Hi everyone, welcome back to logical Bible study.
This is where we take a look at the Gospel reading from today's
Catholic Mass, and we give you the tools to do an exegesis on
the text. What might the the literal sense
of the text be? What's the author trying to
communicate to the original audience?
And that's where we always want to start as Catholics, because
that's where the true original meaning is.
And today we're looking at a really interesting text which
has generated a lot of discussion and informs Catholic
teaching a great deal. So we're looking today at John
chapter 6, verses 51 to 58. Jesus said to the crowd, I am
the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that
I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.
The Jews started arguing with one another, How can this man
give us his flesh to eat? Jesus replied, I tell you most
solemnly, If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you will not have life in you.
Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life,
and I shall raise Him up on the last day, for my flesh is real
food, and my blood is real drink.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live
in Him. As I, who am sent by the living
Father myself, draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me
will draw life from me. This is the bread come down from
heaven. Not like the bread our ancestors
ate, they are dead. But anyone who eats this bread
will live forever. So this is part of the great
bread of life discourse, and there's a whole lot going on in
this discourse and it spans about 30 verses, and we're right
in the heart of it here. So prior to this, Jesus has been
talking to the Jews about the manner in the wilderness because
they placed a high value on that manner in the wilderness and
they saw it as bread that God himself had provided from
heaven, which is true. But now Jesus uses that to make
a new point. Verse 51 I am the living bread
which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will
live forever. So Jesus here says that unlike
the Manor, to eat the Son of God as the one that has come down
from heaven will give one eternal life, whereas the Manor
couldn't. So Jesus here says I am the
living bread, whereas the Manor was not really living bread.
What does it mean to eat this bread?
This is an interesting question, and of course we're going to see
more of this as the teaching develops today.
In today's passage to eat the bread, while on one level it
could refer to Jesus as taking Jesus in in a spiritual
nourishment way, feeding on Jesus in a spiritual way.
It could be that however, the words that Jesus uses in the
coming verses, he kind of amplifies it a bit and it
suggests that it's a much more literal kind of eating that
Jesus has in mind. Notice Jesus says here, whoever
eats this bread will live forever.
Now that's probably deliberately a reference to the tree of life
in the Garden of Eden. The only other time we see this
phrase about eating in order to get eternal life is in reference
to the Garden of Eden. So Jesus opens up the way to
immortality, which was lost in the Garden of Eden, and he now
tells people that once again there is a way to enter eternal
life and it's by feeding on him. Now Jesus gets a bit more
specific in the second-half of verse 51.
The bread that I shall give is my flesh.
So notice this, the bread from heaven isn't Jesus in general.
It is his flesh that is the bread from heaven.
So, so far Jesus has said to achieve eternal life one must
eat his flesh. And he then says the flesh that
I will give for the life of the world.
When does Jesus give his flesh for the life of the world?
Well, the obvious answer is through his death on the cross.
That was a substitutionary sacrifice where Jesus gave his
life for the world. However, that flesh that Jesus
used to die on the cross, that can't easily be eaten.
We can't really eat Jesus flesh on the cross as such.
So Jesus probably has in mind here a different event that's
closely connected to his death on the cross, but which does
enable us to eat his flesh. And that would be the Eucharist.
We see this obviously unpacked more at the Last Supper when
Jesus says this is my body given for you.
And that is, think about it. That's what Jesus says at the
Last Supper. This is my body.
It's the same kind of language here.
Jesus here says I will give my flesh for the life of the world.
And at the Last Supper he says this is my body.
In fact, at the Eucharist, the same Greek word is used for this
is my body given for you? It's an interesting Greek word,
therefore, for. And so perhaps the implication
here is that when Jesus says I will give my flesh for the life
of the world, there's a deliberate connection here to
the Eucharist. He knows that he's going to
institute the Eucharist. So perhaps Jesus here intends to
teach that the way we partake in his flesh is through the
Eucharist. And that is certainly the
Catholic Church's understanding of this passage.
So that prompts the crowd now listed here as the Jews, sort of
the crowd who's interested in believing in Jesus.
They start arguing with each other because he has just said
you need to eat my flesh. The Greek here.
For them, arguing is literally fought.
It's quite an aggressive fight amongst the people.
There's a big disagreement. And they're probably
interpreting what he said in different ways.
So the thing they're arguing with each other about is this
phrase, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?
