Not shunning controversy, Jesus remained with the issue as He told the people already murmuring over His claim to have come down from heaven that it is His flesh He is giving
for the life of the world (John 5:51-58). When they broke out in quarrelsome discussions on how the man can possibly give His flesh for them to eat, He uncompromisingly reiterated that only in eating His flesh and drinking His blood can they have eternal life.
True food, true drink
Jesus lucidly summarized his main points: He is the living bread came down from heaven. The living Father sent Him so that those who believe in Him may have life because of him. What He gives is eternal life, meaning He will raise up on the last day those who accept Him, unlike the Israelites of old who ate manna in the desert but nonetheless died. And the food He gives to impart this life everlasting is His own flesh and blood. Whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood will live forever, and will remain in Jesus as Jesus remains in him.
Taking Jesus’ statement that His flesh is true food and His blood true drink in grossly material sense, the people refused to believe Him and shuddered at the thought of cannibalism, as enemies of the early Christians did when they heard that these eat the flesh and drink the blood of their Lord Jesus. But with insistence, Jesus underscored that it is His flesh that must be eaten and His blood drunk, as real as His self-sacrifice on the cross and as real as His humanity. Not just appearing so but really so, as John the evangelist already had to maintain against the heretical group of the Docetists during His time who denied the real incarnation of the Son of God and therefore any real Eucharist. Jesus did not yet say here how He will give Himself, His flesh and blood, to the people; how and under what signs would come up only later at the Last Supper.
The insistence of love
These claims of Jesus, enigmatic to the people then and no less so today, underline the truth that the whole thing is a mystery of faith. It is only in the context of love for Jesus that His words become acceptable and meaningful. To anyone without faith in Him, no explanation is sufficient. But to one who responds in love to the grace of the Father drawing him/her to Jesus, no evidence will be necessary, and trust in Jesus’ words prevails over any seemingly unfathomable statements.
This discourse on the bread of life we have been reflecting upon for three weeks already is a spiral-like, slow-paced discussion, enabling us not only to meditate progressively on the truth of our faith but also to savor Jesus’ insistence of love. It is remarkable how in this Johannine catechesis on the Eucharist the repetitions present to us Jesus intensely wanting to make the people receive Him and share in His wisdom and experience of God. He sounds as if He wishes His listeners can creep into his mind and see things the way he does. He definitely desires that they also receive what he has from the Father. If only they could be His flesh and His blood, so that they could share in the life from the Father surging through His body.
Alálaong bagá, Jesus knows that only His kind of life can bring light and hope to this world of darkness and death. That is why Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and claims, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” That is why He summons us, “Come to me” in the Eucharist, the sacrament of His body and blood, inviting with us to eat Him and drink Him, in order that He be in us and we in Him, thus participate in His life. Only so can He raise us up on the last day and share with us His eternal life and love.
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.