Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

by Deacon Michael Hoonhout  |  08/18/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

Today’s Gospel contains one of the most disputed passages in Christianity. The question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” continues to be raised by his followers. Jesus’ teaching divided his initial audience and has not ceased doing so among the generations of believers since. What Jesus says is controversial and scandalous, yet because Jesus speaks quite clearly, repeating three distinct times the provocative phrase of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, the reason for the quarreling over what he meant lies with his followers, not with him.

Nor can it be argued that the passage allows for more than one construal, not only because the two interpretations are contradictory and mutually exclusive, but also because only one of them makes any sense of the fact that many quit being his disciples precisely over the offense in what he said, and Jesus was willing to let them leave rather than modify his teaching to make it more palatable to them. If Jesus meant that he is to be “eaten” as the “bread of life” only in a symbolic sense — meaning, e.g., he is to be believed as the source of life — what is so offensive about that?

Now, since most Christians believe that Jesus is truly divine and as God can do all things, the dispute is not really over whether Jesus could turn bread and wine into his Body and Blood and give it to us to eat. The contention is over whether Jesus would ever do such a thing. There is more here than just the reasonable rejection that Christ would never command his followers to engage in a kind of cannibalism. (To be crystal clear, certainly no interpretation of what he meant can support such a suggestion, as will be explained in a moment.) What is also rejected is the necessity that receiving life from Christ requires the eating of his very flesh and blood. Yet, Christ, with the full force of invoking his most solemn authority, explicitly states otherwise: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Many Christians seem quite content to contradict Jesus on this point, believing they have the life Christ gives simply through their faith in him. They believe Jesus gave his life for them on the cross (true); in them dwells the Holy Spirit (true); and therefore by this faith and grace they are fully alive in Christ without any need to take him in as their food by eating his flesh and drinking his blood (not true). If they claim that Jesus was speaking only symbolically, they imply that he — the Word of God made flesh, the fullness of divine Revelation, Truth itself — taught in such a poor manner that the words he chose to use conveyed the very opposite of the meaning he intended.

Let us remove the confusion that his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood involves a kind of cannibalism. Those who find the literal sense too horrible to contemplate resolve the dilemma by positing he could only have meant it in a symbolic sense. Yet there is another way to affirm the literal sense of “eat my flesh and drink my blood” without violating a fundamental taboo of civilization. The flesh and blood of Jesus we are commanded to eat is his resurrected flesh, what he offered on the cross and raised from the dead. It is his flesh but not in the earthly state it was when he spoke these words in the synagogue of Capernaum, but rather his flesh in the glorified state of his resurrected body, described by St. Paul as no longer mortal but immortal, no longer corruptible but incorruptible, no longer natural but spiritual (1 Cor 15:42–44, 53). Because it is incorruptible and spiritual, Jesus can give his glorified flesh for us to eat without loss or injury to himself. Jesus’ glorified flesh is “the living bread come down from heaven” not only because it gives life but because it is no longer subject to death or corruption.

In the second reading St. Paul tells us, “Try to understand the will of the Lord.” What then is the will of the Lord in providing the Eucharist? Why does Christ insist on the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood to have life within? The readings for today can help clarify his intention. In the first reading the Wisdom of God is personified as a hostess setting a table for invited guests, but what is the food and wine she has prepared for them to eat? It is wisdom and truth itself — not just spiritual realities, but that which is divine, for God is Wisdom. Consuming this Wisdom leads to life and knowledge of God. God wants us to be alive with Himself.

One line in this section of the Gospel is the key to understanding what Jesus is up to — the fifty-seventh verse: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” As the Son, Jesus is divine and alive because of the Father, for as we confess in the Creed, he is “God from God.” The divinity — the substance — of the Father is the divinity and substance of the Son, and thus Jesus lives because of the Father, or better, Jesus lives in the Father and the Father lives in him. Jesus’ gift of the Eucharist, by which we truly eat his body and drink his blood, allows for a similar kind of relation and communication of life. By eating his body and drinking his blood we have life because we share in Jesus’ very substance, so that we may live and remain in him, and he in us. That divine substance of Jesus is Life itself, truly given to us as food because when we eat his flesh we consume Him.