The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
We can only imagine how scandalized the Judeans must have been by this statement of Jesus, that the bread that he would give was his flesh for the life of the world. Even at our own historical remove we can easily see how shocking and unexpected these words must have been. It was one thing to speak metaphorically, suggesting that he was the divine wisdom that they needed, symbolically, to consume. It was another thing to suggest that his Body and his Blood was something he could literally give as a gift, which they could then receive. They did not understand that he was the true lamb of sacrifice and that he was inviting them to partake of the sacrificial feast, whereby they shared in the virtue of the offering, and were united as one in it. The Passover lamb need not only be sacrificed, but also consumed. But the reason animals were sacrificed was in some way to be a substitute for what humans should but could not do themselves. If Jesus had been a mere man, and not also divine, his death could not have been a truly atoning sacrifice, much less could consuming his flesh have any positive effects. Indeed, for a mere man, such a thing would be horrific. But for the God man, as it turned out, it was quite different.
The shock value of the Eucharist was like the shock value of the cross itself. For a mere human crucifixion was entirely negative, a triumph of violence. But for Jesus, the violence of the cross was transformed into a self-sacrificial gift, and a triumph of love. And the Eucharist was a representation of this offering. Yet the cross was not an easy thing to see. It implied that if this was what was necessary as a cure then the disease must have been dire indeed. Thus consuming the Body and Blood of the victim also makes us realize, each time, that this is no trivial gift we receive.
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.
Jesus didn't back down when his audience quarreled among themselves, but rather doubled down. He insisted that his Body and Blood were not nice to have optional extras, but rather the very means, the only means, by which they could receive true life. They already had provisional life, physical and temporal. But they did not possess spiritual life, and, in such a state, did not merit the resurrection to life on the last day.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
The reason Jesus didn't just wave his hands and impart life as some kind of amorphous spiritual force was that what he meant by life, in the truest sense, had to be more than that. It was precisely his presence living in them, his life in them, that was meant to be their life. It was not something that could be had independently of Jesus. The reason for this that what he was sharing was something of his own life, his divine life, that he received from the Father. It wasn't just longevity. It was anything but continuing life endlessly in its present unregenerated form. It was the only kind of forever worth having. It was God himself.
We who receive the Eucharist regularly often find it easy to take it for granted. We may have a regularly positive experience of it without noticing such lofty effects as it would seem to promise. Aquinas would suggest that if we grow in our sincerity in receiving then the reception will bear more fruit. For him this meant it was necessary to desire the union with Christ the Eucharist signified, and to do our part to remove every obstacle to that union.
There is insincerity when the interior state does not agree with what is outwardly signified. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, what is outwardly signified is that Christ is united to the one who receives it, and such a one to Christ. Thus, one who does not desire this union in his heart, or does not try to remove every obstacle to it, is insincere. Consequently, Christ does not abide in him nor he in Christ.- Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John
We may remove some obstacles. We may desire that union weakly and partially. But there is unlimited potential for upward growth. There will always be more. However much the Eucharist means to us already we can have great hope knowing that we have only scratched the surface.
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