Transcript

So, let's start in episode three with a prayer.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Lord, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we may have, um, the light to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of the bread of life.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

So, in this episode three, we're going to look at, um, the New Testament on the Eucharist.

All right, this is too big for a 30-minute segment, and so we're just going to focus on two, um, two things, the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6 and the institution narrative, the four institution narratives from the three Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians Chapter 11.

All right?

So, that's what we're going to look at here.

So, let's start in with the Bread of Life Discourse.

John 6, um, which gives us the Bread of Life Discourse, um, gives us, um, Jesus' preparation for his disciples on the Eucharist, um, which occurred about probably a year before the institution of the Eucharist.

John tells us it was in the proximity of the Passover and clearly not the Passover in which he instituted, which would have been the following year.

All right?

And Jesus prepared for this teaching the day before by feeding the 5,000 right in the desert.

And after that, um, they wanted to make him king, and so it's...

What is that about?

And, um, what's happening there is that in, the feeding of the 5,000 was taken by the, um, Israelites, by the Jews as a Messianic sign, and so we have to know this, that, um, part of the Messianic expectation was, um, a new Exodus.

All right?

And so the Messiah would be a new Moses who would recapitulate the miracles of the Exodus.

All right?

One of the key miracles of the Exodus was feeding the people with the manna.

All right?

And so as Moses provided food from heaven for the people in the desert, people of Israel, so the Messiah should likewise provide bread from heaven for the Messianic kingdom.

All right?

And Jesus did that the day before.

They want to make him king, recognizing the Messianic sign but missing its full import, right?

And that's what gets brought out in the Bread of Life Discourse, right?

They see a Messianic sign, but they don't see, um, it as a figure of spiritual nourishment, um, which will be, um, right, that, that will mark the new covenant.

It wouldn't be a feeding of the body as in the, the wandering in the desert through the manna, but a feeding, um, of the soul and of the whole man, um, with the bread of life.

And Jesus expresses this in John 6:26-27.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loafs." In other words, they got a free lunch, and they're coming back for another free lunch.

And he continues, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him has God the Father set his seal." All right?

So, this kind of gives us the main theme of the Bread of Life Discourse, which is the contrast between, um, physical nourishment and spiritual nourishment, or better, the analogy, right?

That physical nourishment is the analogy for understanding spiritual nourishment, which the, the Messiah gives us in the bread of life.

The Bread of Life Discourse, um, contains four fundamental themes, um, oversimplifying, um.

It's incredibly rich, but, um, we can single out these four themes, and the first is this contrast between physical and spiritual nourishment.

All right?

Jesus' Messianic mission is to nourish us with the eternal and divine life.

But this presupposes recognizing him in his Messianic and divine identity, right?

And we saw that in that quote I just read, which ends with, um, Jesus speaking about himself as, "The one on whom God the Father has set his seal." In other words, Jesus' own identity is central to the Bread of Life Discourse because he is the bread of life coming down from heaven.

Right?

He can only give divine life because he has it or is it, um, from all eternity, right, and has come down precisely to communicate it to us.

And this has to be believed.

And so that, we could say, is the third theme.

If the second theme is Jesus' divine identity, the third theme is faith in that identity is necessary to receive the life that he wishes to give.

Right?

And we see this in verse 29.

And the people asked, um, "What is the work of God?" Right?

"Tell us so that we can do it." And Jesus answers, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." Right?

You have to believe in him so, um, in order to believe in his gift.And then, the fourth point, the most important, the central point, is that Jesus promises that he will give the food of eternal life, which is his own body and blood.

All right, let's go through it.

Um, so in John 6:31, the crowd, um, asks Jesus about the manna.

And so, this is marvelous.

This is w- what we call a teachable moment, right?

A teachable moment is...

So I teach, and it's wonderful when the students ask a question which is exactly what I want to talk about, right?

But...

And that's what the crowd does here.

The crowd says, "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness.

You gave them bread from heaven." Right?

What are you gonna do?

And so, that's perfect setup for what Jesus wants to do, and that is to show the analogy and difference between the manna in the desert and the Eucharist.

So, Jesus answers, verse 32.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven.

My Father gives you true bread from heaven." Right?

And so, that's the contrast there between the figure and the reality, right?

True bread from heaven is what the manna was pointing to, but wasn't.

"For the bread of God," Jesus continues, "is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." And they said, "Lord, give us this bread," right?

Fantastic, right?

"Give us this bread oft- always." And Jesus then answers, "I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." All right, that's just a doubly strong statement.

So, Moses didn't give himself as bread, right?

As manna.

He gave something else.

