Friday in the Third Week of Easter, April 28, 2023

John 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.

“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”  The Jews ask a good question, but they do not ask the only one who could answer it.  Instead, they “quarreled among themselves”.  The Greek text is stronger, saying that they “were fighting” or “battling”.  The use of the imperfect tense indicates that this went on for an extended time: “The Jews were fighting among the,selves, saying, etc.”  That is, they did not all reject the Lord’s words out of hand, though some undoubtedly did, but argued heatedly about what they meant.  

“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.”  The Lord reiterates on his teaching and insists on the literal meaning of his words.  He also claims to be the Son of Man, which reminds them that he is far more than a prophet.  He is the Messiah from God.  His teaching them that they must eat his Body and drink his Blood does violence to their idea of the Messiah, however, and this also inflamed members of the crowd against him.  The “life” the Lord speaks of is the life of grace, a sharing in the divine life which confers eternal life in heaven on the who possesses it.  “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”  John’s Gospel is the only one of the four that does not contain an extended teaching on the end of the world — for that we must go to the Book of Revelation, a collection of visions which John received years later.

“For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink.”  That is, the food you and I eat is modeled after the Body of Christ.  It is the Body of Christ which is true food; what we eat and drink shares a couple of properties with it but is still a faint copy.  Perhaps all we can can really say they have in common is that they both nourish.  “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.”  Thus, the Flesh and Blood of the Lord is greater than us: it does not remain with us, but we remain in him through it.  We receive him in order to be received by him.  This remaining and the nourishment that accompanies it lasts through our lives unless we fall into the serious misfortune of sinning.  “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.”  “I have life”: the Greek says, “I am living”.  The first means something like, I have life now, at this moment.  The second means that the Father is sustaining his life.  Life is not a feature or quality that we can have, as though possessing it.  It is a gift from God who continuously gives it, sustaining us in every moment.  God does not give life as though it were a one-time gift but which he showers upon us for as long as he wills.

“Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  While God indeed gave manna to the Hebrews, it had as a more important purpose that of God’s preeminent sign to the Chosen People of the Body of Christ which he would offer them.  Jesus fulfills the sign with his own Body and Blood, and he makes this abundantly clear to the Jews.  Protestants who think the Lord is speaking symbolically here err in that the Lord would hardly say that he was fulfilling a sign with another sign (or, even weaker, a “symbol”).

Let us be very conscious of who we are receiving when we present ourselves for Holy Communion, and who it is who receives us.