He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him

 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  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, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.

- John 6:52-59

In our current readings, the lectionary is going through chapter 6 of John's Gospel, which began with the feeding of five thousand in the wilderness.  Yesterday we read that religious leaders complained about Him, because Jesus said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven."  And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven'?"  Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves.  No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.  Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  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, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.  In John's Gospel, we remember, the term the Jews is used to designate the religious leadership.  Jesus is speaking in the synagogue in Capernaum, and after the feeding in the wilderness, the people wanted to make Him king.  They have followed Him here to Capernaum, where we presume the leaders of the synagogue are also present and listening (and criticizing).  My study bible says of today's passage that Christ was crucified in the flesh and His blood was shed on the Cross, and on the third day He was raised in a glorified state.  It notes that we receive the grace of Christs sacrificial offering as we come to Him in faith and also through receiving Holy Communion in faith.  In Communion, we eat His flesh and drink His blood, and this grants the faithful eternal life -- with Christ abiding in us and us in Him.  All through the earlier readings for this chapter, Christ has spoken about raising "all that the Father gives" Him to eternal life.  St. Hilary of Poitiers is cited by my study bible, who comments on this passage:  "There is no room left for any doubt about the reality of His flesh and blood, beause we have both the witness of His words and our own faith.  Thus when we eat and drink these elements, we are in Christ and Christ is in us."

What does it mean to take the Eucharist?  Obviously, among many denominations, and among many different individual Christians, one will get many answers to this question.  In the ancient tradition of the Church, and right from its inception, we have the understanding that in the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ.  This is not because ancient people were somehow superstitious.  Those who gave us theology were the finest products of a classical education in all subjects.  They were not gullible nor easily credulous; they had science and mathematics, Aristotelian logic, and were schooled in the demand for rigorous truth.  Neither is it because ancient people had no idea what symbolism was!  (The ancient literature of the classical culture was richer in symbolism than we moderns can imagine.)    But the concept of "icon" is related to the root of our understanding of the Eucharist.  An icon is more than a symbol.  It is a type of representation, in the sense in which Christ's miracles in John's Gospel are called signs.  An icon is an image that is not merely symbolic, but rather points to the presence or substance which it represents, and connects us with it.  An icon of a saint is meant as a mystical way to enter into communion through faith, in prayer with that saint, and to invoke the prayers of the saint in the same way one would ask a friend for prayers and pray together.  The miracles that Christ performs -- the seven signs in John's Gospel that we are explicitly given -- are not meant as mere magical shows, they are not given in order to impress or convince as proofs.  Rather, they are offered as signs of the presence of the kingdom of God because Christ has come into the world.  They point to something with us, present, beyond the mere physical attributes of the signs themselves.  But this is a mystical understanding, and demands from us our own capacities for a mystical way of thinking.  Over and over again in the Gospels (and even in the Revelation), Jesus will demand from His hearers:  "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" (see these verses).  Christ is invoking the prophesy of Isaiah when He does so (Isaiah 6:9-10).   When Jesus explains why He speaks in parables, He tells the disciples, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables," and here He quotes the prophecy of Isaiah to hammer home the point (Mark 4:11-12).  We are meant to have spiritual hearing.  And in the Eucharist, we are meant to understanding that there are mystical realities present to us, just as Christ's words and teaching in today's reading are impossible to understand without a capacity for a grasp of mystical or spiritual reality.  The risen Christ appearing to His disciples was not merely Christ in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth.  Rather, as my study bible points out in a note cited above, He was raised in a glorified state (the Gospels indicate that Mary Magdalene, the first one to see Him, didn't even recognize Him until He called her name, and then He commanded her not to cling to Him -- see John 20:11-18).  To eat His body and blood is to grasp a mystical presence, one which cannot truly be explained in worldly terms, but one that is accepted and understood in faith.   The Eucharist is, indeed, what we accept in faith and understand in terms of the teaching He gives in today's reading:  "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him."   He who has ears to hear, let him hear!  This is but the beginning of teachings.  In Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus' disciples ask Him about teaching in parables, He gets more explicit:  "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.  For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.  Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."  We head through Lent toward the greatest mystery of all.  Let us try to have ears to hear, rather than stand outside the mystery He asks us to enter with Him.