Christ in 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 one of Catholicism’s core
doctrines. What’s more, the attacks 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 colloquy that 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 understood him to be speaking metaphorically.
Again and Again
Jesus first repeated what he said, then summarized:
"‘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: "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).
No Corrections
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, 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 used to his remarkable ways. He warned them
not to think carnally, but spiritually: "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" (John 6:63; cf. 1 Cor. 2:12–14).
But he knew some did not believe. (It is here,
in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John 6:64.)
"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?
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 that 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 A. 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"
(O’Brien, The Faith of Millions, 215). For an example of this use,
see Micah 3:3.
Fundamentalist writers who comment on John 6 also
assert that one can show Christ was speaking only metaphorically by comparing
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, "For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood
is drink indeed" (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 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 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.
What Did the First Christians Say?
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 a letter 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 much cleaner
things would be if spirit never dirtied itself with matter! But God approves
of matter—he approves of it because he created it—and he approves of it
so much that he comes to us under the appearances of bread and wine, just
as he does in the physical form of the Incarnate Christ.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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