#12477 Is the Eucharist a Literal Sacrifice or Just Symbolic? Body, Blood, and Sacrifice (ENCORE) - Joe Heschmeyer

Summary

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Catholic Answers Live – Episode #12477

Is the Eucharist a Literal Sacrifice or Just Symbolic? Body, Blood, and Sacrifice (ENCORE)
Host: Cy Kellett (A)
Guest: Joe Heschmeyer (B), author of The Eucharist is Really Jesus
Date: November 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Joe Heschmeyer takes on every major objection to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Focusing especially on common Protestant objections that the Eucharist is "just symbolic," the conversation delves into scriptural interpretations of Jesus’ words, the historical and theological background of Eucharistic belief, and the intricacies of biblical metaphors. With detailed exegesis—particularly of John 6—and a step-by-step dismantling of symbolic-only interpretations, Heschmeyer shows how the Catholic view of real presence, sacrifice, and communion is rooted in both the Bible and ancient Jewish tradition.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Opening and Framing the Debate

• Purpose: Address every objection to the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, with a primary focus on Protestant objections.
• Tone: Informal, collaborative, drawing on traditional Catholic apologetics as well as modern media techniques.

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2. The "Just Symbolic" Objection

Timestamp: 03:00–07:40

• Protestant View Presented: "When Jesus talks about eating his body and drinking his blood, he’s clearly speaking metaphorically, just as when He says, 'I am the vine' or 'I am the door.'"
• Joe’s Response:
  • Not all metaphors are the same, and Jesus does not always speak metaphorically. Sometimes He is literal.
  • Key Quote:
    • "The fact that sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically is no reason to believe that he always speaks metaphorically. Sometimes Jesus speaks literally. That doesn't mean he always speaks literally." (B, 03:39)
  • Importance of context: biblical interpretation requires understanding authorial intent, literary forms, and reaction of Jesus’ audience.

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3. Scriptural Analysis: John 6 as Case Study

Timestamp: 08:00–13:11

• Method: Examine carefully how Jesus presents His teaching on the "Bread of Life", how His listeners understood Him, and whether Jesus corrected or confirmed their understanding.
• Key Observations:
  • Whenever misunderstanding is possible elsewhere (e.g., John 3, Nicodemus and "born again"), Jesus clarifies.
  • In John 6, Jesus leads the crowd step-by-step to a more literal (not less) understanding—He never pulls back, only intensifies.
  • Quote:
    • "If you take a non-sacramental read of John 6, Jesus seems to be steering in exactly the wrong direction because he's leading them deeper and deeper into that understanding of his teaching.” (B, 13:11)

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4. The Progression of the Bread Discourse

Timestamp: 13:53–17:04

• Jesus doubles down: shifts from "eat" to the stronger Greek term "to gnaw"; adds shocking imagery (drinking blood).
• Jewish law strictly prohibits drinking blood for animals; therefore, this metaphor would make little sense to Jews unless something extraordinary is intended.
  • Exchange on Jewish context:
    • Quote:
      • "To drink the blood of an animal would be to enter into communion with it in a way that was unseemly...if you understand why it was forbidden, then you can see why the very reasons you wouldn't drink the blood of an animal would be the reasons you would want to drink the blood of God. Because you'd want to enter into communion with God." (B, 15:45–16:42)

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5. Addressing “The Flesh is of No Avail” (John 6:63)

Timestamp: 19:06–23:10

• Objection: Protestant opponents cite John 6:63 ("the flesh is of no avail; the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life") to argue Jesus meant everything figuratively.
• Joe’s Exegesis:
  • “Flesh” here refers not to Jesus’s physical body, but to unaided human understanding.
  • Cites Gnosticism: Denying bodily value is anti-Incarnational (Antichrist).
  • Quote:
    • “To say, ‘Oh, yeah, what Jesus did on the cross, because it was his body, it didn’t do anything…That’s Gnosticism. That’s not Christianity.’” (B, 21:09)
  • The Holy Spirit enables correct apprehension of the Eucharist, going beyond mere human logic.

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6. Tracking the Conversation in John 6

Timestamp: 29:35–36:12

• Joe counts at least eight times Jesus explicitly reemphasizes the need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, in increasingly literal/sacramental terms.
• Question from Cy: If taken literally, how can Jesus give us his flesh?
  • Answer: Jesus later resolves the "how" at the Last Supper—He gives Himself under the forms of bread and wine, now understood through the lenses of the Passover and manna traditions.
  • Sacrifice connection: As at Passover, mere death of the lamb wasn’t enough; participation required eating its flesh (see 1 Cor 10).
  • Quote:
    • "With a sacrifice, it’s not enough that an animal dies…How does this become incorporated to my life? And the answer is by eating the flesh." (B, 33:09)

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7. "Do This in Remembrance of Me"—Memorial or Sacrifice?

Timestamp: 37:45–40:10

• Objection: Jesus’s words at the Last Supper (“Do this in remembrance of me”) just refer to symbolic memorial.
• Joe’s Response:
  • Greek term “anamnesis” is specifically sacrificial, translating the Hebrew "askara", used for “memorial sacrifice".
    • Cites Leviticus 24:7 and Hebrews 10:3-4.
    • Jewish remembrance is not mere recollection but “making present.”
  • Quote:
    • "In the Jewish framework this is going to sound much more like a memorial sacrifice...it’s a much more technical kind of term." (B, 39:30)

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8. “Once For All” Sacrifice—Why Not Repeated?

Timestamp: 40:10–45:50

• Objection: Hebrews says Christ’s sacrifice is "once for all"—how can the Mass be a sacrifice?
• Joe’s Explanation:
  • Sacrifice in Jewish context had three phases: offertory, killing, and consumption (eating the offering).
  • Christ’s death is not repeated; the Mass is the ongoing participation in His one sacrifice by consuming the offering ("eating the lamb" as per Passover).
  • Christ’s heavenly offering (Hebrews 9:11–12) occurs at Ascension, not Good Friday.
  • Quote:
    • "We are receiving him by eating his body and blood to participate in the death that has already happened... When you sit down and eat the first time, you're completing the sacrifice." (B, 42:36)

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9. The Charge of Cannibalism

Timestamp: 48:35–52:48

• Objection: The Catholic Eucharist teaching is tantamount to cannibalism.
• Joe’s Response:
  • Cannibalism is destructive: tearing apart a body and metabolizing it. The Eucharist is not destructive, but supernatural participation in Christ’s risen body.
  • Early Christians were accused of cannibalism, showing how shocking and literal their language was.
  • In the Eucharist, the “eating” is real, but it's Christ who transforms us—not the other way around.
  • Quote:
    • "When we eat the bread and wine that have become the body and blood of Christ, we don't metabolize him into us; we are metabolized into him." (B, 50:38)
  • Use of metaphors in Scripture and early Christianity (e.g., manger = food trough, Bethlehem = "house of bread") suggest real, intended connections.

