So Jesus was made of crackers?(sarc)
Come on, you don’t believe that anymore than I do. I WOULD like to know what you believe He mean’t. Unlike you, I won’t presume to know your mind or heart when it comes to what you believe. So please, do tell.
I beleive that the words “this is my body” were not spoken as a parable. Christ meant it literally. Why do I believe so? Because there is nothing to indicate a figure of speech in the sense of the Last Supper; St Luke even records that Christ proclaimed the bread to be His body, and then told the Apostles “do it” (Luke 22:19). How can one tell someone to “do” a parable?
In John 6 Jesus spends half of the chapter driving down the point that the bread is His real flesh, and that eating it is necessary for salvation: “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you”. His detractors not suprisingly do not believe him and leave Him over this point. You, had you been there, would have left as well. This episode is in the Gospel so that you may believe.
The Holy Apostles understood Him literally. St, Paul, for example, teaches that he who does not realize that he is eating Christ’s body is condemned to hell (1 Cor 11:29)
Now, can I explain it? No. If I could explain any of the miracles of the gospel: the virgin birth, the water becoming wine, man walking on water, dead people rising up to life, the Eucharist, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Pentecost then that would no longer be faith; but Christ taught us that it is important for our salvatin to have precisely that, faith.
With God it is possible to have faith. It is possible that you have faith as well, but you won’t be able to get there by rejecting what is written in the Bible.
Our answer is, It’s A Mystery. We aren’t permitted to see beyond the veil. Jesus said blessed is he who sees and believes, but even MORE blessed is he who believes without seeing.