***** the flesh profiteth nothing:******
Jesus’ flesh profits us everything. What you don’t understand is that Jesus is saying here that it is HE, God and Man, heaven and earth, flesh and spirit that is everything.
It is the unity of the divine and the human which is everything. Jesus as mere human, merely the son of man, flesh alone profits nothing. It is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit within HIS body, the Eucharist, that gives life.
It is not I who contradicts Jesus, nor the Church, for Jesus had just said that the bread He will give is His flesh for the life of the world. Jesus says His flesh is bread, true food.
But, Jesus does not contradict here, He clarifies for those who believe. It is exactly the same as when He rebuked people for coming back after they had their bellies filled through the miracle of the loaves and fishes. He tells them do not work for food that is perishable but for the lasting food that gives eternal life. That is what the Eucharist is....food that gives eternal life. Not just flesh or bread, but Him, the Word of God.
Therefore, we do not receive Him in the Eucharist to sustain our earthly life, but to have eternal life.
*****Matthew 15:17 Do not you yet understand, that whatever enters in at the mouth goes into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?*****
True, except earthly food, perishable food becomes a part of us when we consume it. In the Eucharist, we become part of Him. He is not cast out like earthly food.
Also, Jesus here is not speaking of Himself. He is speaking of the heart of a man and how it is what men say that makes them unclean because they speak from their heart.
Jeremiah and Ezekiel are from the OT and foreshadow Jesus in the Eucharist.
******Deuteronomy 8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.******
Jesus quotes this when tempted by Satan. There is a reason He prefaces His Bread of Life discourse with comparison to the manna.
Jesus is the Word which proceeds from the mouth of God. Bread alone does not save, it is Jesus that is both, bread and Word that gives life.
These are hard sayings. Shocking as Jesus said. But, no more so than that God would come to us as a babe in the womb, to be led like a lamb to the cross so that we may have abundant life with Him for eternity.
So it’s not the literal, physical flesh of Jesus in the Eucharist after all!! It really is a spiritual remembrance like the Protestants claim! The pope is going to be shocked I’m thinking.
From http://www.catholic.com/tracts/christ-in-the-eucharist talking about how wrong those are who say it’s spiritual and not physical flesh.
“They say that in John 6 Jesus was not talking about physical food and drink, but about spiritual food and drink.”
From http://www.mdpparish.com/2011/10/the-eucharist-the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ-2/.
That fact that Jesus is physically present in the Eucharist is sometimes hard for us to understand.
From http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/resources-for-the-eucharist/the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ-in-the-sacrament-of-the-eucharist-basic-questions-and-answers.cfm
Does the bread cease to be bread and the wine cease to be wine?
Yes. In order for the whole Christ to be present—body, blood, soul, and divinity—the bread and wine cannot remain, but must give way so that his glorified Body and Blood may be present. Thus in the Eucharist the bread ceases to be bread in substance, and becomes the Body of Christ, while the wine ceases to be wine in substance, and becomes the Blood of Christ. As St. Thomas Aquinas observed, Christ is not quoted as saying, " This bread is my body," but " This is my body" ( Summa Theologiae, III q. 78, a. 5).
Are the consecrated bread and wine "merely symbols"?
In everyday language, we call a "symbol" something that points beyond itself to something else, often to several other realities at once. The transformed bread and wine that are the Body and Blood of Christ are not merely symbols because they truly are the Body and Blood of Christ. As St. John Damascene wrote: "The bread and wine are not a foreshadowing of the body and blood of Christ—By no means!—but the actual deified body of the Lord, because the Lord Himself said: ‘This is my body'; not ‘a foreshadowing of my body' but ‘my body,' and not ‘a foreshadowing of my blood' but ‘my blood'" ( The Orthodox Faith, IV [PG 94, 1148-49]).
Notice all that? Truly, physically, and literally the body and blood of Christ. Not just spiritual as you say now. In fact, they also say that once the bread and the wine becomes the real, physical, literal flesh and blood of Christ it can never change back.
The Church teaches that Christ remains present under the appearances of bread and wine as long as the appearances of bread and wine remain (cf. Catechism, no. 1377).
So Catholics deny what Jesus said and claim, just as you did, that “Jesus’ flesh profits us everything” in direct conflict with what Jesus said “the flesh profiteth nothing”.