Posted on 01/12/2019 8:50:47 AM PST by Salvation
A grotesque request? We are called to eat Christ’s Body and Blood so as to become one with him in a mystical Communion
Msgr. Charles Pope
12/26/2018
Question: Why did Jesus tell his followers to eat his Body and drink his Blood? It seems like such a grotesque request.
— Anthony Navarra, via email
Answer: It is, to be sure, a shocking mandate, and many of the Jews who first heard it were indeed quite dismayed. They said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52). Yet Jesus insists and even uses impolite terms in Greek for eating, such as trogon (Jn 6:54), a word which means to gnaw on, munch or crunch. Many actually left Jesus over this teaching (c.f. Jn 6:66).
Why Jesus insists on this teaching and method of feeding us can be answered in several ways. First, in terms of precedent, we can look to the Old Testament practices of Passover and the Temple sacrifices. We note that in the Passover just before the Exodus from Egypt, each family was to procure a lamb, slaughter it, eat it and put some of its blood on their doorposts. The blood of the lamb would cause the angel of death to pass over that house. So the blood of the Passover lamb was a kind of saving blood, and we note that the people ate that lamb.
In the Jewish temple sacrifices, some animals were killed and wholly burnt up. This was called an olah; literally, “ascending offering” (Lev 1, Lev 6:8-13). However, a common practice was the sacrifice of a well-being/fellowship offering (zevah shelamim; Lev 3, Lev 7:11-35). In this sacrifice the innards (fat, kidneys and part of the liver) were burned in the altar fire. But most of the meat of the animal was eaten, divided between the priests and the offerer. Hence, here again, the offerer ate some of the animal sacrificed.
Thus we see in the Old Testament the concept of participating in a sacrifice by eating some of it. Christ is our paschal lamb and is sacrificed for our sins, and we, too, eat of his very body and blood.
Jesus gives further reason to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (Jn 6:54-56). Thus he bids us to eat his flesh and drink his blood that we might remain in him and he in us.
There is something here of the nature of food to consider. When we eat something, our body absorbs some of the elements of that food, and it becomes the very substance of which we are made. Thus, if we receive Christ, we become the one we eat. And because he lives, he also takes us into himself.
This is a mystical yet very real holy Communion. And on account of this union, we are raised to eternal life because, when Christ rises, so do we rise who are members of his Body. Hence by eating his Body and Blood, Christ enters us and takes us to himself and up to heaven.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
I love this lesson from Christ, the “Meat and Drink” of the Gospel. When He says “This is My Body,” we say “AMEN,” because it would be indecent to say or believe anything else. Simple, offensive, the remedy to death, and antidote to sin, the Bread which conduces to Eternal Life, and repeated in an illuminating way by the faithful Msgr. Pope.
Speaking of Pope: I wish...
Thank you for posting this insightful article.
When the challace is raised during the concecration at Mass, I silently ask my brother Christ Jesus:
“By your cross and resurrection you have set me free and in that freedom I, like Longius, recognizing you as no mere man, know that I too have pierced your heart, may I also, here at the foot of the cross be washed clean, both inside and out by the blood of the lamb”
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What are the repercussions of The Divine Creator actually becoming a part in his creation? Every thing he touched became imbued.
He was put thru a human food processor before being pierced. How much of his breath, blood and body was spread to the 4 winds and seven seas to disperse into this earth?
Communion is EVERY MEAL!
Thank You,
again for shedding light on
The Shadows of Salvation.
As usual, a fine essay by a dedicated cleric. ( tho he misunderstands the Biblical sacrificial system a bit - there’s no ingestion of salvation or grace - the meats shared have the purpose of normal nutrition not any kind of magical intakibg of powers or favor. Waste of good food is unacceptable in Jewish law. It’s that simple. Also, there’s no such thing in the divine law /Jewish religion as substitutionary atonement or forgiveness - forgiveness and right standing with the Creator —are obtained by genuine repentance by the transgressing individual alone. Finally, of course human sacrifice and canivalism are indeed, as the good Monsignor mentions, strictly verboten in the Divine law. Thanks for posting these articles they’re very helpful.
This leads to a question which is more complex than it seems on the surface. FULL DISCLOSURE: As LCMS, I have no qualms with the idea that Jesus meant what He said, that the Eucharistic elements are not simply representations of His body and blood (we call it Real Presence, but that is a separate issue.)
