Friday of the Third Week of Easter

“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. 
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink. 
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.

Catholics Christians have a hard time envisioning this passage without the actual eating of the Eucharistic Bread and drinking from the Chalice of Sacred Blood. Catholicism has been described as a materialistic religion. We use bread, wine, water, oil, fire, smoke, clothing and human touch to experience the immediate presence of God.

Likewise, we cannot imagine the priesthood of Jesus Christ without the sacramental presence of our priests, bishops and pope. We see Jesus entering the tabernacle of God and offering himself before God’s altar, as he is described in the Letter to the Hebrews, because our own priests enter the sanctuaries and stand before the altars in our churches. Even the Book of Revelation is clearer once we recognize all the liturgical symbols that are still familiar in our Church. Opening its pages we find books, altars, candles, incense, albs, stoles, deacons,trumpet-voiced readers, wheat and blood of the grape -- to name a few. They're all explained and utilized in Catholic liturgy and many are creeping back into Protestant liturgies. 

Today’s gospel certainly recall's Jesus' dramatic challenge to the Jewish religion. Pope Benedict XVI, in his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, teaches that Jesus very intentionally and with full awareness started a new religion during his Last Supper. It was an entirely new kind of Passover meal; and though he used many of the traditions, symbols and meanings of the feast, he probably celebrated it a few days before the Passover. 

With his Passover meal, there was no sacrifice of a lamb. The lambs would not be slaughtered in the temple until that Friday afternoon, around three o’clock -- as he, the Lamb of God, was dying. 

Jesus’ Passover was a simple sharing of bread and wine with astonishing, beautiful words:

While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take it; this is my body. Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”

Because tomorrow's feast of the Apostle Mathias has its own readings, we will not hear the conclusion of John 6, when many of Jesus' followers desert him: Then many of his disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it?"


We have seen this winnowing of his disciples throughout the Gospel. In the sixth chapter the critical issue is the Eucharist, the ingestion of his body and blood. Finally he will turn to "the Twelve" and ask, "Do you also want to leave me." And Peter will answer for all of the Church, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."


Although the Church added more ceremony to those simple gestures in the years that followed his resurrection, we have not failed to obey his direct command to eat and drink and "Do this in remembrance of me." (I Corinthians 11:24)