Sometimes Jesus explained his parables, and sometimes he didn’t. None the less, I have a very hard time accepting that Jesus could allow the disciples in John 6 to be so gravely misled. In none of the examples you gave did Jesus leave any listeners believing something untrue. In Matthew 13 the crowd was confused, but that was it. They didn’t go away with a positive misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching, did they? His words may have confused them, but didn’t mislead them. In John 3, Nicodemus may not have understood what being born again was, but Jesus did explain that he didn’t mean re-entering and exiting a womb. The Samaritan woman may not have understood what living water was, but that was apparently not something that was going to keep her from receiving Jesus’ message. It seems to me like a different matter entirely if Jesus was to allow a misunderstanding to not only confuse someone but to prevent them from following him. We can’t know everything God knew, but what you are suggesting seems very unlikely to me, and I don’t see why I should believe that’s what happened.
Two more points on things you said:
As far as Peter telling Jesus “you have the words of eternal life” I think that fits perfectly well into the Catholic understanding of John 6, and it does with many other interpretations of the verse. Jesus does have the words of eternal life. Jesus had just been telling them how to be saved. It seems like a fitting thing for Peter to say no matter what view a person takes about the meaning of what Jesus said. If Peter had said “you are the bread of life” instead, would your view of the chapter be changed?
“Do this in remembrance of me.” I’ll be honest about doubts I’ve had. I think the track you are taking there is the most convincing counterpoint to belief in the Real Presence - I’m sure I’m not the only Catholic to have had a “hey, wait a minute…” moment with that sentence. It’s quite familiar as we hear it every time we go to mass.
A thought I’ve had is “Wait, how can we REMEMBER Jesus if he is here with us in the Eucharist? How can you REMEMBER someone if they are right there with you? So maybe Jesus isn’t with us.” This thought, more than anything, has made me doubt the truth of the Real Presence. I’d love to hear others on this board argue with the point, but I have my own reason for rejecting that argument. Whether one believes in the Eucharist or not, every Christian agrees that Jesus is, in fact, with us in one way or another. Jesus says that at the end of Matthew 28. He isn’t with us in the same way he was with the apostles, of course, but he is still here. So my argument was wrong. Maybe was Jesus meant was that We can act in remembrance of him and what he did while with us (or, rather, the disciples) in Palestine 2,000 years ago. Maybe it alludes to the mass as a sacrifice… I don’t really know. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can help out here…
In any case, I’m not particularly worried about this. It can be a remembrance without being
just a remembrance. And everything else seems to point in that direction. I did find one argument (
catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0402sbs.asp) that tries to make the case that the Greek word used for “remembrance” means more than something as simple as having a memory of something. I don’t know any Greek or Hebrew, so I really can’t comment too intelligently on the argument, but if you do perhaps you’ll want to check it out. Not to consume your entire day, but you do seem to be passionate enough about the subject so I thought you might be interested.
Which seems to make sense of why “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.” I’m not sure what it means to be “guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord” but it doesn’t sound good and doesn’t sound like a mere offense against a symbolic ritual. That also explains why some are spoken of as being weak, ill, and dead. According to this article (
catholic.com/library/Institution_of_the_Mass.asp)), which I haven’t read today but probably have in the past, the words do mean what I’d figure: that to be guilty of someone’s body means to commit and offense against a person’s body.
As for the stuff in the original article about Judas - I see your point about it seeming a bit speculative. Maybe there is more to the point that the author of the article didn’t mention; I don’t know. In any case I don’t think it’s central to this discussion.