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10. Summing Up & Looking Forward

Timestamp: 54:20–end

• Recap: The Catholic view is that Jesus gives us His real flesh and blood as food and drink as our participation in His once-for-all sacrifice; we receive this in the Eucharist, not by re-killing, but by sacrificing and consuming in ongoing memorial.
• Transition: Having addressed the symbolic language objections fully in this hour, the next hour promises to cover further objections, as the symbolic/sacramental divide makes up the core.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Joe Heschmeyer, on metaphor:
  “Sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically. So how do we know he's not speaking metaphorically here?... The fact that sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically is no reason to believe that he always speaks metaphorically.” (03:39)

• Joe Heschmeyer, on John 6:
  “Jesus slowly, carefully, methodically, kind of leads them into… this is a figure of speech because it's not literally bread, it's literally my flesh.” (12:03)

• Cy Kellett, on Jewish tradition:
  “So my neighbor down the block, they owned a lamb and they brought that lamb and had it killed. I didn't own the lamb. I didn't kill the lamb. I've done nothing so far. How does this become incorporated to my life? And the answer is by eating the flesh.” (33:09)

• Joe Heschmeyer, on accusations of cannibalism:
  “If your eucharistic views couldn't be misunderstood as cannibalism, they're not the eucharistic views of the early Christians.” (52:48)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:00 – Symbolic vs. literal language of Jesus
• 08:00 – Contextual analysis of John 6
• 13:53 – Jesus "doubles down" on realism: gnawing, drinking blood
• 19:06 – The meaning of "the flesh is of no avail"
• 29:35 – Parsing Jesus's responses & the escalation in John 6
• 33:09 – Passover context; eating as participation in sacrifice
• 37:45 – "Remembrance" as memorial sacrifice (anamnesis)
• 40:10 – “Once for all” (Hebrews) and the three stages of sacrifice
• 48:49 – Cannibalism: Why the Eucharist doesn't qualify
• 52:19 – Early accusations of cannibalism and their roots in eucharistic language
• 54:20 – Recap and preview of further objections in next hour

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Overall Tone & Style

The discussion is rich, scripturally dense, and approachable, balancing scholarship with accessibility. Both host and guest use humor and vivid analogies (e.g., “is Jesus a literal door, hinges and all?”) while never shying from deep theology, respecting both Catholic listeners and Protestant objectors.

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This summary covers the first hour of the podcast, focusing mainly on the “symbolic vs. sacramental” objections to the Eucharist, with scriptural, historical, and linguistic evidence marshaled in defense of the Catholic doctrine.

Transcript

[A]

Buying or selling your home. Real Estate for Life can connect you with a pro life real estate agent. When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers. Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Hello and welcome to Catholic Epic Answers Live. Thanks so much for being here with us. Joe Heschmeyer, both hours today. Something that we've been kind of experimenting with and it has received a very positive reaction, is doing shows where we tackle every objection. And this is something I think that we learned from YouTube. The kids on YouTube, they're doing good stuff these days, so why not learn from them? So what we do is we'll take the next two hours and we'll do every objection to the Eucharist. And I think that the, the emphasis of the objections to the Eucharist, I'll be honest, will tend towards Protestant objections to the Eucharist. There are more generally philosophical and cultural and kind of mythicist objections, some of which Protestants share. But we'll start with mostly Protestant objections to the Eucharist. But we're gonna try to tackle every objection to the Eucharist that we could come up with for Joe in the next two hours. Tremendous preparation goes into these. You've had weeks and weeks and weeks to prepare for this, Joe.

[B]

I arguably had my whole life to prepare for this.

[A]

Wow, very good. But we also. I'm being somewhat facetious because we have you traveling and we got you here in the studio and we had a staff meeting before this and we gave you a few minutes to prepare. But you wrote the book. The Eucharist is really Jesus, so you should be prepared for this, Joe.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think I've done some remote preparation, but not a lot of proximate preparation. So we'll see how it goes today.

[A]

Spoken like a true philosopher. The distinction between remote and proximate. So. All right, sorry we didn't give you a lot of proximate preparation time. Also, this is a pre recorded show, so if anything has happened recently in the news that we really. It would be a. It's, it's, it's strange that they didn't address that. It's because we don't know the news at the moment we're recording before. So I won't be giving out the phone number, or I should say I will be giving out the phone number, but I'll be wrong when I do it because we're not able to take calls because you can't call to the past when we were recording this. So Here we go with answering every objection to the Eucharist. Joe, the most obvious objection, it seems to me, look, this is all just symbolic. You Catholics are misunderstanding what Jesus clear words were. As a matter of fact, Jesus tried to help you with this by saying certain things. When he was talking about eating his body and drinking his blood and drinking his flesh and you won't have life in you. He's clearly talking about other things. Maybe he's talking about faith and you all are. And I've even heard this objection made this way. Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Do you eat vines and say, that's Jesus body? Jesus says, I'm the sheep gate. Every time you see a sheep gate, do you go, oh, that's really Jesus's body? So am I making this objection clearly enough?

[B]

I usually just hear it with like, oh, Jesus says, you know, I'm the door. Does he actually have like a hinge and a handle? And he's made of wood.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And look, let's give the objection the weight that it deserves, because this is just another way of saying sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically. So how do we know he's not speaking metaphorically here? Yeah, because once you say it that way, it's like, well, it's not that strong of an objection. The fact that sometimes Jesus speaks metaphorically is no reason to believe that he always speaks metaphorically. Sometimes Jesus speaks literally. That doesn't mean he always speaks literally.

[A]

And so he's using actual human communication. So his incarnation means that he speaks like a human being. Sometimes he's metaphorical, sometimes he's literal.

