He got up and was baptized,
and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.
We need to come together around the table of the Lord, at the banquet of the lamb's sacrifice. For it is there that we are taught the truth and the scales that blind us fall from our eyes. It is there that we eat the true heavenly food and receive a strength that is not at all about our level of nutrition or physical fitness. It is from there that we are empowered and impelled to go forth just as was Saul.
He stayed some days with the disciples in Damascus,
and he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues,
that he is the Son of God.
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