and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
☧
Bishop Robert Barron points out how the words of Jesus preceding this passage were intellectually shocking and repulsive to the Jews and then he goes on to comment about the reaction of Jesus, "So what does Jesus do? Does he soften his rhetoric when he hears these reactions? Does he offer a metaphorical or symbolic interpretation? Does he back off? On the contrary, he intensifies what he just said: “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 all the scholars point out to us, the verb used here in Greek is trogein, which indicates the way an animal eats.
So what do we do? How should we understand this? If we stand in the great Catholic tradition, we honor these mysterious and wonderful words of Jesus. We resist all attempts to soften them or explain them away or make them easier to swallow. We affirm, with all of our hearts, the doctrine of the real presence."
 |
| Artwork of Fr. DeWit, Photo credit: Fr Augustine Foley |
No comments:
Post a Comment