[B]

Exactly. And so when you're reading the Bible, there's no. You don't get a special gold star because you say, I'm a biblical literalist. Because if you just say, I'm going to interpret this literally. It depends what we mean by literally. The historic sense was according to the letter, which meant you're interpreting it the way the author seems to mean it to be read. But the way we use literally now means non metaphorically. And so if you're interpreting the Bible non metaphorically, when it's using metaphor or using allegory or using hyperbole, you know, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. That's hyperbole. Don't go mutilate yourself, those kind of things. Like if you should not interpret it by prejudging that you're going to take everything non metaphorically. So that's the weight that it deserves. We agree on that. And you Know, we don't say everything in the Bible should be read non metaphorically. A good way of interpreting this is by looking at the biblical context. A bad way of interpreting it would be to say, well, if John 6 is literal, that's a hard teaching. Therefore I reject it. Because we know from John 6 itself that it's a hard teaching. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

[A]

Well, Jesus says other hard things like be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. I think I may be paraphrasing that, but, but basically be perfect is your. Yeah, that's an impossibly hard teaching. So is Jesus being figurative when he says that?

[B]

No, because you can't decide I'm going to accept some level of sin in my life. Like if you're not aiming for perfection, then you're not aiming high enough for holiness.

[A]

So just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not literal.

[B]

Exactly. That's a great. And you know, so a good way to tell is by looking at things like the context, how did his original listeners understand him? And then do we have any indications whether they understood him correctly or incorrectly? And you're going to get two types of indications. Frequently Jesus will correct them if they misunderstand him. That's a good way of knowing what he means. The other category, sometimes the evangelist will correct a misunderstanding. So I'll give you a few examples. In John 2, Jesus says, Destroy this temple and in three days I'll rebuild it. And John tells us that he was speaking of the temple of his body. Now John wants to make it clear Jesus body is not just metaphorically a temple. I mean his body literally is a temple because a temple is a divine dwelling place and a place of divine sacrifice. He meets in his body all of the definitions of what a temple is, but our imagination when we hear the word temple runs through the building in Jerusalem, right? And so Jesus truly, he's not just speaking metaphorically there, but he's also not speaking of the temple in Jerusalem, he's speaking of the temple of his body.

[A]

May I say something there?

[B]

Yeah, you may.

[A]

The mind runs because Jesus is using the temple as a metaphor for his own body. He's doing that on purpose. So for example, when Jesus says I am the bread of life, he's not saying that so we won't think of bread. He's saying that so we will think of bread.

[B]

And one particular type of bread too, the manna, which is the bread come down from heaven, which was called the bread of angels in The Psalms, which is this miraculous bread. So he wants to draw your mind to miraculous bread as a way of understanding what he is saying in the Eucharist.

[A]

Right, right. So he doesn't. To say that he's speaking metaphorically is not to say that he's not also speaking literally in a certain. Do you see what I'm saying?

[B]

I do. And in fact, what we're going to see in John 6 is that there is one layer of metaphor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the problem with a Protestant interpretation, and I'm speaking very broadly there, not all Protestants believe the same thing about the Eucharist. But if you think that we'll get into this in just a second, but we want to watch out for a double metaphoric interpretation where you say his language is a metaphor for a metaphor for some vague spiritual principle, that's going to be a bad interpretation of Jesus. The fact that he sometimes uses metaphor is not bad. So I gave you John 2. In John 3, Jesus talks about being born anew or born from above and born again. This is where that comes from. And Nicodemus thinks that this means physical birth. And Jesus has to explain that he's using this non literal kind of language to describe spiritual rebirth. So we see in John 3 Jesus correcting Nicodemus directly when he misunderstands. In John 2, Jesus doesn't correct them directly. And this is actually going to be very important because this will be one of the allegations raised against him at his trial. But John explains, so we won't misunderstand. I want to contrast that with John 6, because if John 6 is just another metaphor like we saw in John 2 or 3, where, you know, bread of life just means something like, my teachings are really good, you should really chew on what I'm telling you. Something like that. Then. Okay, then we would expect it to read like that. But I would encourage, as a good bit of biblical exegesis to just go carefully through the back and forth and just look at what Jesus says and then look at how the crowds understood him, and then whether Jesus seems to affirm or redirect or refute that understanding. Because those are how you figure out the interpretation. Like if Nicodemus says, I have to be born again physically, and Jesus said, absolutely, yeah, that would totally change how we understood John 3.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you want to look at the interaction, not just what does Jesus say, but how does Jesus respond to people saying some version of. Do you mean X? Yeah, because you see a lot of that in John 6. Most of the chapter in John 6 is dedicated to this eucharistic teaching. And so you have Jesus saying that he's going to give them this bread, this heavenly bread, and they've just received the multiplication of the loaves the day before. So their first thought is that this is just going to be food because they've just received miraculous bread. And so they're just imagining that they want this always. Jesus then corrects them that this isn't what he means. He's not going to give them the same thing he gave them the day before. He says, I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. 41 John 6:41. And so they murmur at this saying, is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Now notice what they've done when he says that the bread is him who's come down from heaven. They now think, okay, so the bread is just a figure of speech for Jesus. And all he's trying to tell us is that he came from heaven.

[A]

So that's what bothers him because we know where he's from, right? Yeah.

[B]

And notably, a lot of the Protestant exegesis on John 6 ends up somewhere like that. That when Jesus talks about the bread is just his teaching or it's just a reference to him being from heaven. And if that was right, the chapter could just end there. Like, okay, this is what he said. And then people were confused because they knew where he was born. But Jesus corrects this understanding and explains that this is not true. And he then compares this to the manna. And then in verse 51, he says, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And then he says this and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. So he's just explained what the metaphor means. He could have said, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my life saving teaching. He could have said, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is the substitutionary atonement on the cross. He says, it is my flesh. And so is he using a metaphor of bread in one way? Yes, he's using the manna, but it's a metaphor for his body. And so when he says, you have to eat this bread, bread, he doesn't mean you have to really ponder his teachings. He's just told you bread here means flesh, so eat this bread means eat my flesh.

[A]

And at so it is a metaphor but what's it a metaphor for exactly? It's a metaphor for his physical flesh.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. So is it bodily, is it metaphorical? Yes, in a way that is satisfied by the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist pretty uniquely. Because at that point they have a new objection. Their objection now is, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? But notice this is now John 6:52. Like the Eucharistic teaching, it really begins on verse 22. So we're 30 verses deep. They don't, you know, the other times where Jesus speaks, you know, symbolically and people take him literally, it's usually right away they've just. They hear a figure of speech, they don't understand it's a figure of speech. And so they, Their minds run to the wrong place. Their minds didn't do that. Here, Jesus slowly, carefully, methodically, kind of leads them into. Yeah, there is a way. This is a figure of speech because it's not literally bread, it's literally my flesh.

