The Catholic Eucharist: Unbiblical and Idolatry

>>You DID get a bunch of data PROVING this allegation; didn't you?<<

And Al Gore says the theory of global warming is build on data!

Thanks for your response. I took a quick look at the link but am too tired to contemplate the eternity of God with timelessness.

I think it is clear that Jesus is not speaking metaphorically or allegorically about eating his body. In verse 52, RSV, it states, “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How an this man give us his flesh to eat?’”

If your interpretation is correct, Jesus would have said, hold on a minute, I did not mean for you to take me literally.” But he did not say that, but rather said, “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.” It sounds to me like Jesus meant it literally.

Thanks for your response. I took a quick look at the link but am too tired to contemplate the eternity of God with timelessness.

I think it is clear that Jesus is not speaking metaphorically or allegorically about eating his body. In verse 52, RSV, it states, “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How an this man give us his flesh to eat?’”

If your interpretation is correct, Jesus would have said, hold on a minute, I did not mean for you to take me literally.” But he did not say that, but rather said, “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.” It sounds to me like Jesus meant it literally.

Keep in mind Jesus is God. CS Lewis once said something to the effect that if God always did what we expected, we would have reason to believe He was the invention of our own imagination. So when we come to a passage like this, it is weak to build an argument on what we think He should have said under a given circumstance. It's not an altogether useless technique, but it has its limits.

Having said that, there are plenty of clues this is all a metaphor about believing in Him, and some of those clues can be read as satisfying your condition that Jesus is forcefully rejecting the crowd's crude literalism as a misunderstanding. One of the best clues we are looking at metaphor is verse 35:

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
(John 6:35)

As I have explained many, many times on these threads, you know you are in metaphoric space when you have an "is" equation, (A is B), where A and B are two distinct conceptual domains, and would not ordinarily be identified with each other. This triggers an automatic mental search for the lesson of the metaphor, i.e., what is it about B that teaches us something about A.

But what happens sometimes is that the student is stubborn, and does not want to learn the lesson of the metaphor. So they get stuck on some mangled misunderstanding of it. This crowd following Jesus didn't want to bother with actually believing in Jesus as the source of eternal life. They were materialists at heart, and wanted an unending supply of free, physical food.

So they rejected the metaphor, which Jesus clearly spells out in verse 35, because it is not by an act of physical eating or physical drinking that this hunger and thirst of which Jesus speaks is satisfied, but by coming to Him, believing in Him, clearly spiritual acts, acts of faith His audience was not willing to learn about. So they got stuck by trying to understand Him using a materialist framework, which was pathetically useless.

And as I said before, Jesus does give sufficient warning to them their materialism is the wrong way to understand Him. The fact that He doesn't spell it out in exactly the same pattern of speech you or I might use means nothing, except to prove we cannot predict what God will say, so we are obligated to listen to what He actually does say. In this particular case, verse 63 provides an unmistakable clue that the matter must be understood in spiritual, not carnal terms:

When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
(John 6:61-63)

So there you have it. In direct response to the stubborn students and their grumbling about the "hard" lesson (which really isn't hard at all), Jesus dismantles their misunderstanding in one fell stroke. A day will come when Jesus will leave earth and go back to the place He had with the Father. That would make their dreams of using Him as an unlimited EBT card even harder to fulfill, as He will be there in Heaven, not here on earth. What will they do then?

Then the clincher. His physical departure is actually not a problem, if they would only understand the life He was speaking of was imparted by spiritual, not carnal means. They are making a category error, the same error as Rome (albeit Rome dresses it up with more "nuanced" language). They are in the category of fleshly hunger, fleshly thirst, and fleshly remedies. They are wrong, and Jesus plainly tells them so. The category is spirit, spiritual hunger, spiritual thirst, and spiritual remedies, coming to Jesus, believing in Jesus, consuming Him, not with the mouth, but with the heart of faith, unto eternal life.

And Peter gets this. At the end of the chapter he confirms the metaphor in a dramatic declaration, who else can we go to that has the words of eternal life? He's in the right category, spirit, and showing the right response, faith. In that passage, you are witnessing Peter consume Christ, if you have eyes to see it.

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.
(John 6:67-69)

Amen, Peter.

Peace,

SR

It is not your fault that you don’t know what you are talking about. Only one who has the gift of Faith can understand these mysteries.

That little morsel of bread is Jesus Christ’s glorified body, by His command, and effected through His priests. Heaven and Earth will pass, but His Words will remain.

His sheep hear His voice. But keep in mind, they have been blessed with the gift of Faith; not merited, not earned, not arrived at by good works.

The Eucharist is called the “Mystery of Faith” because every one of our senses tell us it is just bread and wine. Seeing we do not see, touching we do not touch, tasting we do not taste, smelling we do not smell, yet hearing we do hear. Yes, as the “Pange Lingua” of Thomas Aquinas reminds us, the sense of hearing only is to be trusted when approaching this great Sacrament.

I had an experience once that taught me in a very special way how true, beautiful, and intimate the reception of Jesus Christ Himself is for those who believe.