Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, interprets Jesus’ words in John 6, “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him,” as a call to radical intimacy, where the Eucharist functions as God’s physical embrace, allowing Christ to become part of the believer’s very being. Rolheiser emphasizes that this teaching means we are meant to be nourished by Jesus’ life, ultimately becoming what we consume.
The Eucharist is a Divine Embrace more than simply a theological concept. It is a physical, affectionate embrace from God, comparable to a mother holding a child. This allows us to “remain” in Jesus and shows how he desires to be fully integrated into our lives—body, psyche, and spirit—just as food is integrated into our bodies to provide life.
There is a popular t-shirt that reads “You Are What You Eat”. Rolheiser writes that we are called to become the body of Christ for the world. Just as grain is ground to make bread and grapes are crushed to make wine, eating his flesh means entering into a life of sacrifice, self-renunciation, and service to the marginalized.
Our reflection verse today from John’s Gospel underscores the Catholic understanding of the Real Presence, in which Jesus offers his actual life as food, serving as “new manna” that provides daily sustenance for our journey.
When Jesus tells the gathered disciples, “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him,” any first-century Jew would see this statement as referring to cannibalism, and appropriately said back to the Lord, “This is a hard teaching.”
This doubt has continued into the twenty-first century, as more than half of self-professed Catholics do not believe in the Church’s teaching of Christ being literally present (spiritually, of course) in the bread and wine.
Rolheiser writes that we don’t have to fully comprehend this teaching. What the Church does ask of us is to be faithful in participating in it, trusting that the reception of the precious Body and Blood of Christ heals our personal loneliness and connects us to the “global loneliness” of a divided world.