[A]

Right. So he's working them towards what the person who does not believe in the real presence in the Eucharist would say is the wrong conclusion. Like he's not working them towards the right conclusion and he's working them towards the wrong conclusion. If that's what you think.

[B]

Like if you take a sort of a non sacramental read of John 6, Jesus seems to be steering in exactly the wrong direction because he's leading them deeper and deeper into that understanding of his teaching. They didn't start there. Jesus slowly led them there. And then in verse 52, as I said, they say, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So now we're at a juncture if that is a wrong conclusion, one that Jesus seems to have led them into. Jesus would seemingly have a basic duty as a teacher, to say nothing of a moral duty. Like if someone says, oh, I'm supposed to literally cut off my hand to follow you, you should say, no, this is a figure of speech. Let me explain what a figure of speech is.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

And so here, if they're saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? We know now the kind of interpretation they're taking. We don't know exactly, but we have enough of a sense of what they have in mind. And Jesus responds by doubling and tripling and quadrupling down. In fact, let's just go through this, if we may, and just count the number of times he seems to redouble this direction, the sacramental view. He says to them, truly, truly, I say, to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man. Well, the verbiage here has actually shifted. In Greek, it went from the normal word for to eat to trogon, which means like to gnaw. It's more of an animalistic eating. So he's already doubling down just on the imagery. He's not just saying eat, but like chew, gnaw my flesh and drink my blood. Or actually his blood. Because he says, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. Now, drinking of blood, even of an animal, is strictly forbidden. So now if this is a figure of speech, what kind of figure of speech is it to say we have to drink the blood of Christ? To say like, I'm going to drink psy's blood does not mean to any normal person, I'm going to listen to what Psy has to tell me.

[A]

Yeah, that's really weird.

[B]

Yeah, right. As a metaphor, it doesn't make sense. If you just mean something like ponder his teaching or take them to heart or follow Jesus. Those are not normal expressions, you know.

[A]

Well, could you, could you go. Because sometimes Jesus metaphors, and I think the bread one that you said, it's rooted in Jewish teaching. So, like when he's saying about the bread come down from heaven, he is, that's a weird metaphor, but he's drawing on an already well established thousand, more than a thousand year old historical item that they know about. So could he be drawing on Jewish, like previous Jewish understanding of what drinking blood means?

[B]

In a way, yes. But notably, there's no Jewish precedent for the drinking of blood. Again, like, under the Mosaic law, the drinking of the blood of an animal was strictly forbidden. But Leviticus explains that the reason is forbidden is because the life of the thing is in the animal. And so in the blood. Sorry, in the blood. Yes. So to drink the blood of an animal would be to enter into communion with it in a way that was unseemly. For you to like become communing in the life of a cow.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Would be completely inappropriate. And so you weren't allowed to have any animal blood in your food at all because it was a sign of basically communion. And so if you have that Jewish understanding, then when Jesus is saying, drink my blood, on the one hand the drinking of blood is strictly forbidden. On the other hand, if you understand why it was strictly forbidden, then you can see why the very reasons you wouldn't drink the blood of an animal would be the reasons you would want to drink the blood of God. Because you'd want to enter into communion with God.

[A]

Yeah. Because if you drink the blood of the cow, you're taking on the life of the cow into your own life. That's weird. That's a thing lower than you. You're debasing yourself.

[B]

Right. It's bestial.

[A]

But if you take on the life of the Lord.

[B]

No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me would be the kind of thing you could say if you have been transformed by the body and blood of Christ.

[A]

I hate to do this, but can we take a break right there?

[B]

Yeah. I think we'll come back to other ways Jesus kind of redoubles in John 6.

[A]

All right. So was Jesus speaking symbolically when he said, I am this is my body in the same way he is when he's saying I am the vine or I am the door, I am the sheep gate or that kind of thing? That's where we are right now. The symbolic understanding of Jesus own words that Catholics say, these are the words that establish the Eucharist. And those who do not accept the Catholic view say, now just take that's symbolic. You guys are messing up by taking that so literally. We'll continue with that conversation with Joe Heschmeier right after this.

[B]

Hang on.

[A]

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[A]

Welcome back. CATHOLIC ANSWERS live. I know we have Protestant listeners who are listening right now, some with curiosity, some are going insane right now because there's an obvious passage of Scripture That I have not cited to Joe talking about John six, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood. The Catholics taking that literally, that we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Many Protestants saying, look, that's metaphorical symbolic language for something else. Usually the act of faith that we ingest him when we accept his teaching. Now, here's something that opposes the Catholic view that I need to confront you with now. Right there in John 6, verse 63, it says, the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken, you are spirit and life.

[B]

That's right. Many people unfortunately read that passage to mean something like, don't take this literally, take it metaphorically. And they're taking spirit as sort of a metaphorical version, the way we might say, like the spirit of Vatican II to mean, like the general sense or something like that. The vibe.

[A]

The vibe, yeah, the vibe, right. Spirit, vibe. Yeah. Right.

[B]

And that is not how to read John 6:63. And the first indication you have is from the passage of John 6 itself. So when Jesus says the flesh is of no avail, we'll jump back to verse 51, where he says that the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. Now, there's two broadly ways of interpreting that. That he's talking about the cross or that he's talking about the Eucharist, or both. Either way, to say that's of no avail would be heretical. To say, oh, yeah, what Jesus did on the cross, because it was his body, it didn't do anything. It's not worth anything. That's Gnosticism. That's not Christianity. You know, the Gnostic objection to Christianity is, why would God take a human body? Since bodies are worthless or even evil.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And all of Christianity stands against this. John calls this Antichrist. Like, if you believe that you are Antichrist because you're literally opposing yourself to the Incarnation, people have this idea that Antichrist is like a figure in Revelation. It's not the only times you'll find the term Antichrist is referring to those who oppose the Incarnation.

[A]

So the flesh of Christ does avail the flesh.