Here is the question. Jesus almost certainly would not have been speaking Greek to His fellow Jews at the Temple. Greek was the lingua franca of the time, just as English is the most common second language today for non-English speakers, but people who speak the same first language generally aren't going to converse in their second language. (When I have been in Japan, I will attempt to speak Japanese to the Japanese, but I immediately drop to English when encountering English-as-first-language speakers.)
On the one hand, the NT is all in koine Greek, so understanding what it is saying requires delving into the nuances of that language. If the Greek verb trogon means to gnaw or crunch, this gives an indication of the type of eating meant in the passage.
On the other hand, Jesus would not have used the verb trogon, because He would not have been speaking Greek at that moment. He could have been speaking Hebrew because of the Temple people, or He could have been speaking Aramaic because of the non-educated audience. In either case, the word He actually used, as opposed to the Greek translation of the word, would give us a closer indication of what was meant.
What would that word be? That would be a complete guess. Any NT in Hebrew is a translation from the Greek, meaning the translator would be guessing what word best represented trogon. The Peshitta, the Bible in Aramaic, is probably also a translation from the Greek--Lamsa said otherwise (personal note: I met him once in the mid 70s), but his is definitely a minority view, with little to no objective evidence. So...
We know what the Greek says, which, since the Bible is the Word of God, is what God wants us to know. But since the Greek is a translation of what Jesus would have said in either Hebrew or Aramaic, it would be reasonable to assume that there is something lost in translation--but what, and how much? Inquiring minds want to know...
Amen and Amen!
Have you ever studied transubstantiation?
“I silently ask my brother Christ Jesus”
We worship one God in Three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Every human is in the position of creature to God. We are His creatures, not His siblings.
To say that a human is God’s sibling, in any sense of the word, is theology so bad as actually to constitute heresy.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now ...” 1 John 3:1-2a
“Beloved, we are God’s children now”
God’s children, not His siblings.
However, I read what scholars say (if they say it in simple English) and I proceed on the strong hunch that people in the first 3 or 4 Christian centuries, who were radically more in touch with the languages and cultures of the Levantine/Eastern Mediterranean/late-Roman antiquity than we are, are more to be relied upon than, say, 17th century Christian gentlemen in London, or 19th century German scholars, however thinky they may have been.
Is that reasonable?
My other strong hunch is that it is not haphazard, but providential, that Greek became the Gold Standard for the NT, just as it had been for a couple of centuries for the LXX Old Testament. The LXX Greek OT was the Scripture referenced by all the books of the NT writers. Except for Jerusalem proper, in Damascus and Antioch and Asia Minor and Alexandria and all the other cultural capitals where the Jews lived, the Jews spoke, read and wrote Greek. Scripture was Greek.
And as Jerusalem sank into total decline after it was physically destroyed (70 A.D.) -- 30 years before the closing of the NT canon --- you're left with the conclusion: Greek it is.
So, Long story short, I would go to the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers to get their view on the exact meanings of words like "Eucharistia" as well as "trogon" (gnaw, crunch, devour), and assume that the Greek is just as legit as the Hebrew. It was to the vast majority of the Jews at that time, as I understand it.
This, a brief article on Justin Martyr, gives a lot of insight in a short space.
One final hunch: If your conclusion about "what Jesus really meant" isn't shocking and offensive, it's not what He meant.
This is what we can see by the reaction of almost all of His Hebrew- or Aramaic speaking listeners, which was: "That's disgusting. This guy must be out of his mind. I'm outta here."
That is a beautiful prayer. Thank you.
My understanding is that through One Baptism we are sons and daughters of God thusly brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus by adoption.
I do not appreciate your uncharitable and condescending tone. Unless it’s an apology, please do not post to me again, I will not respond to further insults.
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At the elevations of both the Body and Blood, I silently pray:
Dominus meus et Deus meus.
(My Lord and My God!)
“I do not appreciate your uncharitable and condescending tone.”
Such a “tone” is entirely the product of your own perception.
“Unless it’s an apology”
I’ve done nothing for which to apologize. However, you now owe me an apology.
“please do not post to me again, I will not respond to further insults.”
As I have yet to insult you, you owe me another apology for your use of the word “further.”
“My understanding is”
Incorrect.
Yes, I have a similar prayer at the elevation of our Blessed Lord Christ Jesus truly Present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist.
“My Lord and my God, do with me what thow widst.”
Perhaps you can translate it into a Latin for me.
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What are we to make of Jesus saying to Mary Magdalen, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
John 20:17
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