He simply was an, a mediator in God giving this food, the manna.

Whereas Jesus says, "This bread that I'm talking about is me," right?

"I am the bread of life." And then even more, um, even stronger, this bread of life is such that it totally satisfies the human heart.

"He who comes to me shall not hunger," right?

Well, we'll still, in the course of this life, obviously, we hunger every day for the Eucharist.

But we don't hunger for something more than the Eucharist, because the Eucharist contains everything, containing the mystery of the wording part.

Now, the crowd, right, is doing, um, what happens in John's Gospel in just about every chapter, right?

Jesus speaks over the heads of everyone.

Very interesting.

Um, we see this with Nicodemus, with the Samaritan woman, and here with this crowd.

And it makes sense, because Jesus is speaking of mysteries, um, that obviously require faith.

And even after we have faith, they're still way over our head, so it's no surprise that this mystery was over the head of the crowd.

But what he's clearly saying is that he is the, the bread of life, and that, that we, um, are to be nourished with, and that it will completely fill our restless hearts.

Right?

And it also speaks about his own identity.

He can give this.

He is the bread of life only if he is God, right?

So this is a divine claim here.

Um, he can...

Only God fills the restless heart, right?

That's Saint Augustine's famous line.

"Our hearts are restless until they come to rest in you." Um, and so Jesus is proclaiming himself as the one who fills the heart, such that we will hunger and thirst no more.

And secondly, it also speaks of his divine identity in coming down from heaven, and thus, um, speaking of a pre-existence, right, in heaven with his Father.

He comes down from heaven in the incarnation through the hypostatic union at the enunciation, right, and continues to come down from heaven to us in every mass, right, through transubstantiation, which we'll talk about in a later episode, Episode 6, 5 and 6.

You can't...

There's a, um, a phrase in philosophy, you can't give what you don't have, right?

And so, Jesus can nourish us with divine life only if he has it, right?

He's nourishing us with his own, and we see this in John, um, 6:39-40.

"This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him..." Right?

That's the, that theme of faith.

"Should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." Right?

Again, that's a strong claim.

Jesus will raise up the faithful.

You can't give what you don't have, right?

He promises to give eternal life, and that's possible because he has, or better, is it.

He possesses that life to the full.

Now, the people, right, are...

Obviously, this is a lot to be dropped on them.

And they say, "How does he now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?" Um, and again, the importance of faith in his identity in order to receive his gift.

And Jesus shared, um, highlights, also his knowledge of the Father.

"Not that..." And this is verse 46.

"Not that anyone has seen the Father, except him who is from God.

He has seen the Father." Right?

He's speaking of himself.

And so, this also is, um, to reinforce, um, our faith in him.

Jesus should be believed in, right, because he speaks of what he sees.We know by faith, Jesus by vision.

All right, this has to do with Jesus having the vision of his Father throughout his earthly life.

So he speaks of what he knows.

And then he continues in verse 48.

"I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, they died.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven that a man may eat of it and not die." All right, what does he mean by that?

Obviously, we will physically die, but, um, what he's saying is that the Eucharist has the power of communicating divine life both to spirit and body.

Right?

Spirit first.

That's what is most important, that we receive hi- that divine life in our souls in the form of sanctifying grace from which charity, faith, hope, and charity, and the other supernatural virtues flow.

Right?

But he's also saying that it nourishes us with divine life for the body in its proper time.

Right?

And that's in the general resurrection.

He doesn't clarify that right, just leaves it hanging.

And he continues, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever." All right?

And again, we want to take that live forever in, um, in the sense of grace and glory.

Grace now, and glory to come.

And so we see here what we mentioned in the previous talk, that the bread of life has the same effect as the Tree of Life in Eden.

Right?

And thus the Eucharist brings about a return to the beginning, but a better return because we're receiving the Word Incarnate, right, who's loved us to the end, dying for us and rising for us, and giving himself to us in both his passion and his resurrection.

Now, this was prefigured by the prophets, um, in a particular way in Isaiah 25, verses 6 through 8.

Um, a difficult prophecy.

"On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine and the lees well-refined.

And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever." Right?

A strange prophecy, but it puts together feast and the destruction of the power of death.

Right?

And Jesus is alluding to that in the bread of life discourse.

Right?

Because he's speaking of a feast of his body and blood that destroys death and gives eternal life.

In John, uh, 6:51, he says, "The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh." All right, here comes the shock.

So all of it was difficult up to this point, right?

Divine claim, and God, uh, Jesus seeing his Father coming down from heaven, being able to nourish us.

But then the, the shocker, we could say, is how does this take place?