[B]

Exactly. So the flesh that is of no avail is not the flesh of Jesus. It is my fleshly understanding. So there's several different ways that this word flesh is used in Scripture. But one of the ways is. And the way we see here is something like my unaided human attempts or understanding. So understanding the Eucharist in a human way, not led by the Holy Spirit, like the juxtaposition is not soul against body. It's not metaphor against literal. It's Holy Spirit versus just going it alone. So if your objections to the Eucharist are that it's cannibalism, St. Augustine, his tractates on John points out, that is the fleshly understanding, because a person unled by the Spirit who hears you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood is imagining, like chopping the person up.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

That is a fleshly understanding. And that's no good. An example of this as well, in Galatians 5, St. Paul contrasts the fruit of the Spirit to the works of the flesh. And flesh there does not mean body. It means us when we're not working with the Holy Spirit. And one of the ways we know that is several of the things. And this is again coming from Augustine. He points out that you've got pride and dissension and factions and envy and all these things that the devil is guilty of, and the devil doesn't have a body. And that really gets to the heart of where Gnosticism goes wrong. If bodies are the problem, the devil doesn't have a body. So we'd have to say, the devil's good. And meanwhile, Jesus does have a body. So it's put you on completely the wrong teams.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And so don't take a Gnostic understanding of John 6:63. He is not saying, the words that I've spoken to you are metaphor. They're spirit and life. And likewise, in 1 Corinthians 15, when St. Paul talks about how what is sown in the earth is a physical body and what is raised is a spiritual body, he's not saying your body is no longer a true human body. He's saying he's been transformed by the Holy Spirit. And so if you get that wrong and you take spirit to mean metaphor, then you end up denying the bodily resurrection.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's a huge error.

[A]

So basically, Jesus is saying, look, you can't. You actually can't comprehend this if you're just gonna think in the way that your unaided brain thinks. That's your flesh.

[B]

Like, what he is doing is something beyond our normal frame of reference. And the manna is actually a great point about this. You may remember in the Temptation of Christ, when he responds to the devil by saying that we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That is coming from the Old Testament originally about the manna, that the only way to understand the manna from heaven was not just, hey, free food on the ground, but recognizing this food comes from God. It is not of human origin. It's not of earthly origin. And to understand what it is, I mean, even the word manna is like, what is it? That's what it means, is like, the only way to understand it is with a view towards God. And so the only way you understand the manna is in view of God. The only way you understand the Eucharist is with the help of the Holy Spirit. So that's what he means in John 6. 63. Like, the reason people so often stumble over, like, pagans and Protestants understanding Jesus's words and eucharistic teaching. Like, well, if you take it literally, that must be cannibalism. That is not aided by the Holy Spirit. And I put pagans and Protestants together there. Because if your objections to the Catholic teaching are the same objections that the pagans had to the early Christians, and we know for a fact that the early Christians accused us of pagans, accused the early Christians of being cannibals, then you should say, well, okay, clearly the pagan objection wasn't led by the Spirit. And if my objection to the Eucharist is the same thing, and the people on the receiving end are being criticized in the exact same way the earliest Christians were criticized, that should raise some red flags for that criticism. If I may, though, I. I'd love to go back to. We were in the middle of unpacking John six. Okay, so for context, the question was, what does Jesus mean? And I suggested the way to interpret it would be to say, okay, let's parse out piece by piece. When Jesus is posed with a question or an objection, how does he respond to it? Does he clarify or does he lean into it and suggest that they're on the right track?

[A]

I think this has just turned into a tease.

[B]

Oh, is it? Are we about to go to another break?

[A]

Yeah, the music's playing. All right, so Joe's going to answer that when we come back. We're trying to cover every objection to the Eucharist.

[B]

We'll get to at least one.

[A]

We're gonna try to get through one at least this hour. More with Joe right after this on Catholic Answers Live. We hope that one of the things that we communicate here at Catholic Answers Live is that our Catholic faith allows us to be fully serious about all the problems we encounter in the church and in the world. But it also lets us have light hearts and maybe even mix in a bit of fun. And that is exactly what our good friend Joe Heschmeyer does in his popular podcast, Shameless potpourri. You should check it [e-mail] Joe's got a deep grasp of the faith, morals, the teachings of the Church, all that, but he's also got a witty conversational style. He entertains and he informs, but you will leave equipped to better answer the most common challenges, misconceptions and questions about the Catholic faith. He's got insightful guests, he does on air debates, and he takes a close look into all the things that you want to know about as a Catholic living today. You'll walk away knowledgeable and filled with joy. Look for Joe on his YouTube channel. Check him [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, become a patron. Throughout history, some Catholics have been among the worst kind of villains, right? Or were they in cancelled Historian Steve Weidenkopf digs into the lives and controversies of some of these Catholics whose reputations have been blackened, often unfairly. He takes on the anti Catholic versions of history and defends not only these figures, but the faith they represent. Order your copy of canceled [e-mail] or.

[B]

Ask for it at a good Catholic bookstore near you.

[A]

Each Catholic is obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed. Well, we're here to help. Join special guest Chris Stefan, Dr. David Anders, Steve Dawson, and all your favorite Catholic ANSWERS apologists this September 25th through 28th in beautiful San Diego for the Catholic Answers Conference. Our theme Go make disciples enjoy four days of faith fun and fellowship. Use promo code early to save $50 when you register today at CatholicAnswersConference.com. Welcome back CATHOLIC Answers live. I am Cy Kellett. Your host, Joe Heschmeyer is our guest and we've been doing these shows where we just take the two hours and we try to answer every objection to try to create something that puts it all into because sometimes you can get a question, frankly, like what does this passage of scripture mean? And if it's a passage of Scripture from the sixth chapter of John's Gospel or from the end of any of the Synoptic gospels, you're going to end up giving a partial answer about the entirety of the Catholic understanding of the Eucharistic meaning of Scripture, really. And so here we say, well, let's take the whole thing, let's see what are all of the objections to what Catholics believe about now? And we clearly understand we are limited human beings. We're not going to you're going to find objections that we don't get to. But the idea is to get to all the major ones. And so we're dealing really still with the objection that Christ is not speaking literally when he says, eat my flesh and drink my blood in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. And now I'll go back to you, Joe.

