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Thank you for you reasoned and thought out comment. Too often the easiest path is to cover our ears and spew each of our topical narratives without examining the facts. Ultimately it does boil down to our own interpretations that fit our knowledge and experiences. Those that challenge their knowledge and physical world though learn the deeper meaning. It’s like CSLewis said that we can never understand the strength of temptation until we try to resist it. Or what Churchill said about finding oneself in hell, - keep going. That very smart Protestant Lewis taught me about faith and works and how to look at it- and understand it. It’s the pair of scissors analogy, you need both blades to work...one Blade without the other will Not get the job done. Whether it’s Matt 25 goats or other places in the Bible where works or deeds are judged, I don’t see how I can refute CS Lewis’ scissor analogy. You need both.

If John 6 was meant to be spiritual, why bother With it at all? If I don’t believe I am not taking into my body, the Body of Christ in the Eucharist- I’m just wasting my time....and can get the spiritual thing done by saying grace at a good Italian restaurant. But I know different from what has been written from the earliest Christians...That at the Passover Last Supper Christ again says “This is my body, This is my Blood”... (The Gospel even begins with Christ feeding the 5000.... yes it was a nice gesture for some- but for others it foreshadowed Christ’s intent to feed us with the Christ life. And that requires more Faith and desire to partake in the Eternal Sacrifice of the Lamb...(And I would think using cannibalism as a litmus Test of belief at Capernaum doesn’t make any sense if he goes right back to it at the Last Supper)...Christ commands Peter 3 times on the shore, Feed my Lambs, Feed my Sheep, Feed my Sheep...... How does Peter go about putting the Christ life into the new Christians, not with manna..... but with something St. Paul warns Us that we bring judgement upon us if we do it in an unworthy manner. And there is plenty of evidence in the writings of the first Christians for this feeding.

I ask, why wouldn’t God seek to feed us in this way? The earliest Christians obviously believed in the Eucharist. Why wouldn’t God feed us this way, as he did once with the manna? Certainly God likes matter, he invented it. Why is the Eucharist so unreachable as a Sacrament?

I don’t understand the prisoner/ prison sentence analogy. When we “do” something for someone we are trying to embody Christ. His two commandments ask us to “do” something- action. Now the misunderstanding or outright falsehood that Catholics believe they can “earn” salvation is a tired talking point. NO Catholic believes you can earn your way...even if you had a Joel Osteens money you couldn’t buy that ticket...
At Every Mass we say the Creed... have done so for 15-1600 years....Faith in a Christ is paramount for Salvation... even 500 years ago The Council of Trent proclaimed * “If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or by the teaching of the Law, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema” (Session 6; can. 1).

And like St. Paul we are Hopeful that one day we can say AS HE DID, “ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith“ ====. Faith is something we must have everyday. Taking Christ into our own body helps us in keeping that Faith - as it did St. Paul, and all the Saints....

If John 6 was meant to be spiritual, why bother With it at all?

It is in line with Jesus style of teaching, that of using metaphors to explain spiritual truths to those following Him.

Don’t forget that He also told us that we had to take up our cross daily and follow Him.

Should we then be literally crucified on a literal cross every single day, just as He was?

What about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye if they offend you or cause you to sin?

Do you expect people to literally HATE their mother and father, sister, and brother, and even their very own lives?

Your Catholic mind is in grievous error. IF one is born again / born from above then God is abiding in their spirit and cannot be ingested via the gut for the gut is part of the flesh (the soul and body are the flesh). Jesus did not shed His blood to save your flesh. He desires to save your spirit because He will give you a new body and soul to house your spirit which is already eternally alive with God abiding therein (1 John 3:9).

There is no such place as purgatory for your mythical purgatory is all about cleaning up the soul, which is destined for obliteration if you are born from above / born again.

Jesus told His listeners who remained with Him that the flesh profiteth nothing; it is the spirit that gives life ... His words are spirit and life. You cannot bite off a piece of God's divinity and swallow it to get eternal life in you. ONLY GOD can put His Life in your spirit. You cannot 'eat Jesus, body soul and divinity' as the blasphemous Roman Eucharist claims, because Salvation is FIRST a spiritual birth. That is Justification and you cannot do any work(s) to obtain Justification because ONLY GOD can justify a dead spirit because HE has chosen to abide in the born again.

If John 6 was meant to be spiritual, why bother With it at all?

Interesting point; but why not look at ALL of John chapter six in context?

There's some good stuff in it that hardly ever gets discussed by non-Prots.

John 6:25-40

²⁵When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

²⁶Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. ²⁷Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

²⁸Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

²⁹Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

³⁰So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’^[c]”

³²Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

³⁵Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. ³⁷All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. ³⁸For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. ³⁹And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. ⁴⁰For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

Notice that the emphasis is on BELIEVEING; not eating or drinking.

But the blades on scissors are very similar, and for all intents and purposes, equal to each other. That’s not how it is with faith and works.

The Lord inspired Paul to give the best explanation in Ephesians 2. Bottom line, we are saved by grace through faith and NOT by works, lest we would something to boast about. Being born again and being saved mean being RECONCILED to God.

It’s something like a criminal filled with hate and anger who doesn’t care about hurting people with his crimes - and who is therefore very untrustworthy - one day having a genuine change of heart so he truly now cares about others and so wants to obey good laws. That criminal is like a different person. And in fact being reconciled to God through Christ commonly reforms many criminals in prison. A well-known example is David Berkowitz.

Becoming sorrowful and regretful for our sin against God and appreciative of His mercy and grace and the rightness of His will for us makes it in our new nature to want to obey Him.

And Paul further explains that it’s Christ living in him who does the good works.

On the Lord’s Supper, it matters what you believe the spiritual is.
It doesn’t seem to mean very much to you, but Jesus explains in John 4 that God Himself is spirit.

Can you explain the “physics”of that, then? Or of how God sees and how His eyes work, versus how ours do? Or the physics of the light that the Father and the Son will provide in the New Jerusalem, or of Heaven and our glorified bodies?

It’s not nothing to participate in the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of Him, which proclaims His sacrificial death for our sake, so that we can come alive spiritually and have eternal life. To consume it unworthily is to be in unbelief, denying what He’s done for us.

And here is where what saves us is clear, too, in terms of faith and works. Our eternal life is entirely dependent on His sacrifice, as the Lord’s Supper shows. He’s our one and only food for eternal life. We don’t provide any of it.

Jesus also actually could have given His disciples something of His actual body and blood to consume at the Last Supper, but He didn’t.

After the unbelieving left, Jesus then explained to His disciples that it was His words that mattered, as they believed Him.