And that is a fair question. What do they mean by this?
Well, there's two possible meanings here.
They could be saying, how can he physically give us his flesh to
eat, as in it's a physical science question.
Or it could mean something like this.
Why would he want to give us his flesh to eat?
Because to the Jews, some of them would be quite appalled by
this idea that Jesus would want people to eat his flesh.
Because according to the Jewish law set out in the Torah, Jews
are not allowed to eat flesh or blood, or particularly flesh
that has blood in it. And that's specified in
Leviticus 17 and 19. So to the Jews, eating flesh of
a human would be unthinkable. Jews would not do that.
So they're just not sure why Jesus would suggest such a
thing. Now they're, if that's what
they're thinking of, they're thinking of it in terms that are
quite cannibalistic. Now, that's not what Jesus is
teaching. Jesus is not saying whatever
he's saying. He's certainly not saying you
need to physically eat my physical flesh that you see
right in front of you. He's not saying that.
And as we go on to see, Jesus is talking about a different kind
of eating and in particular he refers to himself as living
bread. So it's not a cannibalistic
thing where the person is dead and you're eating their dead
flesh. Jesus flesh is constantly
living. He's the living bread.
There's some other interesting things about this though that's
worth looking at. Jesus doesn't correct them.
He doesn't if they have misunderstood, he doesn't
correct them. So when they say how can this
man give us his flesh to eat if they had misunderstood, this
would be his opportunity to correct them, which he does do
in other places. In fact, two chapters earlier in
John chapter 4, verse 32 to 34, Jesus is talking about bread and
they misunderstand what kind of bread he's talking about and he
actually corrects them here. He doesn't correct the crowd.
He seems to think that what they're saying is basically
right. Their assumption that Jesus is
trying to give his flesh for them to eat is correct and he
doesn't. He doesn't try to correct them
there, but he doesn't answer their question either.
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
He doesn't really answer that in this discourse.
He only answers that in the Last Supper.
And certainly at the Last Supper, a lot of the people that
were there would have been here in this scene as well.
So in the Last Supper they would have looked back on John chapter
6 and realised that the Last Supper is the fulfilment of what
He promised about giving them His flesh.
Verse 53 He says, I tell you most solemnly, which means he's
about to say something quite serious if you do not eat the
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood.
Now let's pause here Jesus adds in a new element that hasn't
been in there before. So not only do people need to
eat His flesh to inherit eternal life, they need to drink His
blood. Notice the the physicalness of
it. The object of the eating is His
actual flesh and blood. If you do not eat the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in
you. So that means they won't have
God's divine life if they don't eat His flesh and drink His
blood. Now Jesus clearly here can't be
teaching cannibalism because he's talking, as we know from
other places in the Gospel of John.
He's talking about divine life. He's not talking about physical
immortality. He's talking about divine life,
living forever in eternity. That's the kind of eating that
people can derive from his flesh and his blood.
So it's not cannibalism. Anyone who does eat my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life.
So on the other hand, if you do eat his flesh and blood, you do
have eternal life. Now, what does it mean to say
eating Jesus flesh and blood? And this is the real question.
There's two possible interpretations.
It could mean something spiritual, as in it's meditating
on and following Jesus, recognising his identity,
believing in him, following him. That's one interpretation.
Or it could mean that Jesus is being a bit more literal here
and Jesus is saying you need to literally eat his literal flesh
and literal blood, something like that.
Is there a way that we can work out which of the two he means?
There's arguments for both views and we want to look a bit about
the pros and cons of each because this is such a an
important text in understanding Catholic teaching.
In fact, Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is based largely
on John chapter 6 here. And so in this podcast where we
look at the literal sense, the very words of the text, we want
to talk about the fors and against of different ways of
understanding this text. So the first interpretation is
that his medi he means meditating on and following him
in a spiritual way. That's what it means to feed on
Jesus. The biggest argument for this
interpretation is, well, firstly because any physical
interpretation might suggest cannibalism.
I think we've dealt with that if we understand Jesus words
correctly, he's not implying cannibalism.
But the other argument for suggesting that this might be a
spiritual meaning that Jesus is intending is the context of what
he's said so far up until this point in the sermon.
His sermon has been about believing in him, believing that
he's the Son of man and that will give you eternal life.