Through giving us his flesh.

Now, that sounded to the people there, right, at Capernaum, in the synagogue in Capernaum where this discourse took place, like some kind of canna- cannibalism.

Right?

It was a hard saying.

Um...

And he...

Right, he will give his flesh for the life of the world, and thus, um, there's a sacrificial connotation in verse, uh, 51.

Right?

Giving, um, his flesh for the life of the world, um, as a kind of sin offering or peace offering, a sacrifice to be consumed by those who offer the sacrifice.

Right?

The Israelites ought to have understood the sacrificial dimension, and the aspect of communion.

But they didn't fully, right?

And they said, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" And he doesn't retreat from it, but doubles down.

All right?

This is verse 53 to 57.

"Truly, truly," right?

"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood..." All right, it was bad enough up to that point.

Now, blood is reserved for God alone, right?

So in sacrifice, the sacrifice of Israel, the blood was always poured out on the altar, um, or just simply in the, the slaughtering of animals onto the ground as the sign of God's portion.

He gives the life, the life is for him.

Um, the symbolism, right?

That's what's given to God alone.

And here, Jesus is saying not only a cannibalistic kind of image of eating his flesh, but drinking his blood, which ought to be for God alone.

"For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me." All right, the logic of this makes sense, but, uh, the form in which it's to put would have been totally shocking to his listeners.

The logic is what we said in the previous, in the first talk, about the divine interchange.

Right?

That's the purpose of incarnation.

He's taken what is ours to give us a share of what is his.

And he's putting forth the Eucharist as the principal means by which that happens.

"He who eats me will live because of me." He's taken what is ours, he's giving it to us to consume so that we can live his life.

And this happens day by day, because we have to progressively-...

be nourished with his life.

And so, yes, it makes sense, but, of course, the form is totally shocking then, cannibalism and drinking of blood.

And what's interesting is Jesus doesn't retreat from this, but actually shifts the verb from, to trogo, which is a Greek verb for eating that emphasizes the physical aspect of chewing as it were then.

Rudolf Bultmann, a not my favorite exegete, but nevertheless, he gets this right, um, says, "The offense is heightened in verse 54 by the substitution of the stronger trogein for phagein," which would be the more ordinary verb for eating, which Jesus began to use, and then switches when challenged then.

"It is a matter of real eating," this is Bultmann, "and not simply some sort of spiritual participation.

Thus there is every indication that verse 55 should be taken in this way.

It is really so.

Jesus' flesh is real food, and his blood is real drink." Unquote.

Um, amen.

So the drinking of the blood, again, is a sign of sharing in the divine life, and the fact that this was not given in the Old Covenant and is given in the New is also, um, significant, right?

In the old, it was a, m- the sacrifices were figures, um, and the communion likewise were figures.

One didn't really receive the divine life, um, eating a Paschal Lamb, right?

But through the hypostatic union, receiving Jesus' humanity, um, is inseparable from receiving his divine life, um, given, provided that we have the proper dispositions.

Uh, many of Jesus' disciples found this teaching a hard thing and left him, quite understandable.

And Jesus responds in a, in a strange way, enigmatic way, just like the whole discourse, in verse 62 into 63.

"Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?

It is the spirit that gives life.

The flesh is of no avail.

The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life." Unquote.

Now, s- many interpret, Protestant interpreters then tend to take this as, ah, he's retreating from the strong statement of actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood, just a figure.

But that's to, totally missed the point.

What Jesus is doing here is, um, going back to the beginning of the discourse, the contrast between the manna and the bread of life, right?

The manna mer- nourished the body, and the Eucharist is instituted to nourish the soul with grace and the body with glory, but later in the general resurrection, right?

The bread gives eternal life precisely because of the spirit, right, that's given in the Eucharist.

And I- I'll come back to that in our episode on Holy Communion.

And his ascent, he alludes to his ascension here as a sign that he will send the Spirit and give the life of the kingdom, and then the Eucharist communicates it to us every day, right, from on high, as it were.

We receive his risen life, right?

And we could also think of Ezekiel 37, the Spirit breathing on the dead bones, right, that marvelous image from Ezekiel of the Spirit, um, giving life to the dead bones of Israel, right?

And Jesus is promising this and saying that his words are spirit and life.

Also, um, so the fathers speak about this, um, this verse and say that the reference to the ascension is again to, to make it clear that the Eucharist is not going to be eating bite-sized pieces of Jesus' flesh, right?

He ascends how?

Whole, obviously, and will be received whole and entire, not consumed in bite-sized pieces.

