"Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real
drink." (John 6:53-56)
"On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This
is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60)
"As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former
way of life and no longer accompanied him." (John 6:66)
Jesus tells us that his flesh is REAL food, his blood REAL drink. We can
read in black in white that Jesus makes no mention of a metaphor from here we
can understand that if what He said was merely symbolic and all we had to do
was eat some bread and drink some wine to gain eternal life, well that would be
easy and everybody would sign up for this kind of salvation. But His disciples,
people who knew Jesus, who had left literally everything they had ever known to
follow Him, family, friends, a job, said to Him "this is a hard teaching.
Who can accept it?" These people didn't just show up for one day to hang
out with Jesus they knew Him and trusted Him with their welfare. If all the disciples
had to do was eat bread and drink some wine then it wouldn’t be hard. Jesus
tells his followers eat my FLESH and drink my BLOOD and because of this
"many of his disciples returned to their former way of life." These
people knew Jesus meant what he said (either that or thought he was insane)
regardless they knew he MEANT what he was saying. Men who left all they'd ever
known, possibly miles from their homes, maybe even had to sever ties with family
to be with Jesus left him because of this teaching and Jesus let them go. Jesus
let them go because he knew that if they couldn’t accept this teaching then
they would miss out on so much more, that this was one of the most important
things he was offering to us, His people on earth and ultimately when they rejected
his body and blood, they rejected Jesus.
Jesus is REAL body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist and thank God
for that gift. I was really inspired today during prayer listening to a podcast
from Father Michael Schmitz on the Eucharist so I just thought I'd share with
you all.
AMDG
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