The Scandal of the Eucharist

Gospel Reflection for August 18, 2024 - John 6:

I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.

The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.

For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.

As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. (John 6:51-58 DRA)

The Gospel passage for this Sunday presents the heart of Our Lord’s Bread of Life discourse. Its central theme could be described as “the scandal of the Eucharist.” Just as St. Paul described “the scandal of the cross” (Gal 5:11) as “unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness”, (1 Cor 1:23) the Eucharist is also a scandal which in this reading confounds the Jews, who think Christ is teaching cannibalism, and even scandalizes many of His disciples, who in a subsequent verse murmur, “This saying is hard, and who can hear it?” (Jn 6:61)

The Eucharist has been the most attacked doctrine in the history of the Church, the central tradition rejected by the Protestants and a lightning rod for mockery and derision by modernists, including those in the Church who have worked to rationalize the Mass and demystify it. Indeed, this is the goal of all heresies: to make the Faith more palatable to the world, to erase from it anything which might seem hard to believe or do - and the Eucharist is the hardest of all. This is why J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “It was against this that the [Western] European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched - ‘the blasphemous fable of the Mass’ - and faith/works a mere red herring.”

The worry of the Jews - that the words of Christ amount to cannibalism - is one way in which the Eucharist has been doubted, particularly since the Protestant Revolution, when the post-Renaissance spirit of rationalism denied the sacramental and mystical nature of the Christian life. Like Wycliffe, who once threw a consecrated host on the ground and, after watching a rat eat it without apparent effect, concluded that the Eucharist is merely a symbol, many Protestants treat Christ’s words as metaphorical and the Eucharist as a kind of communal meal without sacramental power, despite His simple reiteration without clarification in this chapter. Yet, as St. Hilary of Poitiers made clear,

Of the truth then of the body and blood of Christ, no room for doubting remains: for, by the declaration of our Lord Himself, and by the teaching of our own faith, the flesh is really flesh, and the blood really blood. This then is our principle of life. While we are in the flesh, Christ dwelleth in us by His flesh. (c.14:19) And we shall live by Him, according as He liveth. If then we live naturally by partaking of Him according to the flesh, He also liveth naturally by the indwelling of the Father according to the Spirit. (Hilary, Catena Aurea)

St. Thomas Aquinas likewise taught,

The truth of this sacrament is indicated when he says, is my flesh. He does not say, ‘This signifies my flesh,’ but it is my flesh, for in reality that which is taken is truly the body of Christ… [S]ome might think that what he was saying about his flesh and blood was just an enigma and a parable. So our Lord rejects this, and says, my flesh truly is food. As if to say: Do not think that I am speaking metaphorically, for my flesh is truly contained in this food of the faithful, and my blood is truly contained in this sacrament of the altar: “This is my body... this is my blood of the new covenant,” as we read in Matthew (26:26). (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Ultimately, the Bread of Life discourse cannot be understood apart from the institution of the Eucharist. This is why Christ said that His Body and Blood “will be offered,” meaning both on the Cross and, for our participation, in the Eucharist. Cannibalism is the eating of dead human flesh, as if it were any animal meat, for bodily sustenance; the Eucharist, on the other hand, is the eating of the spiritual flesh of the resurrected Christ, eternally sacrificed on the Cross and offered to the Father in Heaven, under the appearances of bread and wine. Whereas ordinary food, including the manna of the Israelites, nourishes only the body for a limited time, being transformed into our flesh, the Eucharist transforms us into Christ, giving us a share in Christ’s divine life - if it is received worthily.

A mere symbol cannot confer eternal life - otherwise, the sacrifices of the Temple would have been sufficient. Nor is a purely spiritual infusion of the graces of Christ’s Passion, which we receive in the Eucharist, proper for us as incarnate beings - hence why the Son of God became man, established a visible Church and constructed with the “seven columns” of the Sacraments. This sacramental understanding is wholly foreign to the modern mind, whether Protestant or atheist, formed as it is in the scientific materialism of the Enlightenment, but as Flannery O’Connor once said, “Well, if it’s just a symbol, to hell with it!”

But why would Christ even give such a teaching which is so prone to misunderstanding and even scandal? The same could be said of His sacrifice on the Cross, and even of His Incarnation, both of which are blasphemous to Jews and Muslims. Christ instituted this sacrament, and at this time did not even explicitly reveal its future realization in the Eucharist, as a test of the faith of His disciples, and He proved that many of them followed Him only for His comfortable words and His miraculous powers, not out of true fidelity and intellectual vulnerability. As Christians, we must say with St. Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” (Jn 6:69) And this humble patience would be rewarded at the Last Supper. It remains as scandalous, and as necessary, today to believe in the truth of the Eucharist, to “[discern] the body of the Lord” in St. Paul’s words. Otherwise, we cut ourselves off from the fullness of Christ’s divine life and from the perfect unity in communion with the Church which is effected by forming us into one Mystical Body in the Eucharist.

(Cover image source: https://reflectionsonthesacredliturgy.com/2019/06/24/corpus-christi-homily/)