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But I don't think you take the discourse about "flesh is meat indeed" literally, ad so at least on that part I correctly said "you don't take these passages in John 6 as words of eternal life".

There is no requirement that we abandon the ordinary use of direct metaphor to believe what Jesus is teaching in John 6. The fact is, the fair weather followers of Jesus who abandoned Him in John 6 did so precisely because they rejected the metaphor and went to a literal sense. That literal sense jarred them because it seemed to go against Moses. They didn't have enough faith in Him personally to realize He would never lead them into rejecting the divine law. They didn't have enough faith to realize that when He was gone back to Heaven, they would have still been able to continue feeding on Him by faith, simply by believing on Him, and feeding on His words.

Therefore you are not correct. Jesus in this passage does not insist on "literal" meaning for spiritual teaching, but rather confirms the opposite.

(2) The Catholics take these words to mean what they say ("my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed") and don't reach for hidden meanings to the opposite.

The spiritual meaning is not hidden at all. As I have said repeatedly, Jesus states explicitly He is teaching about faith in Himself, and at a spiritual not a fleshly level. And Peter demonstrates the right response at the end of the discourse, not in an effort to literally eat Jesus, or to secure transformed bread and wine, but from out of his heart proclaim his faith in God's chosen Messiah. The meaning, so far from being hidden, could not be more plain if it were written across all the starry host, "come to Jesus, and you will hunger no more, believe on Jesus, and you will never thirst again."

But those who wanted to understand him literally, because after all, the fishes and loaves were literal, they were blinded by their literalism. It was their literalism that drove them to reject the words that might have led them to eternal life.

we are not asked to be theologians alongside St. Thomas, but we are asked to take Christ's words on faith even when they are "hard teaching".

And indeed it was very hard teaching. The rabbinical teachers had concocted various stories of how Messiah when He came would provide literal bounty, literal freedom from oppressors such as Rome, a literal and outward kingdom that the power brokers could walk into with all their worldly glory, yet with uncircumcised hearts. Messianic utopia without the new birth that changes a person from the heart. This sort of literalism was a dodge, a way to avoid the pain of remorse for sin. It was central to the spiritual problem of the Pharisees. Outwardly, they were lovely tombs, but inside was the stench of death. Throughout all of Jesus' ministry, He is teaching by parable, by metaphor, about truths that get past the superficial outside, and cut down into the deepest parts of the human heart, where the real problem resides. It is a spiritual matter, and it always has been.

And that is what made Jesus' teaching so hard. On the heels of one of the most spectacular and game-changing physical miracles in human history, a miracle that promised the elimination of hunger for all time, He turns it upside down and drives them to think about the true hunger all men and women face. What will satisfy that? Fishes and loaves? No literal food can satisfy a spiritual hunger such as that. But those who ingest Jesus by faith, who feed on every word that proceeds from His mouth, their hunger will be satisfied. He is the manna from Heaven, but He can only be consumed by faith. It is not enough to tag along for the miracles. There must be a change of heart.

It was too big a shift for most of them. They refused to see it in spiritual terms. All they had left was the literal, and they couldn't figure out how that could work. Yet there was Peter, to whom the Father had revealed the Son, demonstrating the very faith of which Jesus speaks. Hard, yes, but all things are possible with God.

Peace,

SR

A sweetly written, nourishing summary of why we were given the imperative to regularly gather together to worship and honor the Great Teacher by remembering His death, burial, and resurrection, in it prompted buy the familiar tokens of His Passion, the bread and wine that carried our mental imagery to the piercing, beating, bruising, cutting, dislocations, perforation, and lacerations of His Body by disgruntled humans; the burning of His flesh as in a smelting furnace by the fiery wrath of The Sin-offended God; and the pouring out of His Blood and edema, laced by the poisonous products of tortured twisting on that engine of terror and agonizing death. Was that all in the cup and the bread they and we consumed? I think we know more now than the disciples did at the moment of the inauguration of the death-supper, whose meaning was later stamped on them as on a vise that impresses on a coin the visage and memory of a victorious commander of war and peace.

(Just sayin')

Thanks for your labors to paint a true and glorious picture of the Man Who chose us as His Friends and Warriors!