Peace be with you. Friends, this weekend
we come to the end of our prayerful liturgical reflection
upon John chapter 6, this wonderful chapter in which
we find John's reflection upon the Eucharist. Now, we had a little
pause last week because we had the Feast of
the Assumption of Mary. But we've been following
the discourse of Jesus in the Capernaum synagogue. What I want to do is just
pay a little attention first to what we would've read
last week. And then, we'll get
to this denouement, this concluding section,
which is our Gospel for today. So we recall that Jesus
had talked about himself as the bread of life —indeed, the bread
come down from heaven. "Unless you eat this bread,
you will have no life within you." Well, understandably, his
audience balked at this. How can this man give us
his flesh to eat? He's the bread come down
from heaven? I mean, It seemed so outrageous. What we would've read last Sunday
is Jesus' very intriguing rejoinder. In the face of this protest,
given every opportunity to explain his words in
a more metaphorical, poetic way, Jesus instead
turns up the heat. "Unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you." "My flesh is real food." "My blood is real drink." I think I might've mentioned
this to you before, but the words in Greek
are very interesting, because Jesus does not say "Unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man" using the word typically associated
with the way human beings eat. He says "trogein" in the Greek. "Unless you gnaw on the
flesh of the Son of Man" —that's a word used to
describe the way animals eat. So they were balking
at the realism of this. And Jesus instead
turned up the volume, as he intensified his language. For Jews of his time,
even to speak of eating an animal's flesh with blood
was not only disgusting, it was immoral. It was explicitly forbidden in several parts of the
Old Testament, because see,
blood symbolized life, and so you wouldn't eat the
flesh of an animal with its blood. To speak of eating his own Flesh
and drinking his Blood? I mean, it was objectionable
at so many levels, and that's why they balked. But again, given the opportunity
to soften the language, Jesus, if you will, hardens and
intensifies the language. Now, this helps to explain
our Gospel for today. We come to the end
of the discourse, and we see what happens
in the wake of it. We hear, "Many of Jesus’ disciples
who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard;
who can accept it?’" Notice, first, we're talking
not about a neutral audience; we're not talking about
enemies of Jesus. These are his disciples. I don't mean his inner
circle of Apostles, but these were followers of his,
who were obviously with him, attending to his words. And then, they took in
this discourse, and they heard him speaking in
this indeed shocking way. And so, even his friends say, "This saying is hard;
who can accept it?" Again, Jesus,
knowing their murmuring, has an opportunity to say, "Hey, look. I mean all
of this symbolically." Instead, he says,
"Does this shock you?" I sort of like that. "Well, yeah, it does.
It is shocking language." In other words, he means it
in just that way. Here's something I've always
found intriguing. I've been involved in a number
of dialogues with Protestants over the years,
and we'll come sometimes to this very neuralgic point of
how we understand the Eucharist, because most Protestants
understand the Eucharist in a more or less
symbolic way. And again, this is
a very old debate, where Catholics hold to
the Real Presence of Jesus. And a point that I often make (I've never really had a
good answer to it) is if Jesus meant all this
in a merely symbolic way —and he often
speaks symbolically. He refers to himself as a
vine, as a good shepherd, even comparing himself to a
mother hen at one point. Well, I mean, no one stalks
away in anger when he says those things because it's
very clear he's speaking in a metaphorical way. Why, if he were speaking that way
and the people knew it, would they have been
so shocked? Why would they have threatened
to leave? My strong suspicion is —and John's trying to
communicate this to us— is they knew darn well
what he meant. They knew he was speaking in a
very sharply, even shockingly, realistic way. And that's why
they were balking. Again, he's got the opportunity
to clarify things metaphorically. But instead, he says, "There are some of you who
do not believe." So he's not trying to make
it easy for belief. He's just observing: there are some of you who
don't believe. This is a key standing or
falling point, it seems to me. Do you accept this teaching
of Jesus or not? It's why the Catholic Church has,
from the beginning, insisted upon the Real Presence
of Jesus in the Eucharist. We didn't make this up. It's not some medieval accretion. Rather, it goes back precisely
to this sixth chapter of John and to this discourse,
when Jesus insists upon the reality of his presence. Now, to understand how this
is even possible, can I suggest something else
from our Gospel for today is illuminating? Jesus says, "What if you were
to see the Son of Man ascending to where
he was before? It is the spirit that gives life,
while the flesh is of no avail." Mysterious, isn't it? Mysterious observation. "What if you were to see
the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?" Is he talking there about
his fleshly humanity? No. His humanity, if you want,
comes from the earth. But in his divinity, Jesus comes
