The Bread of Life Discourse on eternal life

Today’s Sunday gospel is the 3rd in the series entitled “The Bread of Life Discourse.” Surely, if we Catholics are fed this teaching on one single topic for the entire month of August, I have no doubt in my mind that this teaching would certainly permeate the minds of even those who are what we call nominal Catholics. This gospel reading can be found in your bibles on John 6:51-58.

“[Jesus said to the Jews,] 51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give you is my flesh for the life of the world. 52 The Jews quarreled among themselves saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have any life within you.

54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food; and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57 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. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

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Honestly, after three previous gospels of the same topic, I’m running out of ideas on what to give our readers. Anyway, I will still give this a shot. Actually we have come to the point that when our Lord Jesus Christ told his disciples (many of them were Jews) that he is the bread of life, it was still acceptable to them until he dropped the big one when he said,  “and the bread that I will give you is my flesh for the life of the world.”

I’m sure that statement came as a shock to the Jews. After all, this man Jesus was speaking very plainly and offering his own flesh to eat and his blood to drink. Bring your thoughts to that time 2,000 years ago and you are listening to the Nazorean, the son of the carpenter Joseph speaking this way. What would go on in your mind? To be totally frank to our readers, perhaps most of us would say that this Jesus is talking about cannibalism.

Call us lucky that we, the Catholics of today, 2,000 years after this issue has been debated, argued and discussed by holy men, especially the Church of the Early Fathers, now know that what Jesus Christ really meant was he would be truly present… body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist. This was demonstrated during the Last Supper when our Lord broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, then he gave them the wine and offered it to his disciples. Being God, he can truly be present in the Holy Eucharist and we Catholics must believe in this truth. If you don’t believe in it, in my book, you have ceased to become a Catholic.

Going back to today’s gospel, the Jews quarreled among themselves, questioning the ways of our Lord. But our Lord Jesus did not change his stand and went on saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have any life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”

Let me bring you back to my favorite topic in Mark 12: 28-34 about the Greatest Commandment, which goes like this, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God will all your heart with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and your neighbor as yourself.” The scribes who agreed that doing this was worth all the burnt offerings and sacrifices you can do in the temple. Then our Lord Jesus answered the scribes, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” What did he mean by this? In my understanding, he really meant that following the greatest commandment doesn’t usher you to eternal life, but you are no longer far from the kingdom of God.

In order to gain eternal life, we must eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood because our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” This has been the teaching of the Catholic Church from 2,000 years ago, which is why orthodox Catholics still believe that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, except for those who never heard of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As I wrote before, if the 5,000 whom our Lord Jesus Christ fed in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, literally cooked our Lord like a lechon and they literally ate his body and drank his blood, not all the 5,000 would have been able to eat him. But since our Lord is God, he ordained that he would be truly present in the Holy Eucharist so that thousands of years later, all those who believe in him and his words would gain eternal life.

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