As we conclude our reading of John chapter 6, we come to a point where we see something that does not occur anywhere else in the Gospels except during Our Lord’s Passion: people abandon Christ. Certainly, there have be situations where those around Christ have questioned His sayings and teachings or have left not understanding His words. But in this instance we find the one occasion where we hear the Gospel writer declare that not only did some of His disciples left Him, but they also returned to their former way of life. We see in this passage the scandal which the definition of the Eucharist caused in Christ’s own time, and the shadows of the scandal of the Eucharist which remains to our own day.
For certainly, the Eucharist is a scandal to our Protestant brethren, especially fundamentalists. They uphold a literal reading of the Scriptures as essential to the faith, except when it comes to this specific passage. They will seek to reinterpret or downplay what Our Lord declares here, trying to show that it is only symbolic or that Christ is really meaning faith or the Scriptures or anything else other than the Eucharist. Their folly is exposed simply by carefully reading the passage. Does Christ stop those who are leaving? Does He correct them and say that He is only symbolically the bread of life or that we must symbolically eat His flesh and drink His blood through the bread and wine of Communion? Never! In fact, Saint John’s Greek is very scandalous: John uses a Greek verb for eating which was associated with how animals ate. It denotes rending, gnashing, gobbling, the simple, stupid, slovenly way that animals eat as compared to a normal human. There can be no doubt about it: the Catholic Church, from the very beginning, has maintained the literal reading of this passage along with the whole Scriptures in contrast to the falsities of the Protestants.
The Eucharist is scandalous to non-Christians as well, those who live united to the sinful world rather than those seeking after the good God. We see this in the way they elevate their bodies as their god instead of the One who gave them both bodies and souls. Our society is filled with those who seek the pleasures of the body as the means of happiness and let nothing in the way. The rampant use of abortion and contraception demonstrates this principle most sorrowfully to us. One author remarks that abortion is the devil’s parody of the Eucharist, for in both the key phrase to understand each is “This is my body.” For when your belly is your god, then your Eucharist is only found within, and this leads to destruction.
The Eucharist is lastly scandalous to those Catholics who have not remained faithful to Christ, whether they have remained in the Church or not. For we are reminded once more in this passage of the necessity of faith and its very essence as a gift of God. Christ reminds those who are about to go away that no one comes to Him and to His Church except the Father draw them in through the Holy Spirit who bestows life upon us. St. John Chrysostom teaches that in this passage Christ is desiring to remove the scandal of the Eucharist from the hearts of His disciples so that they will believe. Yet they still abandon Him because His words ask too much of them. Saint John remarks that Christ, being divine, knew who would believe and who would not believe, and even knew the one who would betray Him to His passion and death. In the example of Judas we see those bad Catholics who have abandoned the faith while still remaining within the confines of the Church. For Judas was chosen to be an apostle, one of the Twelve sent by Christ to proclaim the Gospel to the world, yet he chooses to abandon Christ for his own sinful reasons. How tragic it is to see Catholics receive the Eucharist when it means so little to them and when it will bring not eternal life but eternal punishment upon them!
If we are to avoid that same fate, if we are to avoid the pains of Hell and to receive eternal life, we must do as Saint Peter and the faithful Apostles did. We must believe what Christ tells us and receive His flesh and blood in the Eucharist faithfully and worthily. We must not let our reception of Holy Communion be wasted, but lead us into a deeper relationship with Christ really and truly present in this mystery of faith. We must be nourished by the one who, as Saint Paul reveals, loves the Church as a husband loves his wife, so much in fact that He is willing to die for her, willing to die for us. We must seek to free our lives of every sin which separates us from the love of God and from worthily receiving the bread come down from Heaven.
Let us do our part, then, to imitate the example of the Israelites in our first reading, by readily clinging to God above all else. Let us not be fooled by the devil into our own interpretations but receive this mystery with a willing heart and being transformed by Christ each time we receive Him. Let us cleanse our hearts of sin through our more frequent reception of confession so that we may receive more fully the graces and gifts Christ desires to pour upon us in our need. May our reception of the Body and Blood of Christ bring us all to eternal life.
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