That's from Saint Augustine's, um, commentary on the Gospel of John.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria speaks about this, um, when the nature of flesh considered alone itself, it won't be life-giving, but the flesh, um, assumed by the Word in the incarnation has, m- is life-giving in its entirety.

This body belongs to him who is life by nature.

He now fills his whole body with the life-giving activity of the Spirit, right, and for that calls his flesh, um, spirit and life, right?

Because that's what it gives.

All right, let's, uh...

And the apostles themselves, right, are asked by Jesus, "Are you going to go too?" And Peter answers, "Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life." Right?

And that's how we should also respond.

In other words, Jesus should be believed even when we don't know what he's talking about.

And we can't fully know what he's talking about, right, because this is a mystery that totally is above us.

Uh, let's go on now.

So he left them hanging, right?

He spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood and didn't explain how this was going to happen, and he left them hanging for a whole year, and he reveals it only at the Last Supper, a year later.

Um, and he reveals there that this eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood occurs under sacramental signs, the sacramental signs of the matzo, the, the unleavened bread of the Passover supper and the, the wine of the Passover supper, right?

And that makes it possible for us to receive him in a human way that, um, doesn't involve receiving a piece of flesh....

but receiving the whole of Jesus under these appearances of what we are accustomed to eat and drink.

And so, when you don't understand Jesus, wait, and he will make it clear in due time.

All right, so we get...

So this becomes clear in the institution there is, and we have four accounts of this because it's so central to the life of the church, the three Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11.

John doesn't give us the institution of the Eucharist because it had already been given by the Synoptics, and he chose instead to give us the Bread of Life Discourse that we just spoke about.

And the washing of the feet at the Last Supper.

All right, of these four sources, we have a, a firm date for 1 Corinthians 11, right?

In the mid of the, the 50s, 53 to 57.

That is some 20 to 25 years after this event.

In other words, within living memory of the Last Supper, and Saint Paul presents it in a very solemn way, passing on what he himself received.

And in all four accounts, the essential nucleus is the same, although the wording differs.

Right?

And the liturgical practice of the church is to put the four accounts together and consider them as a whole, complementing each other.

And so the Synoptic Gospels show us the Eucharist instituted at a Passover supper.

Right?

And that's very significant.

And we talked about it in the last episode that Jesus chose, um, this most perfect figure of the Eucharist to be the occasion in which they institute the Eucharist, right, as the new Passover of the New Covenant.

And the Synoptic Gospels make very clear this Passover setting.

Um, so that's the, um, they ask Him on the 14th day of Nisan, um, where should they prepare the Passover, right?

And Jesus tells them an interesting thing.

He doesn't tell them exactly.

He doesn't give them an address.

He says, "Go into the city." And that itself is significant.

Jesus didn't want to be, um, interrupted at the Last Supper.

Right?

He knew Judas was looking for an opportunity to betray him, and he didn't want to be betrayed during the supper, but only after, because he had something very important to do to institute the Eucharist as the, the sacrament and sacrifice of the New Covenant.

And this, the Jewish Passover could only be eaten in the city of Jerusalem, right?

And that's why they, um, they couldn't celebrate in Bethany, but had to have a room in the city itself, right, as indeed happened, the Upper Room.

And he chose this night for multiple reasons, right?

We mentioned the first thought, because it was his last night, um, that he...

And so, he wanted to, he wanted this mystery of the Eucharist to be most deeply impressed on the apostles as something done as a last testament.

Um, and also, he wanted it as close to his crucifixion as possible.

And third, he wanted it to be on the Passover to show the continuity between the, the great sacrament of the Old Covenant and the great sacrament of the new.

Now, there's a problem about the date.

This would take us too long to explain, um, but, um, the Synoptic Gospels are clear that it's a Passover supper.

John's Gospel, um, gives several elements that confirm that.

Um, John describes a very solemn meal, such as the Passover would be.

He mentions that the participants were reclining, right?

And so he himself, the beloved disciple, has his head on Jesus' breast, right, showing that they're reclining, which only...

Jews only did at the Passover supper.

Um, John also recounts how Jesus gives a morsel to Judas, and that's part of the Passover ceremony, that there's the dipping of, um, of bitter herbs in, into salt, um, and the dipping of matzah into, um, charoset, a mixture of nuts, apples, and wine.

And, and so, um, this dipping and passing of the morsel, also indicative of Passover meal.

And then third, Judas is said to l- have left, "And it was night." And that's proper to the Passover supper.

It had to be held after sundown and continued late into the night, right, as we see the Last Supper did.

Anyway, the point is, it has all the marks of a Passover supper.

Um, but there are a couple details that, um, are hard to reconcile with that.

