Bread of Life - A Must Have

The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said,
"I am the bread that came down from heaven, "
and they said,
"Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? 
Do we not know his father and mother? 
Then how can he say,
'I have come down from heaven'?" 
Jesus answered and said to them,
"Stop murmuring among yourselves. 
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,
and I will raise him on the last day. 
It is written in the prophets:
They shall all be taught by God.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. 
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father. 
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes has eternal life. 
I am the bread of life. 
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die. 
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."

Ahh, John Chapter Six, the Bread of Life Discourse, which is Good News for Catholics and what appears to be a stumbling block for Protestants the world over!  

Yes, today Michael the Lesser is a right-wing Catholic Christian.  If you are looking to hear ecumenical platitudes today you've come to the wrong place.  This is the one subject that I cannot be afraid to anger my separated brothers and sisters of the Protestant tradition.   Please understand that I have to become very right-wing here not because I want to put down Protestants or make them feel bad, not at all.  I want to reflect strongly on the truth of the Eucharist because it is THE most important gift that Jesus left us and it is the key to attaining Eternal Life! 

Protestants pride themselves on being believers in the full Gospel and their Tradition states that the Bible is the sole source for all Christian belief and that the faith stands or falls based on the words found in this collection of books.  Through the whole Holy Book, they will take the words at face value except where Jesus is obviously using a simile to make a point, for example, He is obviously not a shepherd because we are not really sheep.  This is a reasonable, rational, and correct exegesis of such passages and no Catholic scholar would find fault with these interpretations.  However, once we arrive at John Chapter Six some sort of mystical myopathy descends upon Protestants.  Words that cannot be interpreted any other way than as they were written are interpreted as if they are hyperbole.  Jesus very clearly states and restates that you cannot get receive eternal life unless you eat His Body and drink His Blood. The words that are used in Greek are the words used for gnawing or tearing of flesh as a person does when eating. Further, Jesus did not back away from what He said when some of His followers were going to leave Him.  He restated what He said and the Gospel says that the people were sickened at the thought.  They would not have been sickened if they had understood Him to mean what He said figuratively.  When they left He did not call them back saying "Come back, I was only kidding."  No, He let them go. 

When the "reformers" were making up their minds as to what their church would be like they decided that if the Catholic Church is doing it, they would not.  So, out went statues, out went many different prayer methods, out went the crucifix in favor of the cross and out went the Eucharist as a sacrament and in it came as a "memorial" of the last supper that could be taken or left as the pew dweller desired as it was nothing special.  How sad that untold millions of people have gone from cradle to grave without the graces that are brought by Jesus when He enters our very body and we become One, we are one with Christ and we are one with all of the others that have received the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus.  Protestants are aghast that we worship bread.  They think of it as supreme folly to place host inside of a monstrance and to adore and pray to it.  If it were bread, they would be right, but it is not bread, it is the Resurrected Jesus as He is today in heaven and He is there to listen to us as we pray and adore Him. 

Yes, Michael the Lesser is a Right-Wing Eucharistic stormtrooper.  The Eucharist as consecrated by the priest at mass is Jesus and we can get no closer to Him this side of heaven and this Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity is reserved only for Catholics in good standing with the Church.  It is not to be given out lightly to anyone outside of the Church.  I say this not because I am an elitist but because I am concerned that people not prepared to receive Jesus in the Eucharist may receive Him unworthily and that is not good for their souls.   

God loves all of His children Catholic or Protestant because we call God the Father of us all.  But, Protestants cannot receive the Eucharist because they are like the brother that took his inheritance and went off to a far-off land to spend it and live life as he wanted to.  He no longer was a part of his father's house because he was so far away.  The father spent hours, days, months, and years watching for that son to come home again because he still loved the boy and wanted the very best for him but until the son made the move to return to the father, the father was helpless to do anything for him because he was so far away.

The day will come, and maybe it is just around the corner when we will all be one body in Christ again.  Today we are many flocks with many different shepherds.  This is not what Jesus wanted but until that day, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist will have to remain with and be for members of the Catholic Church.