[jodyel]

Nope, spiritual and that is why one cannot understand these passages without the Spirit living inside them.

Christ lives in no Catholic church, my friend, but until you are born again you will never know or understand that.

Good luck to you.

[agere_contra]

Brother, these words of Christ are plain. They are like rocks rolled on top of us. We need no exquisite spiritual sensibility to tease out their hidden meaning.

Their meaning is astonishing and shocking. So shocking that many of Christ's disciples could not bear them., They ended up leaving Him - hopefully not for ever.

Let us therefore put aside any doubt that Jesus meant the shocking and unbelievable thing that He did say - that He would give His very self to us as food.

[Campion]

Your "understanding" of those passages isn't "spiritual," it's just dismissive. If all Jesus wanted to say was "believe in me," why the elaborate and highly offensive metaphor? Why does the evangelist have him switch Greek verbs from phago (dine, eat, sup) to trogo (munch, gnaw, eat like an animal).

(Incidentally, nowhere else in Scripture is "eating flesh and drinking blood" used as a metaphor for faith. It's used in a couple of places as a metaphor for a crushing military defeat.)

Why did he issue this particular strange discourse at Passover, exactly a year before the Last Supper? Why did he not explain himself to the Apostles, instead asking plaintively, "Will you, too, go away?"

When you can answer all of these questions, I'll grant that your "spiritual" interpretation doesn't just sweep the passage under the rug. Until then, I'll stick with what all Christians knew and cherished for the first 16 centuries of the Christian era.