from this higher realm. Why is he able to effect
what we call the Real Presence —that is to say, the transformation
of the Eucharistic elements into his Body and Blood. The reason, everybody, is that
he's not simply a human figure. I mean, we human figures,
we can trade in metaphorical language all the time. I could call you together,
and we'll call ourselves the Abraham Lincoln Society. And we can bring out
a stovepipe hat and say, "This symbolizes Lincoln." I could read the words of the
Gettysburg Address, and we could symbolically evoke
the presence of Lincoln. Fine. We're all capable of that. Any human being with a little
bit of cleverness can do that. But "what if you were to see
the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?" In other words, what if
we put the stress now not on his humanity
but his divinity? Well, then we see something,
everybody. We see that what God says, is. Go right back to the
beginning of the Bible. God speaks,
"Let there be light," and there was light. "Let the dry land appear,"
and so it happened. "Let animals teem upon the earth,"
and so it happened. The point there is that God
makes things through his intelligible speech. God speaks, and things happen. His speech is not descriptive
the way ours is, but rather creative. "As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven, and do not return
without watering the earth, so my word does not go forth
from me in vain, but rather accomplishes
what it set out to do." That's Isaiah speaking of
the divine word. Jesus, not one prophet among many,
but the Incarnation of the Word. "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And that Word became flesh
in Jesus, which is why what Jesus says, is. "My son, your sins
are forgiven you." I mean, I can say
that all day to someone; it wouldn't mean anything. I have no power to forgive
anyone's sins. "Who does this man think he is?
Only God can forgive sins." Quite right.
What Jesus says, is. "Talitha cumi."
"Little girl, get up." And she got up, because what
God says, is. "Lazarus, come out,"
and he came out, because what God says, is. And so the night before he died,
Jesus took the Passover bread. "This is my body." Taking the Passover cup, "This indeed is
the chalice of my blood." I mean, I could say those
words and mean them in a purely metaphorical way. But when Jesus says them —because if you were
to ascend where he was before, if you knew where he came from,
who he is, not just one human
figure among many, but God from God,
Light from Light, true God from true God, then you'd know
that what he says, is. That's what's at stake here,
everybody. That's what's at stake here. That's the center of this
argument, this presentation. And the people listening to him,
they got what was at stake, which is why they say,
"Look, this is a hard saying." Then we come to this. Having taken all of this in,
we hear that they all left him. Now, I don't know about you,
but it's one of the saddest lines, I think, in the whole
New Testament. We know about Jesus' enemies
opposing him, but here his disciples,
his followers, they left in great numbers. They couldn't abide this teaching. Raises a question for us. Are you with the
Eucharistic Christ or not? Do you accept
this teaching or not? It's always been a
standing or falling point in the history
of the Church. Then
—and I submit to you everybody, one of the most dramatic
moments in the New Testament— Jesus turns to the Twelve. So a lot of the crowd,
they've left him. Now he turns to his
most intimate band, the twelve Apostles,
and he says to them, "Are you going to leave me too?" As I say, one of the
most poignant, moving, even a little frightening
lines in the New Testament. "Are you going to leave me
too over this?" And then Peter speaks, as he often does,
for the Twelve. Remember, in Caesarea Philippi: "Who do people say
the Son of Man is?" "Oh, some say Moses,
some say Elijah, some say one
of the prophets." "Yeah, but who
do you say I am?" And then Peter speaks. "You're the Messiah. You're
the Son of the living God." This is John's version of
that moment, it seems to me. We don't have that Caesarea
Philippi scene in John, but we’ve got this scene. "Are you going to leave
me too?" to the Apostles. And it's Peter who speaks: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words
of everlasting life." This is not just an accident. "You have the words
of everlasting life." By those words,
those eternal words, the Eucharistic change
is effected. Peter's confessing the messiahship
of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, and his power to effect
the Eucharistic change. Can you see, at this moment,
that the Church, it would've faded away if
the Twelve and if Peter had said, "No, Lord, that saying of
yours about the Eucharist, your body and blood,
it's just too much"? But Peter speaks.
And thank God. Now, up and down
the centuries, to this day, those who stand with Peter
say the same thing, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words
of everlasting life." Those words that transform
the Eucharistic elements into his very Body
and his very Blood. It's still, everybody,
a standing and falling point. It's still a matter of decision. May our answer always be
that of Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" And God bless you. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video,
I invite you to share it and to subscribe
to my YouTube channel.
