Catholics make a distinction between the first part of John 6:26-51, wherein Christ speaks of himself figuratively as the Bread of Heaven, a spiritual food to be received by faith, and the second part verses 51 to 59, wherein He speaks literally of His Flesh and Blood as real food, and a real drink. In the first part the food is of the present, in the second of the future; there it is given by the Father, here by the Redeemer Himself; there it is simply called “bread,” here the “Flesh of the Son of Man”; there our Lord speaks only of bread, here of His Flesh and Blood; there, it is true, He calls himself “bread,” but he avoids the expression “to eat Me,” where one would expect to meet it; here He speaks both of “eating Me” and of “eating My Flesh and drinking My Blood”.
A careful study of the whole chapter calls for a literal interpretation of the words “to eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood” (John 6:54). Christ makes a clear cut distinction between three kinds of bread:
- the bread or manna of the desert (Exod. 16:15 and John 6:49), given by Moses to the Jews in the past to nourish the body
- the Bread of Heaven or the Bread of Life (John 6: 32,35), Christ Himself, given by the Father in the present to the Jews as an object of faith
- the Bread of Life, Christ Himself in the Eucharist, to be given in the future by Christ for the life of the world (John 6:52)
Again a figurative interpretation is impossible, according to the rules of language. If a figure of speech has a definite meaning, we cannot use it in a new sense, merely for the purposes of controversy.
To eat one’s flesh was a figure of among the Jews of old but it always means to do a person some serious injury, especially by calumny or by false accusation. Is it not absurd to imagine that our Lord would promise eternal life and a glorious resurrection to those who calumniated Him?
