“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52)
In the Gospel on Sunday 18 August, Jesus does not answer this question from his followers: instead he emphasises the necessity of physically receiving him, without explaining exactly how he offers himself to us.
In fact, Jesus uses the word “chew” rather than simply “eat” as the passage progresses – to underscore that he expects us to really eat – and he formulates his teaching in the negative to underline that he is not speaking of an optional extra: “if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.” (6:53)
And if eating flesh was shocking, drinking blood was even worse for the Jewish mind: the blood of a thing contains its life, and so animal blood was forbidden, to avoid receiving subhuman life and so dehumanising oneself.
But Jesus, through his blood, is really giving us his life, his supernatural life, rather than anything subhuman.
This divine life is given to us to share with others. The following sentence implies a striking parallel: “As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me” (6:57).
Jesus draws life from the Father and we draw life from Jesus; but the origin of his life is “being sent” by the Father whereas the source of ours is “eating Jesus”, not “being sent” by him, as one would expect from the structure of the sentence.
“Eating Jesus” is like “being sent” by him: the more we receive him the more we can offer him to others.
Nevertheless, it is always good to ask “how” when we are challenged by Jesus’s teaching, although never in such a way that we doubt “what” he teaches, as his followers do here.
Jesus has the power to give his flesh to us, because he is God; we should not question his power even if we have questions about how he exercises it.
Jesus loves us to ask those questions, but we need realism when we do so: his words are mysterious not because they lack meaning, but because they contain too much meaning for us, more than we could ever fully assimilate.
The Church gives us certain and true interpretations of Jesus’s teaching, but these can never exhaust its mysteries.
True wisdom requires accepting that we will always be “ignorant” to some extent.
In the first reading we hear personified Wisdom say: “Who is ignorant? Let him step this way.”(Proverbs 9:4). Do we have the humility to always admit our ignorance and so be led continuously to deeper wisdom?
Do we trust that because Jesus is God, he always speaks the truth?<br><br><em>Photo: Tintoretto’s depiction of the Last Supper and the first Eucharist; screenshot. </em>