[B]

Yeah, and so I'm not going to recap the whole thing, but I was suggesting go through, listen to how people understand Jesus words and then look at how Jesus responds to the understandings or misunderstandings. Does he treat them as misunderstandings or does he lean into them? And in verse 52, they finally get to taking him something like literally, they say, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? And Jesus responds by saying, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And we've already seen he's doubled down on the language of eating. He's gone from eating. The verb there now becomes gnawing. And then he's adding this provocative language of drinking his blood. So he seems like he's doubling down on it twice there. Then he says in verse 54, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now notice he's doubled down two more times by then, stressing again the need to eat his flesh and the need to drink his blood. And drinking his blood wasn't even something he had mentioned before this objection. There's also now this connection to eternal life, which is something that the earliest Christians recognized, that the Eucharist is the key to bodily resurrection. Now that is a huge topic that maybe we should cover another day. I just want to flag that and say he seems to somehow connect bodily resurrection to eating Christ and becoming transformed at a bodily level by Him. Then he says in verse 55, for my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. So now we're up to six times he seems to have reiterated this teaching in the span of three verses. And I like to ask at this point, like, what more could Jesus have said? If my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed doesn't sound the maybe this is not a metaphor alarm.

[A]

But what he could have said more is how. Ah, yes, do you see what I'm saying? I think the objection at this point is he's saying these things. If I take him literally, even if I'm standing there with Him, I don't know how to do that. How am I supposed to do that.

[B]

And he's not going to give that answer directly. He's going to show rather than tell for the how. Because with the Last Supper, he's going to declare that the bread and the wine have become his body and blood.

[A]

So if he gives you something and says, this is my body, now you have the answer to how do I eat it?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

You just eat what he just gave you.

[B]

And strikingly, as John 6, verse 4 points out, this happens at Passover. Now, this is going to matter for two reasons. One, looking backwards, it means that if you want to understand what he's saying, the Eucharist should be understood through the lens of the Passover and through the lens of the manna, because he talks extensively about the manna here in John 6. So something about the Eucharist is being prefigured by the Passover, where it was not enough to kill the lamb. To incorporate the sacrifice of the lamb to yourself, you had to do what you had to eat the lamb. So in Preparation Day, you had the killing of the lamb. This prefigures Good Friday. John 19 is very clear about that. But it's not enough, as strange as that is to say, for the lamb to die. Like, if you're a Jewish kid and you live in a poor family, under the Mosaic Law, you're not required to even own the lamb. You can share the lamb somebody else sacrifices, like your neighbor. So you then say, okay, so my neighbor down the block, they owned a lamb and they brought that lamb and had it killed. I didn't own the lamb. I didn't kill the lamb. I've done nothing so far. How does this become incorporated to my life? And the answer is by eating the flesh.

[A]

Right?

[B]

You know, maybe your dad puts the blood on the doorpost. You have to eat the flesh. Yes. Right. And so that is how you become a partaker in the altar. And this is explicitly taught in First Corinthians 10, when St. Paul wants to explain the Eucharistic sacrifice, he compares it to the way that you would eat the sacrifices of the altar in Judaism or in paganism at the table of demons. Like, go read First Corinthians 10 and notice he's got this sacrificial image that only makes sense if the Eucharist is a sacrifice that we eat. And so then the question becomes, what? Kind of like, what is being offered here? And at the Last Supper, Jesus says, the offering is his body and is his blood. That the way sacrifices work isn't that you sacrificed a symbol of the thing you sacrificed the thing. Yeah, like you didn't sacrifice a picture of a lamb, you sacrificed a lamb. And so all of this points to the Eucharist really being Jesus. So that why question is right there. But we haven't left this passage in John 6 yet. I know there's a lot here, and I am sorry to listeners who thought this was going to go quicker, but there's so much here that it's worth pointing out, because he's now given us six different ways. He's doubled down to the question, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? And then he says, we got through verse 55 where he says, my flesh is food indeed, my blood is drink indeed. Then he says in 56, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. So now he's doubled down two more times with the eating of the flesh, the drinking of the blood, and. But now he's talking about the dimension not of sacrifice now, but of communion, that there is an abiding where we are incorporated into Christ and he and us in the act of communion. And then he says in verse 57, as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. So again he's doubled down one more time, this time tied to eternal life, and then finally says in verse 58, this is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever.

[A]

Ah, there's that what you were talking about, eternal life.

[B]

Exactly. So the themes that he's drawing out, he is talking about presence and sacrifice and communion. And so those are the three dimensions of the Eucharist. If you want to understand the Eucharist, you need to realize this is really Jesus first. Second, this is Jesus sacrifice for us. And this is how, through a Jewish lens, one partook of a sacrifice by eating the sacrificial offering. Christ is our sacrificial offering. And so it makes sense that we should consume his flesh and blood and then for communion, that the drinking of blood was how one entered into communion. And so all of these things make sense and then point beyond this to eternal life, that bodily resurrection and eternal life are all wrapped up in this idea of Christ's Eucharistic presence, sacrifice and communion.

[A]

All right, let me give you a challenge to that. First of all, before I do that, I would just like to say, as a Catholic hearing it, you hear it. This is the way you hear it. What a Beautiful plan of salvation that all the way from Abraham and his son Isaac, and the not sacrificing of that son through the Exodus and the manna, the Passover. You know, you even think of, like the widow who makes bread for the prophet. Bread is a constant theme throughout, and the sharing of bread is significant all throughout.

[B]

The three items of food and drink that had special blessings in ancient Judaism were bread, wine, and oil. And so if you use that image, and oil is the image of Christ, I mean, literally, Christ means anointed. And so when you have those three, just track those motifs through Scripture.

[A]

I didn't even think of Melchizedek is in here. So you have all this, which is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who doesn't act like, well, this is going to be easy to get to the final part of this. He knows this is hard, but he. And he gives it to us. All right, so that's the Catholic reaction. But I want to stay with the objections. And here's an objection. Just take Luke's Gospel as an example. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. That's not the language of sacrifice, is it? That's just the language of a memorial.

[B]

That is literally the language of sacrifice.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yes. So anamnesis is a Greek word there. And this is the word used to translate the Hebrew as kara, which is like a memorial offering or memorial sacrifice. Strachan's lexicon has a good portion on this if people want to do a deep dive. But in Leviticus 24, for instance, verse 7, you shall put pure frankincense on each row that it may be a memorial portion for the bread, even an offering by fire to the Lord. That memorial portion is again askara. And in the Septuagint, it's the anamnesis as it's translated, the Old Testament is translated into Greek. The word anamnesis is used there. That a remembrance or a memorial is not just an image the way that we have, like, oh, yeah, we remember so and so. You know, we have in the office here a memorial wall for Catholic Answers employees who've died.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we don't think that they are physically present in the office. It is just a visible reminder of those who are absent.