So there is a strong case there. If he's continuing with the same
theme, that would make sense. But there's also some strong
arguments to suggest that Jesus here on the literal level, when
we look at what Jesus is trying to communicate, he is talking in
some sense about literally eating his actual flesh and
blood. So let's look at some arguments
for that. So the Greek here suggests that
Jesus is going for something a bit more physical than just a
spiritual eating of his flesh. The reason we say that is
because the word that's used for eat here is trogos, and that has
actually changed from the word he used earlier.
Earlier in the sermon he used a very general word for eating
when he was talking about the manner in the wilderness.
But now at this point, from about verse 53 onwards, he
actually switches verbs. So his original hearers are
certainly John's Original readers who read the Greek would
have noticed a shift in Jesus meaning here.
Trogos, the the verb that's used here for eat, is a very physical
word. So the fact that he's changed
verbs suggests that Jesus has actually shifted the
conversation to a deeper level. Trogos is a very graphic word
and it means to gnaw or chew. So very graphic kind of chewing
language. We know from other writings that
in this time period, trogos was used to describe how animals
eat. It's what animals look like when
they're eating. So that would suggest that Jesus
is communicating to his audience that he's referring to a
physical eating of some kind. Another argument that would
suggest that he's talking here about physical eating is because
if you follow the conversation up till this point, although
it's true that he's been talking about following him up till this
point, it seems that by this time most of the crowd that are
still there already believe in Jesus.
They believe that he is the Son of God, but it's this additional
teaching that he's presenting about eating his flesh and blood
that they're struggling with. So they, it seems that a lot of
the crowd doesn't have a huge problem with believing his
identity. Now that might not be correct,
but that's one thing to consider here.
Another interesting point, and I think that this is quite
convincing actually, is that if we want to say that when Jesus
says you need to eat my flesh and drink my blood, that that
has a metaphorical meaning. The problem with that is we know
that at that time period, the phrase to eat flesh and drink
blood already had a metaphorical meaning to the Jews.
In fact, if you look at the Old Testament, the phrase to eat
flesh and drink blood is used in a metaphorical way, but it
describes going to war. It describes the physicalness of
going to war as in killing people, leaving blood in the
streets. We see that in Deuteronomy
chapter 32, verse 42 and Ezekiel chapter 39 verses 17 to 18.
So that is the Jewish metaphorical meaning at the time
of Jesus of eating flesh and drinking blood.
But that meaning doesn't make sense in this context.
So I think that is a pretty strong indicator that we should
rule out that the original readers would have understood
this metaphorically. And then the last argument to
make about this is the way that this is later understood in the
Bible itself. So later in the Old, in the New
Testament, Paul explicitly says that communion meal is a
participation in the body and blood of Christ.
So that's in one Corinthians 10, verse 16.
And then in one Corinthians 11, the next chapter, he gets even
more explicit and emphatic about communion.
He says that if you don't eat communion properly, you're
guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
That's one Corinthians 11, verse 23 to 29.
So certainly Paul understood at least the Last Supper, when we
do communion at the Last Supper, that that is in fact about Jesus
flesh and blood. And so there is a reasonable
connection between Paul's teaching and Jesus own words
here. If Jesus mentions flesh and
blood in John chapter 6, and then Paul mentions flesh and
blood in one Corinthians 11, it probably means they're both
thinking of the Last Supper. I think that's a strong argument
to make here. So if we add in all those
different factors, it does seem that on the literal level, Jesus
is talking about some sort of physical, literal feeding on his
flesh and blood, though not in a cannibalistic way.
And that latter interpretation, that it's a physical eating, is
the Catholic teaching. The Catholic teaching, as most
of you would know, is that Jesus really is talking about the
Eucharist here. That's the Catholic teaching.
Jesus offers his flesh and blood on the cross, but then his body
is resurrected to glory and it's his glorified flesh after he's
resurrected and gone to heaven. That's the flesh that's given to
us in the Eucharist. So in the Eucharist we're not
eating Jesus bloody flesh on the cross.
We're actually consuming in a sense when it's probably
understood we're consuming his body that has been resurrected
and glorified. So it's the real substantial
presence of Christ. And the Catholic phrase for the
Eucharist that's often used to describe it is it's the source
and summit of the Christian life.
So Jesus finishes by saying that if you eat my flesh and drink my
blood, I shall raise him up on the last day.