And, um, let me just mention them and then, um, how we can reconcile.

Um, in John 18:28, it's mentioned that the, um, the high priest didn't enter the Praetorium on the morning of Good Friday, so that they might eat the Passover.

And so many think that, um, John therefore is saying that the Passover was still to come that night, not the night before.

But you have to remember here that Passover is a week, um, it's seven days, um, and the priests would have been eating sacrifices offered throughout those seven days.

And if they'd become ritually impure, they wouldn't have been able to do that, right?

So, um, that detail, in fact, doesn't, um, refute it being a Passover supper.

Another verse that sometimes people cite is John 19:14, um, in which he says that the crucifixion was on the day of preparation for the Passover.

Again, sounds like the day before the, um, the Passover.

But in Hebrew, um, Preparation Day is a technical term for Friday.

It's like us simply saying Friday.

Friday in Passover.

Um, and so, it, again, it doesn't, um, make that clear.

A third argument is some hold that it would be impossible for the Sanhedrin to, to try Jesus if, um, if that was the Passover.

And that would be true for ordinary crimes, um, but, um, in the case, in this particular case, he was being tried as a false prophet.And, yes, the at least later Jewish law allowed for the Sanhedrin to meet even during a feast to, uh, try someone accused of being a false prophet so that they could be executed in front of all the people.

Because a pilgrimage feast, the whole of Israel that could come would be present there, as indeed happened at Jesus' crucifixion.

Brad Pe- if anybody wants more information on this, and Brad Petry has a great book on this, Jesus and the Last Supper, and he goes through four different theories about the chronology, and he himself s- um, holds...

So, one ingenious explanation is that there were two calendars, the Essene calendar and the temple calendar, that's possible.

But I, I agree with Brad Petry that the best explanation, I think, is simply the traditional one, that, um, it was indeed, um, the Last Supper and that the difficulties in John's Gospel can all be reconciled with that.

But it, the church doesn't impose any one solution here.

All right, just, I want to end here with, um, the sacrificial implications of the words of institution.

Um, in instituting the Eucharist, Jesus used words that, um, have profound resonances, um, in the Old Testament.

He, um, is alluding to various Old Testament passages that are sacrificial.

And, um, just even, "This is my body given for you," um, is, itself implies that it's not simply given to us, but it's given for us.

That's the idea of sacrifice.

And then the, "Do this in memory of me," now, again, we might say, "Ah, it's kind of a memorial," but that's, um, something that we find in the Old Testament repeatedly, above all with regard to the Passover.

It was a memorial sacrifice Ɣḫwɑ́ɑ̄l.

And, and so that would be the, the way that, um, the Jewish hearers of Jesus would have understood this, as a memorial sacrifice like the Passover, in which one is making a sacrifice today that is, um, commemorating or making liturgically present, um, the foundational event, um, of Passover, the first Passover.

Right?

And Jesus is doing that with regard to his Pascal mystery.

Um, "Do this, even that-" All right, that doesn't sound sacrificial to us, but that's, um, a verb commonly used, um, with regard to the sacrifices of Israel.

Um, but it's above all in, with regard to the chalice.

"The blood poured out," that's sacrificial language, "poured out for many." Um, we can find a reference to the, um, Isaiah 53, the, um, suffering servant canticle.

And he...

"He shall make many to be accounted righteous because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many." Right?

And so, the language at the Last Supper of, "The blood of the covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins," is sacrificial language.

Right?

And that's why we keep that many there.

The meaning is indeed, Jesus died for all, but many as this great multitude.

And then finally, um, "The blood of the covenant," right?

That's sacrificial language, um, recalling the blood of the covenant that we spoke of in the last episode at this, um, Exodus 24, the sealing of the old covenant.

Right?

And the Eucharist is the sealing of the new covenant, and not just the sealing of it, but it gives us the essence of the new covenant.

It is the new covenant in Jesus's blood.

Jesus's very life communicated to us is the essence of the new covenant.

And then that also is quoting Jeremiah 31:31, where he speaks in the prophecy of a new covenant.

Last point.

Jesus, in doing this, um, was making present what would happen the next day, and thus it shows his knowledge of that as something transcending time.

And we'll come back to this in a greater, in a later episode, um, seven on the sacrifice, how it's the same sacrifice.

Right?

And so he made present the sacrifice of the next day that night at the Last Supper, such that the Eucharist contained the whole of his Pascal mystery.

So, let us thank the Lord for the gift of himself in the Eucharist by which the whole mystery of his, um, redemption of us, his Pascal mystery, is made present to us through Christ our Lord.

In Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.