[Previous Fr. Lane posts here, here, and here.]
The interesting thing is that we ourselves in the modern age have trouble with it also [Christ's teaching on his Body and Blood]. It was a teaching so disturbing that the Reformation itself rejected altogether this fleshly existence of the Lord. Luther tried to retain it, but did so only in the context of human faith and not in the context of the reality itself.
In the Revised Oxford Annotated Version of the Bible, one of the most responsible, scholarly translations that we have, there is a footnote to this particular text in John's Gospel, and it tells us that Jesus had to have been speaking in spiritual terms because after the Ascension he was no longer bodily present among us.
This is a classic example of taking some sort of doctrinal statement and belief and imposing it on the Word of God. Many Fundamentalists will say "give me just the plain Word of God" but that footnote is an interpretation and an imposition upon the text of a dogmatic position of a Reformation tradition. Because, as a matter of fact, Scripture itself relies on the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew mindset, and the Hebrew conceptual framework, and they do not abstract. There is no mechanism for abstraction in the ancient Hebrew language. We can do that quite easily, as the editors of the Oxford Annotated Bible do it quite easily, because that's part of our Western tradition. We can look at a statue of Mary and we do not have to say that is the Virgin Mary. We can say it brings us to thoughts and reflections upon the mother of God. But in no way, shape or form do we say that that's Mary, yet in the Hebrew tradition that would be Mary. That was the problem with the golden calf - it was not a symbol of an abstract God because they did not abstract. And so when Jesus said, "This is my Flesh, this is my Blood" he is using Hebrew language and concepts. He is a Jew and so are his disciples, and so he has to know what he says. The fact that his listeners walked away from him indicates very clearly that they understood it in the same way. It would not be so offensive to them if in fact it could be abstracted or made symbolic in some way, shape or form.
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