"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
To give his flesh as bread for the life of the world was a promise that was about as far from what was expected of the messiah as anything could be. It seemed impossible. And if it were somehow possible it seemed ill-advised. This was at least the posture of those who had grown a little too accustomed to living more on bread than on "every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD". The alternative posture was not necessarily one of perfect comprehension. Peter and the others did not understand the why or the how of what Jesus had said. But they continued to trust in his words. They knew that if he had said it he could do it. He could himself become, in his flesh, life-giving bread for the world.
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.
As difficult of a doctrine as the Eucharist is it is far more strange and incomprehensible without the context of the Old Testament. That the Eucharist didn't come out of nowhere was tied to the fact that Jesus was, as John the Baptist pointed out, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It was the sacrifice of the lamb that allowed its life to be offered to God and then shared by those who offered it. But the lamb was only a temporary stand-in while the world waited on the one who could truly offer what the lamb merely signified.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (see First Corinthians 5:7-8).
What is expected of us now that the true lamb of God has been offered? That we keep the feast, celebrate the festival. And what festival is that, exactly? Merely that of the Old Covenant? No, because it was transformed by the Passover meal Jesus celebrated in his Last Supper. During the meal Jesus offered his own Body and Blood as a living sacrifice to the Father. It was the unbloody version of what was about the take place on the cross. In fact, without the Last Supper the cross would not have been recognizable as a liturgical sacrifice. It would have only seemed to be an execution. But that separation of the Blood from the Body of Jesus on the cross was in fact the same offering Jesus made at his Last Supper. And it is the same offering that he continues to make through his priesthood in every valid mass.
All of the sacrifices offered before Jesus in some way addressed the guilt of sin, but only temporarily and imperfectly. They did not address the root cause. The animals could not really take upon them the sins of others. A lamb could not convey its spotless innocence to those who partook. Even those who anointed their doorposts with the blood of the lamb only deferred death from taking them temporarily. It would still come for them in time. The sacrificial meal could in some sense unite those who received it. But it could not truly bring them together as one Body.
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.
The self-offering of Jesus was different. So too were the Body and Blood that with which he desired to feed the world from the sacrificial meals found in the Old Testament. In feeding on Jesus his followers received the true life that was only hinted at in the past. The blood, which contained, as it was thought, the life of the animal, had been reserved for God. Drinking blood was considered an abomination. But now, precisely because it was God's own life that was to be shared, partaking in the Blood of Jesus was not only permitted, but commanded. The sins of those who availed themselves of this sacrifice were truly forgiven. The more they consumed the sacrificial lamb the more the root cause of sin would be addressed and they themselves transformed. It was truly food for the journey, addressing exactly the needs of those who are pilgrims in this world. And where other meals may bring us together, the Eucharist truly makes us one, since it unites all of us to the one Body of Jesus himself.
Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.
We have been told much about the promise of the Eucharist. And yet it remains an elusive mystery, since our own experience of it often seems so ordinary. After all the bread and the wine, though transformed, still seem ordinary to our senses. And so too with the transformation that they bring about in us. It is usually not overwhelmingly obvious to us in the moment. But it is real. Therefore we should not grow lukewarm and take this gift for granted. We should come and keep coming to the one whose words are Spirit in life. We need to pray for the faith to see past the humble appearances of bread and wine to everything promised to us by Jesus himself contained within. The more we approach the Eucharist with faith the more we will be open to being transformed by it.
He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit
- Saint Ephrem the Syrian
Damascus Worship (feat. MarySarah Menkhaus) - Body And Blood
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