Your linkage to applying this to current day communion is based on Ignatious' opinion not scripture.
Each Christian church and denomination have their own explanation for what takes place during communion. That's fine. It's impossible for us to fully understand. That's why there is faith. My apologies for offending you.
No teacher always speaks in metaphors. Jesus, for instance, spoke of a baptism with water and the Holy Spirit. That is taken literally by all Christians, Protestant and Catholic. Therefore at the least you must concede that sometimes Jesus spoke literally. Catholics would argue this is one of those times. That's why people back then walked away in disgust when they heard Jesus saying such things.
And you are dead wrong about the disciples believing that by a "hard saying" this meant it was difficult to understand. They knew it was something so repulsive that many who had followed him up to that point ceased to do so from that day forward.
Let's review the facts:
1. John describes Jesus as using language that is not subject to metaphoric interpretation. He uses the verb "trogo" which means "to chew"--and he uses this word many times to rub it in. He even uses an adverb which means "real" or "actual"--as in "my flesh is actual food and my blood is actual drink." So all the weight of the semantical evidence is on the side of a literal interpretation.
2. The reaction of Jesus' listeners indicate they caught his literal sense and reacted strongly. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. People walked away for a reason--because they believed he was whacko, talking about something that seemed cannibalistic. Even the 12 found it a hard saying, though they didn't quit following him.
3. Jesus doesn't clear up matters. He lets his literal language stand. He doesn't say that he is speaking in metaphors or parables. Besides, the apostles were men accustomed to a metaphoric interpretation. Had they believed he spoke in metaphors, there would have been no problem--and no need to affirm their faith in spite of everything.
4. The early Church UNIFORMLY believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. How do we know? Because the Ante-Nicene writers said so. Moreover the earliest Eucharistic liturgies were sacrificial. There was the clear understanding that Jesus was being sacrificed over and over in propitiation to the Father. Sacrificial oblation would have been an unlikely liturgical fact had the early Church not believed in the physical reality behind the appearance of bread and wine.
Finally, you don't offend me at all. Why should I be offended if you misconstrue the evidence, not only the internal evidence found in Scripture itself, but also the external historical evidence found in the writings of the earliest Church fathers? Do you think I don't realize that without faith such a view as Catholics hold is unreasonable and even repulsive? Yet it is the one Jesus insisted upon.
Your view, after all, is clearly inconsistent with the evidence. Paradoxically, the Catholic understanding is ultimately the more spiritual because it suggests an intimacy so close that Jesus and the communicant are united physically, making us one and the same before the Father. This is why Jesus says at the Last Supper, "I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you."