They did not know why or how, but the disciples did know that in order to participate in the resurrection they needed to consume Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood, as he said, long prior to his death (our teachers show us this in in the historical record found in John 6). It was only later, that night in the week prior to his death where they finally understood how they were going to eat his flesh and drink his blood, where he held something up and said to them, “take and eat; take and drink; this is my body; this is my blood.”
And they knew the day before he died: “Ahh, your flesh and blood are food and drink, indeed.”
Why?
In Egypt the angel of death went looking for first borns to slay, but passed by places where the blood of the dead was on the door and the bodies of death were in the victims.
In the new creation on the third day, the Lord’s Day, the Holy Spirit goes looking for the body of Christ to bring him to Resurrection, and where does he find the body and blood of Christ, but in us who have consumed him. And the Spirit pours the fullness of his being into us, the fullness of God by the Holy Spirit is poured into us who have consumed the body and blood of Christ so that he rises to life in us with us.
In the first Passover the angel of death turned away when he saw a real blood and body of death. In this Passover the Spirit of Life comes in where He sees the real body and blood of the Son. (It does not work symbolically; you need the real thing, body and blood, to continue the eternal reciprocation of the Father pouring his life into the Son just as the Son poured his life into the Father in doing his will. By pouring his body and blood into us, Jesus is now including us in this eternal reciprocation of Love, pouring one’s whole life into the Beloved, including us who have eaten his body and blood to participate in this life of the Trinity).
John Martin