[A]

That's what we think of as a memorial.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's the model.

[B]

That is not the Jewish understanding of a memorial offering. And another example for this would be In Hebrews 10, the only other time the word anamnesis is used in the Bible in the New Testament is in Hebrews 10, verse 3 to 4, where it talks about the Old Testament, sacrifices were a reminder and anamnesis of sin year after year. But it is significant that in this the sin is as it were, being brought to the altar so it can be forgiven. It is not that the sin is absent and is being forgiven in absentia, that rather the sin is as it were, made present so it can be resolved. So then in verse 4 it says, for it is impossible the blood of bulls and guilt should take away sin. So there is this sense in which the sin is actually made present and sort of remains because it isn't finally dealt with by the blood of bulls and goats. So it is a mode of presence, not a mode of absence like we hear in English. And so people who are interpreting remembrance anamnesis through our own cultural frame of reference as 21st century English speaking Americans or whatever, are interpreting through the wrong lens. Because in the Jewish framework this is going to sound much more like a memorial sacrifice and it's a much more technical kind of term.

[A]

Well, okay, so then we have this other objection then about sacrifice. And I'm not going to remember the scripture passage. I apologize, Joe, you probably will remember it. But he was sacrificed once for all. So in what sense could this be? Could the. Like I go to Mass. Okay, so this afternoon they'll have mass here and I could go down to the chapel and go to Mass. If John Versillo gets the meeting over with quick enough. That's my limiting factor. So I go to Mass, I'm participating in a sacrifice. It's the sacrifice of the Mass. But the scripture clearly says Christ's sacrifice is once for all. Unless I'm.

[B]

No, you're right. Except that people hear that. And just like we misunderstand the word anamnesis, we also misunderstand the idea of sacrifice. I alluded to this earlier when we were talking about the Jewish sacrifice with the Passover. I recently talked to a Protestant who insisted the Passover meal was not a sacrifice, only the killing of the lamb was. And that's totally wrong. The eating of the lamb is explicitly included as part of the Passover sacrifice in Exodus description. So with a sacrifice, it's not enough that an animal dies. Animals die all the time. Like when I go to McDonald's. That is not a memorial offering to the Lord. That's something else.

[A]

I feel like there's a joke there, but I can't come up with it. No, I just want to tell you that I'M trying to.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

So you have, broadly speaking, you've got a few stages. You have what's called the offertory aspect, where you present the thing to be offered. Then you have. This is a priestly action, the priest. Does that mean people bring it to the priest? So there's a sense in which the people have an offertory dimension as well. You see this at Mass when we bring up the bread and wine and we bring up the tithe, which represents the portion of our sacrifice to God. And then the bread and wine become transformed into Christ's sacrifice. So the offertory dimension, then you have, you know, with an Old Testament sacrifice, like an animal sacrifice, you then have the killing of the animal, and then you'd usually have the eating of the animal. Now, different sacrifices sometimes proceeded in slightly different ways, but those three elements are pretty key. So when people hear sacrifice, they often think just of the killing. The mass is not re killing Christ.

[A]

Ah, that's helpful. Okay, that's okay.

[B]

But we are receiving him by eating his body and blood to participate in the death that has already happened. And you can see this so clearly in the Passover preparation day. The lamb dies, you then have the Passover, and you were actually required to eat all the flesh. None of it could remain until morning. So you might be required to go back for seconds. You're not re sacrificing the lamb. When you go back for seconds, you're not re sacrificing the lamb. When you sit down and eat the first time, you're completing the sacrifice and you continue to engage in the completion of the sacrifice as many times as in necessary.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And unlike the flesh of Christ, of course, the flesh of the animal is finite. It's limited, and it has to be gone by morning. So when you read Hebrews the way many people. I was in a debate with Dr. James White about this, and he used this as a description of Good Friday happening once for all. But that's not what actually Hebrews is teaching. So in Hebrews 9, for instance, it says in verse 11, When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. So notice this is Christ in his priestly capacity. Then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not made of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy place. Now, the holy place, this is a reference to the temple, but showing that the earthly temple prefigures, or it's an image on earth, I should say, of the more glorious image, the more glorious temple in Heaven, he entered once for all into the holy place, taking not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. Notice, when does that happen? When does Christ enter into heaven with the blood that he's offering? Not on Good Friday at all.

[A]

No, that's the ascension.

[B]

Exactly. So 43 days later. So this already tells us there's an offertory dimension at a heavenly level to Christ's offering that does not happen on Good Friday. So anyone taking this language to say it's all done once and for all on Good Friday is taking literally the opposite of what Hebrews is teaching. Hebrews is talking about Christ's offertory dimension happening once for all in heaven. Of course, there's also an offertory dimension on earth. We see him offering his body and blood at the Last Supper. And then the sacrifice of Good Friday in the sense of the killing on Good Friday also happens once for all. Christ isn't re killed. So that gives you the offertory, that gives you the killing sacrifice portion. And then the third portion is eating, the sacrificial offering or incorporation. And whereas the other two are given with this kind of once for all language in terms of the heavenly offering and in terms of the earthly death, the language of eating, we're told, do this in anamnesis of me. And so that sacrificial language that suggests is a sacrificial dimension that is still ongoing. And so then I would tie that in again to First Corinthians 10, that when St. Paul explains the Eucharist, he explains it in explicitly sacrificial terms. He compares the table of the Lord to the table of demons. Now again, we hear table through modern ears as just like, you know, something like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Table of the Lord in Malachi one is the altar in Jerusalem. And the table of demons is the demonic altars in which they would offer unholy sacrifices to demons. His description of the Eucharist describes it as having an altar. That's what the table of the Lord is. And we eat of the altar and become partakers of the altar. So I would point to that as a very clear indication that the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist is explicitly taught in Scripture. Like, I don't know how to read 1st Corinthians 10 in a non sacrificial sort of way, because it is so explicitly and thoroughly sacrificial.

[A]

So I have to take the break. I want to kind of sum up where we are so far is Jesus gives us his own flesh and his own blood as real food and real drink as part of the sacrifice, which is a multi part action. And we receive that when we receive the Eucharist. That's the Catholic teaching and you gave us the supports for it. When we come back, I've got more objections, though. All right, all right. More Objections to the Eucharist with Joe Heschmeier right after this.

