And this same Jesus said *I am the bread of life*, *I am the door*, *I am the true vine*.
The Passover meal was a representation of the actual Passover, not the actual event itself recreated.
The bread and cup were foreshadowings of the lamb of God. the Jews were FORBIDDEN to eat blood, period. Consuming it made them unclean because they violated the Law.
No observant Jew would eat blood ever, much less at the Passover meal. That would be sin and make him ceremonially unclean. Jesus could not have partook of the bread and cup if it were His literal Body and blood because He would have sinned and made Himself unclean and disqualified Himself from being the perfect sacrifice for our sins, the spotless lamb of God.
The whole Passover meal and communion is a symbolic representation of spiritual realities. We are to observe communion as a reminder of Jesus' death for us and His promise to return again.
All the verses that Catholicism demand must be taken literally can easily be interpreted as representing spiritual truths with NO contradiction with other Scripture or other teachings of Jesus. That alone gives the interpretation validity over interpreting it literally.
Any physical act that one must perform to earn salvation is a work, plain and simple. Works don't save. Faith does. God wants a right heart, not perfect performance with an impure heart.
The blood on the doorpost was symbolic of the shed blood of Jesus just as the wine is symbolic of that same shed blood. The blood of the lamb on the doorpost was no more the real blood of Jesus then the wine is.
>> All the verses that Catholicism demand must be taken literally can easily be interpreted as representing spiritual truths... <<
IOW, we can believe what Jesus said as long as we understand that what he meant was something different than what he said. What’s sad is that you guys are the ones who insist on Sola Scriptura, and yet we’re the ones who refuse to throw out chunks of the bible. Even stranger, the parts of the bible you’d like to throw out are the ones that Jesus says, “Yea, verily, I say this to you,” and the Jews are weirded out, supposing he MUST mean something else, and he tells them, essentially, “yeah, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
I won’t go again into all the verses that support the Catholic belief regarding the Eucharist. You are well aware of them and reject them.
That’s fine.
The prohibition against drinking blood is what made what Jesus said such a “hard saying” and made many walk away from him.
If you can give me any Scripture where Jesus explains away this hard saying I would appreciate it.
I find it amazing that you have gone from claiming that Jesus was a rebel and a loner to using His observant Jew status to reject what He said regarding the Eucharist.
St. Paul believed it as is evident from what he wrote about it, even going so far as to reiterate the words Jesus used at the Last Supper.
Did God really say we must eat his flesh and drink his blood and that his flesh is true food and his blood true drink?
Well, yes, He did.