Literal or symbolic? Partaking of the flesh and blood

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There are plenty of CA articles about this. It is a frequent topic. If you want the official Catholic answer to this question, do a quick search.
 
Benjamin, it’s Faith! Who is Jesus to you? His word tells us His message. If His word says, THIS IS MY BODY over a wafer, it is! Thank goodness it doesn’t change to raw muscle. We couldn’t consume it. Jesus’s was the last blood sacrifice. Don’t go into,” Why blood sacrifices!” It’s emotionally and spiritually draining for me.
It is what it is!
If consecrated and vomited, it is a big deal! That’s why we don’t take communion when sick.
Think of the host being the Ark of the Covenent.
If touched, you’d die. Only Levites we’re allowed to touch the Ark. This isn’t a game. This is our Life in Christ. This lesson is in all Christian Bibles. IT IS! So, Jesus says, So,it is and I believe…
in Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
I’m sorry if I sound disrespectful. I know it’s a Catholic forum, and I’ve been treated very respectfully by everyone here. But this kind of faith seems like the faith that the emperor’s new clothes are really there. If it looks like bread, and has the chemical composition of bread, I don’t think it’s an act of faith to say “It’s not bread!” any more than it’s an act of faith to say, “That parrot’s not dead. It’s pining!”
 
No one is saying it’s not bread. Catholics say the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine. Any scientific analysis of the consecrated bread and wine would show it to be nothing but bread and wine, a finding which would come as no surprise to Catholics. The tragedy would be that the lab technicians would miss the inner depths of substances they were analyzing.

We speak of plants and animals as being living things, of having life. We have analysed plants and animals, reduce them to the cellular level and the cells to the molecular level and the molecules to the atomic and even subatomic levels. Nowhere along the way have we ever come across anything called life, yet we know that life is truly present in these things. Likewise, the body and blood of Jesus is truly present in the consecrated bread and wine.
 
We talk about faith here but there is a part that is hope. The priest and parishioners ask God to change the bread and wine to the body and blood of Jesus. In that way He knows we are trying to do what Christ has asked. It is our hope He will do what we ask and faith that He does.

I like the point @tweedlealice made. If it turned into muscle fibers and blood plasma and cells it would be pretty hard to take.
 
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cody.helscel said:
How can we know the flesh and blood is literal compared to perhaps other symbolic verses?
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The RC teaching is one of Real Presence, i.e. after consecration Christ is really present in the bread and wine. That’s not quite the same as saying that the the bread has literally become His flesh or the wine literally His blood. What is changed by consecration is the “substance” of the bread and wine, but not their “species”, i.e. not their physical characteristics.

So if we ask, does the RCC take the bible literally on this point? The answer is that it depends on what we mean by “literal”. If by “literal” we mean “physical”, then no, the RCC does not take the bible literally on this point. If by “literal” we mean “really”, then yes.

The main point of the RCC teaching on this matter, is that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is not “just a thought”, but real.
 
It’s not disrespectful to ask or disagree. I don’t know how to make it come Real to you. It’s not a fairy story. JESUS IS DOCUMENTED IN ROMAN WRITINGS. Life has such confusing things coming at us.Benjamin. If Christians are correct. It’s heaven and hell. I have company. I’ll write later.
 
The Church is the authority on Biblical interpretation.

Also, it fits that we eat and drink such when considering the Heavenly meal had at the establishment of the Covenant with Moses.
And many expected that in the Age of the Messiah, we’d be sustained by God.
 
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Well, okay. . . that’s why I don’t think it literally turns into flesh and blood.

If by “flesh” you mean not muscle, but some other kind of spiritual sustenance, then we are talking about an metaphorical transformation, not a literal one.

It still seems much more likely that Jesus meant that ALL food is of God, and that whenever you eat anything, you are being nourished directly by the grace of the Lord, and you’d better not forget that.
 
I’m not arguing against Jesus. I just don’t think that “partaking of the flesh and blood” can be taken as literal. Nobody ever ate bread and threw up muscle tissue; no coroner ever pulled out human tissue from a stomach so far as I’ve ever heard.