[B]

Hang on.

[A]

We'll be right back with more Catholic Answers Live. The Catechism defines evangelization as the proclamation of Christ and his gospel by word and the testimony of life. But what does that look like in real life? It looks like St. Paul street evangelists out in the public square sharing the good news. We're a Catholic nonprofit that starts conversations by handing out free sacramentals. Then we employ our method of listen, befriend, proclaim, and invite. Catholic Answers is supported in part by St. Paul Street Evangelization. Visit streetevangelization.com to learn more. With news from EWTN's Vatican bureau, you can watch all of the important events from Rome. And even if you don't have TV access, using the latest technology, we've made it possible to watch the latest news from the Holy See, all delivered directly to your home via live streams. Watch live on EWTN's YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and x. Welcome back to Catholic Answers Live. Joe Heschmeyer is our guest. Having fun today and really fascinating to go through Scripture and because all of scripture is about Jesus, you pretty much have to go through all of scripture if you're going to really truly talk about the Eucharist. I'm correct, right? All scripture is about Jesus.

[B]

All scripture is about Jesus.

[A]

And so this Eucharistic thing is big, but we're trying to work our way through all of the objections. Let me just review one, because I had it as a written objection, and I want to make sure that I. It's. It's not cannibalism.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So cannibalism is destructive.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, that's. That's what I want you to do. Why is it not cannibalism?

[B]

So with cannibalism, you tear apart a body and you eat it. And that is not what Catholics believe is happening in the Eucharist. That is probably one of the ways people understood Jesus teaching, probably one of the reasons they were horrified by it. But he is not. This is why you have to understand that, yes, this is a bodily eating, this is a bodily drinking of the flesh and blood of Christ, but not in the ways that you'd be limited to by mere human effort. Like, by mere human effort, if I was going to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, I would have to cut him up with the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ can become bodily present in the Eucharist in a sacramental way that is not destructive of his body. And several of the early Christians talk about this, that there's a real sense in which when we eat the bread and the wine that have become the body and blood of Christ, we don't metabolize him into us, we are metabolized into him. In the words of St. Paul, again in 1 Corinthians 10, we are one body because we partake of the one loaf that this one art on loaf. It's not obviously meaning a literal loaf of bread there. Because he's writing to people in Corinth, and there's not like one big piece of bread they're passing all around, that he's talking about the Eucharist, that the Eucharistic bread that becomes the Body of Christ transforms us into the Church as the Body of Christ. But the reason we can talk about the Church as Body of Christ in the full sense, the reason first communion is one of the sacraments of initiation into the Church and is considered historically the pinnacle. You'd usually get baptized and then confirmed and then receive first Communion, because that is where you become, in the fullest sense, a member of the Body of Christ, that we receive him and he turns us into him. That means that even though we understand this very bodily, we also understand this very spiritually. We understand that there is something going on in a supernatural, spiritual way, that we're not receiving this in the way that we would receive ordinary food and drink. And we have to spiritually discern our Lord. And failing to do that, then, yet you would be left with just saying, well, it seems like we just have cannibalism as an option. And then the last thing I'd say on that is, there's a good sign there. One of Municius Felix. This is one of the early kind of Christian writings. It's a dialogue between a pagan and a Christian. And one of the objections that the pagan raises is, well, you guys sound like cannibals. And the pagans believed that at a Christian Eucharist, because they were closed off to the public, there was this rumor going around that they would take a baby and put him in something like a manger and then cover it with grain and then secretly eat his body. And you can see that they've somehow gotten confused about basically the Nativity scene in the Eucharist and combine them in the most ghastly, unspiritual sort of ways.

[A]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but that does point to the fact that Christ was placed in a manger, which means chewing. They were mixing up metaphors that were supposed to actually mix up in a certain way that Christ was given to us as food. From the moment of his birth, he's.

[B]

Placed in a manger, a food trough in what city?

[A]

Bethlehem.

[B]

Which means bread. The house of bread.

[A]

The house of bread.

[B]

Beth lehem. Yeah. And in Arabic, it's actually house of flesh, which is also great.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

So, I mean, amazingly.

[A]

So it's funny that they're misinterpreting it, but they're actually helping us to see how we are supposed to interpret it by their misinterpretation. Like, it's not stupid to think of a manger as something that you eat out of.

[B]

Right. And so I would suggest to that if your eucharistic views couldn't be misunderstood as cannibalism, they're not the eucharistic views of the early Christians.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. Sorry, just blew my mind. That's not good radio to have your mind blown like that, but okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So they were capable of being misunderstood because they were speaking of it as they were actually eating someone's flesh and drinking someone's blood. And if you hear someone talking about that or maybe overhear it or something, you're like, what are these people doing?

[B]

Right. And so you catch just enough of the conversation to think, this sounds really ghastly. Yeah, that sort of thing. So a mere memorialism. I mean, go back to John six. I know you're probably cringing because you're thinking, we're never going to leave John six. No, we don't need to. Like, there's all. There's something so strange and shocking about Jesus's eucharistic teaching here that you say, okay, well, this. People are saying, this is a hard teaching. Who can believe it? And disciples are leaving Jesus over this. If all he means is a vague, like, I came from heaven and I want you to follow me, that's not going to lead to that reaction. In John 5, before any of this happens, Jesus presents himself as the Lord of the Sabbath and he calls himself the Son of God, which his enemies regard as blasphemy because he's making himself equal to God. So I want you to remember that whatever Jesus is saying in John 6 is so shocking, so provocative that people who are fine with John 5 get to John 6 and say, this is too much.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, I never thought about that. So, yeah, it's okay if he presents himself as God, but if he starts talking about eating him, we're out of here.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Joe Heschmar is our guest. You won't believe it, but I've got. You know what? I will say this. The biggest objections take the longest to address. So we'll get through a whole bunch more in the second hour. Because once you have dealt with the symbolic objections, the symbolic language objections, you're kind of through the meat of it. So.

[B]

So to speak.

[A]

Yeah, right. So we'll have a little wine, relax. Second hour, we are going to dig into a bunch more objections. We're trying to cover every objection to the Eucharist with Joe Heschmeyer, the author of the Eucharist Is Really Jesus, because it really is Jesus. We'll be right back with more Catholic Answers Live right after this.