And that's been discussed in previous days when Jesus used
that same phrase, verse 55 for my flesh is real food and my
blood is real drink. So Jesus is probably contrasting
this food with the manner. The manner in the wilderness
wasn't perfect and in a sense it's not real food and drink.
Whereas Jesus flesh and blood is real food and drink.
It's the true source of eternal life.
On the other hand, it could be that Jesus here by using the
word real, he's emphasizing that his body and blood really are
food and drink. Verse 56, He who eats my flesh
and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in Him.
So this is quite a deep theological teaching.
Jesus is saying that for those who choose to eat his flesh and
drink his blood, whatever that means it mean it brings about a
real divine communion between themselves and Jesus.
Not a fake communion, not just a spiritual nice idea.
Someone who chooses to eat his flesh and blood actually brings
about a real communion between themselves and Jesus.
The word therefore remain, remains in me and I in Him, is
meno. In Greek and in John's Gospel,
that word meno designates this mutual indwelling of the Father
and the Son, this eternal relationship between the Father
and the Son which people are invited to be a part of.
We see similar language when Jesus talks about the vine.
I'm the vine, your other branches remain in me.
So that's a very similar language.
And what we see here in John chapter 6 is a similar thing,
but it actually takes it further.
It's Jesus saying that to remain in me, you must consume the
Eucharist. That's how we put all this
theology together. Verse 57.
As I, who am sent by the living Father myself, draw life from
the Father, so Jesus as the Son, the second person of the
Trinity, derives all of his energy and his teachings.
And in fact, his very life comes from the Father.
So whoever eats my, whoever eats me, will draw life from me.
Now that's a pretty radical claim.
Jesus says that through participating in his flesh and
blood in the Eucharist, people will actually draw divine life
from Jesus in the same way that he draws it from the Father.
So it's like passing on that divine life down to us.
That's brought out later in John chapter 17, verse 26, when he
said Jesus says the love with which you loved me may be in
them and I in them. So that's what Jesus wants.
He wants us to be a part of this communion that he already has
with the Father. We can say that This is why the
Father instituted the Eucharist in the 1st place.
It wasn't just a nice idea. God the Father actually wants
all believers to have real physical access to this divine
life. That's their inheritance.
That's our inheritance as Christians, as his sons and
daughters, to have this access to the to the divine life.
And he's instituted the Eucharist so that we can have
regular access to that, to the very flesh and blood of Jesus.
Verse 58, This is the bread come down from heaven.
Not like the bred our ancestors ate, they are dead.
But anyone who eats this bread will live forever.
So Jesus is summarising his entire discourse.
He's finishing up now and he sums it up by returning to the
opening scriptural text. You remember this whole
conversation started by talking about the manner in the
wilderness. And so Jesus returns to that
here. Jesus main point is that unlike
the manner in the wilderness, as good as it was, it could not
give people everlasting life, even though it was bred from
heaven. Whereas Jesus flesh is the true
bread from heaven and it can bring eternal life.
Notice that phrase here. Anyone who eats this bread will
live forever. That will live forever phrase
sounds like a kind of a fairy tale phrase.
It's not used very often in the Bible.
It only occurs three times, twice in this discourse in John
chapter 6, and one other place is in Genesis chapter 3 verse 22
in connection with the tree of life.
Anyone who eats from the tree of life will live forever.
The fact that that's the only place where these are mentioned
implies a strong connection to the tree of life.
So the tree of life originally bore fruit to the broad about
physical immortality. And the bread of life, according
to Catholic tradition, is called the medicine of immortality.
That's what the Eucharist is. It brings about divine,
supernatural, eternal life. So I want to include this quote
now from the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for the
Gospel of John, which I think sums up this teaching on the
Eucharist really well. It says the Holy Eucharist is
the source and summit of the Christian life.
It is the real substantial presence of Christ among us, the
Body and Blood, together with the soul and divinity of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ is truly,
really and substantially contained.
According to the Council of Trent, at every Mass, Jesus gift
of Himself to the Father on the Cross is made present again
sacramentally in the Eucharist and offered to us as our food
for eternal life. Not only does the Eucharist
unite believers to Christ, it also unites us to one another.
As Henri du Lebak writes, the Eucharist makes the Church.