To me, that’s obviously because bread is bread, and it is not muscle tissue. If you want to say, “We’re talking about a spiritual nourishment,” or “Jesus meant that ALL nourishment is a gift of the Lord, and that all things in the world of of Him and His grace,” then okay.

Otherwise, I’d just have to argue that your definition of “literal” is not the same as mine, and that the word in this context doesn’t really mean anything.

And again, I don’t mean disrespect. When I was a young man, I read the Bible a lot, and was considering a monastic lifestyle actually, but I could not then accept some of these points, either.
 
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IM BAAACCKK!
Ok, I’m working on our beliefs from a different angle.Lets say, Ya’all— JESUS WAS PHONY! He was a Con man to sucker us into this belief system. A Con man wants something! What did Jesus and His followers get???
Jesus was tortured and killed. His Apostles didn’t build big churches to accumulate money. None of them got wealthy. Why go down the Via Dolorosa and suffer and die, if you weren’t going to get anything??? How can ppl deny Him, if we look at His Life and Death, as a Con and can’t find the reward. His followers were royally dumb!
Leaving family and friends and jobs to wander around telling a lame story. No riches! Just enough to keep moving for years. Church persecution for 300 yrs. There is no financial gain. There is no Land rewards. LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY!! Burning crosses. You know all the torture.
THE ONLY THING WE GAIN FROM A POOR, BROKEN MAN AND DEVOTED FOLLOWERS IS SALVATION AND NEW REAL ESTATE OF HEAVEN. All bought w His blood and death and our receiving His Faith.
Can anybody else think what material gain, He achieved to be a crook??
In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
Hi,
We’re talking Apple and oranges. The natural world, it’s bread and wine. The Supernatural world, by faith and trust in Jesus, is body and blood. Transubstsbtiation=the Spirit of the inanimate object changes by the power of the Holy Spirit to a Spiritual BODY AND BLOOD.
Indians believe everything has s spirit. Even rocks have music. Trees and plants live.
Think of the essence of life.
Gotta go
In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
Okay, can I put it like this?

When I eat, my body is nourished by the sugars etc. of physical bread, but the essential life force that the food also provides is of God?
 
Wrong. The Prods pick and choose what Jesus taught literally.
 
Ben, we’re going to start semantics here. Each person has to define this miracle as he/she needs to believe a gross concept of eating flesh and drinking blood. Lutherans believe in consubstantiation. We believe in transsubstantiation. Con is with and trans is across. What’s the big difference?? I think your assessment is fair. As I said, it’s natural and supernatural. Defining it exactly to our human mind, can’t be done. If Jesus is! Then what He says is true. It’s simple and complex. SURRENDER!
In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
Ask Jesus to reveal the truth to you. It is definitely His flesh and blood.
 
First, I don’t think you are being disrespectful because I think you are sincere in your line of reasoning. But think of what you are saying Jesus meant compared to what He literally said. He did not say all food is nourishment from God. He said “unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His blood you do not have life within you” (John 6: 53).
 
benjamin1973 said:
I’m not arguing against Jesus. I just don’t think that “partaking of the flesh and blood” can be taken as literal. Nobody ever ate bread and threw up muscle tissue; no coroner ever pulled out human tissue from a stomach so far as I’ve ever heard.

To me, that’s obviously because bread is bread, and it is not muscle tissue. If you want to say, “We’re talking about a spiritual nourishment,” or “Jesus meant that ALL nourishment is a gift of the Lord, and that all things in the world of of Him and His grace,” then okay.
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Literal here means the bread and the wine have become the Body and Blood of Jesus. That’s what it means by literal. They are not symbolic of his Body and Blood but his true Body and true Blood.

That has to be made clear.

The other issue is whether the bread and the wine have changed literally into muscle and human blood. Nobody said that, not even Jesus, which is also not found in the John Gospel.

They are two different issues.

Therefore, one has to work on from the first paragraph - how is that the bread and the wine have become the true Body and true Blood of Jesus as Jesus said they would? The answer for that is the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation.
 
We know it is literal because the Mass is a sacrifice. And Jesus Christ Himself, in flesh and blood, has to be sacrified, otherwise the sacrifice won’t be good enough for our salvation.
 
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