How Can This Man Give Us Flesh To Eat?

"'I AM the living bread from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever.  The bread I shall give is MY flesh, and I will give it for the life of the world.' 

The Jews were arguing among themselves, 'How can this man give us HIS flesh to eat?'  So, JESUS replied, 'Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink HIS blood, you have no life in you.   The one who eats MY flesh and drinks MY blood lives eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

MY flesh is really food, and MY blood is truly drink.  Those who eat MY flesh and drink MY blood, live in ME, and I in them.  Just as the FATHER, who is life, sent ME, and I have life from the FATHER, so whoever eats ME will have life from ME.  This is the bread from heaven; not like that of your ancestors, who ate and later died.  Those who eat this bread will live forever.'" - John 6:51-58  

(JESUS becomes our bread when we eat HIS body in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

How can this man give us flesh to eat?  Thus spoke the Israelites who distrusted GOD in the desert [Numbers 11:4 and 18].  John plays on the same words and gives them a different meaning here: why would a messenger from heaven give flesh to the world, when what we need is something spiritual?  JESUS answers in verse 63: this flesh to eat may sound like food for bodily sustenance, but it is really a sharing in the life of the risen CHRIST transformed by the Spirit.  For that reason, it gives life [verse 63].

Through material means the believer participates in a heavenly reality and enters into communion with the risen CHRIST.  The Church defines sacrament as something material that symbolizes and brings about a spiritual reality.  When we faithfully participate in a sacrament, we encounter the living CHRIST in person renewing our lives.  In the Supper of the LORD, that is, in the Eucharist, we really receive the body and blood of CHRIST, in what appears to be only bread and wine.  The risen CHRIST becomes for us the food of eternal life.

JESUS acts as living bread in us.  When we eat ordinary bread our body digests and assimilates it, but when we eat living bread [the body of CHRIST], this bread actively changes us.  CHRIST transforms us; gives HIS life to us and unites us with HIMSELF: Whoever eats ME will have life in ME.

Flesh and blood.  In Hebrew culture flesh and blood denotes the human being in his mortal condition.  JESUS wants us to make our own HIS entire human being in its humble and mortal condition and communicates to us HIS divinity.)

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