If the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, the Eucharist is
its beating heart, pumping Christ's blood through the
members of His Body, the Church. If we are to grow in holiness
and love, we must make the Eucharist the centre of our
lives, because in doing so we make Christ the centre of our
lives. If we receive Christ worthily in
the Eucharist and worship Him in Eucharistic Adoration, He will
fill us with His grace and enlarge our hearts to love and
serve more perfectly. Eucharistic worship and
adoration does not detract from works of love.
On the contrary, it is what enables us to do them.
In the 1st place, consider these words of Blessed Mother Teresa
of Calcutta. If we truly understand the
Eucharist, if we make the Eucharist the central focus of
our lives, if we feed our lives with the Eucharist, we will not
find it difficult to discover Christ, to love him and to serve
him in the poor. So that's an extended quote and
it brings together Church teachings and various quotes
there, but I think it summarises the Catholic teaching on the
Eucharist very well. So obviously, because this is
such a central text in helping us understand the Catholic
teaching on the Eucharist, as you would expect, there's a lot
of catechism references which talk about it.
So I just want to talk about a few of the ones you may not have
heard before or possible connections to this verse that
maybe aren't as obvious or that we haven't talked about in the
previous days. So let's start with paragraph
2837, and this is a commentary on the line from the Our Father,
which says give us this day. Our Daily Bread, daily epiusios
occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.
Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition
of this day to confirm us in trust without reservation.
Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary
for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for
substance. Taken literally, epiusios is
super essential. It refers directly to the bread
of life, the body of Christ, the medicine of immortality, without
which we have no life within us. So that's a really interesting
one that in, if you look at whether our Father is given by
Jesus, the word that's used for that's translated daily is
epiusios in Greek. And there's some discussion
about what that word means. And one of the legitimate
connections that's been made because it basically means it's
super abundant bread. It could be a reference to the
Eucharist. And so that paragraph links it
here to John chapter 6, where it says without if you do not eat
the flesh of the Son of man, you do not have any life in you.
So that's an interesting one. Paragraph 1406.
This is a summary of the teaching on the Eucharist.
Jesus said I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and
abides in me, and I in him. And that's the entire paragraph.
It's just a quote from John chapter 6.
And the Church sees that as a great way of summarizing the
Catholic teaching on the Eucharist.
Paragraph 1524 is about Vyadicum, which is a special
kind of Eucharist that's given to people just before they die.
So that paragraph says in addition to the anointing of the
sick, the Church offers those who are about to leave this life
the Eucharist as Vyadicum. Communion in the body and blood
of Christ received at this moment of passing over to the
Father, has a particular significance and importance.
It is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection.
According to the words of the Lord.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up at the last day.
The sacrament of Christ, once dead and now risen, the
Eucharist is here, the sacrament of passing over from death to
life, from this world to the Father.
So the Church says the most appropriate thing you can do
just before someone passes away is to give them the Eucharist so
that they have eternal life as Jesus says here and can be
raised up at the last day. Paragraph 787 talks about that
phrase in John chapter 6 about he lives in me and I in Him.
Jesus spoke of a still more intimate communion between him
and those who would follow him. Abide in me, and I in you.
I am the vine, You are the branches.
And he proclaimed a mysterious and real communion between his
own body and ours. He who eats my flesh and drinks
my blood abides in me, and I in him.
And then in paragraph 1391, we'll finish with this one.
This talks about what taking Communion actually does for us
in our life. Holy Communion augments our
union with Christ. The principle fruit of receiving
the Eucharist in Holy Communion is an intimate union with Christ
Jesus. Indeed, the Lord said he who
eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
Life in Christ has its foundation in the Eucharistic
banquet as the living Father sent me, and I live because of
the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.
So a whole lot of really interesting stuff there.
And there's some more paragraph references.
I'll include all of those in the show notes.
Thanks for listening. I hope you learned something new
about this really pivotal passage in John Chapter 6.
Please continue to share this podcast around, keep this
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Thanks for tuning in to our exploration of the key part of
the Bread of Life discourse. Tomorrow we'll look at something
a little different. But if you're interested in
going through the entire Bread of Life discourse systematically
all through John chapter 6, verse by verse, the best time to
do that is in week 3 and week four of Easter Tide.
So the third and 4th week after Easter.
And we've done that in our podcast.
So if you'd like to go through that systematically, go back and
have a look through the podcast archives for Easter Tide week
three and four, and you should find it there.
Thanks. And we'll see you tomorrow.