Replies

Of course he spoke in metaphors. But not always. Do you always speak in metaphors? Can people tell when you are or aren't? Of course they can. Do you correct them if they can't comprehend what you are saying? Of course you do. Jesus did the same. But in this instance he didn't because he had made it very clear he wasn't speaking figuratively. He had deliberately used a word for "eat" that was not subject to metaphoric interpretation.

I do not compare you to those who walked away in the sense that you are suggesting, therefore. They understood what he was saying and rejected it as obviously loony and cannibalistic. You simply misunderstand what he is saying and insist that it is metaphor. You may be compared therefore only in the sense that you both reject the literal meaning as cannibalistic, though it is true you don't walk away.

The concept of a priest holding up the Body of Christ is indeed bizarre. But faith requires it of us because Jesus asks it of us. Do you suppose his disciples didn't know it was a "hard saying"? But Jesus asked the twelve if they would therefore leave him as so many of his other disciples had done, unable to take the literal sense of what he was saying. Jesus had even emphasized his point by using unusually graphic, non-metaphoric language. The apostles answered him--"Where else can we go? You've got the words of eternal life." That's what faith is all about, believing in what can't be rationally explained.

Catholics understand that underneath the physical is the spiritual relationship that physical intimacy brings. We achieve this spiritual relationship in depth by taking into ourselves what we believe is truly the physical Christ. Call it lunacy if you will--but this was what Jesus taught us and this is what was believed by the twelve apostles and this is what the earliest Fathers of the Church believed and this is what has been passed-down to us in faith. It is our belief in this hard saying that takes us to that deeper dimension.