To begin to understand the full context of our Gospel reading today, we have to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve had just eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. Through their disobedience, our human nature became corrupted. Our human nature became like a sickness, which symptoms include sin, shame, and death.
As part of His response, God said, “The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever?” God then “expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Now at the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus declares that He will make the Bread of Life, His very Flesh and Blood, available to us as the remedy of, as the medicine for, those symptoms of our fallen humanity.
Let’s look at the correlations a bit more closely.
First the flaming sword, or blade, that blocked the way to the Tree of Life. It is no accident then that during His sorrowful passion, the heart of Jesus Christ was pierced by a blade or spear…sometimes, by the way, referred to as the Spear of Destiny.
The instrument that blocked the way to eternal life, then used to pierce the heart of Jesus Christ. In the process, opening up the way. Making it possible for the Blood of Jesus Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit to flow out from the side of Christ into the Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church for our salvation.
Jesus is indeed the way, the truth, and the life. The Cross is the Tree of Life and He is the fruit of eternal life. The Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church (particularly the Mass) is our gateway, the gateway once blocked by the Seraphim, but now opened by Jesus Christ for us to feed on Him in order for us to have true life because of Him and live forever in Him.
The heart of Jesus Christ is of course the Flesh of the Son of Man…the same Flesh we consume through the Eucharist. What God once barred mankind from eating during the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Jesus now commands us to believe and eat.
Similar to Protestants and other non-Catholics today, the Jews chose not to believe. “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
Jesus gave the only response that He could. He doubled down in a way only Jesus can. “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.”
As Saint Paul will later capture Jesus saying in his first letter to the Corinthians, “This cup (referring to the Eucharist) is the new covenant in my blood”.
The Eucharist is the New Covenant. The Eucharist is the dividing line of salvation.
That was a hard teaching for the Jews, almost literally all of His disciples left him. That was a hard teaching for the Protestant reformers, as they left the Eucharist to follow their own theological musings as we discussed in a recent homily. That is a hard teaching for many Catholics that do not believe in the real presence.
In our first reading, Jesus said Saint Paul is a “chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before Gentiles”. The reality is that each of us are chosen instruments to carry not only the name of Jesus Christ out into the world around us, but also to carry the promise of John chapter 6 out into the world around us.
We are chosen instruments to reunite all the children of God into the Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church, which is the world reconciled and restored.
We are chosen instruments to go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
Thanks be to God!
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