A reading from the gospel according to Saint John. The Jews quarrel among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? And thereupon, Jesus said to them you recognize the background. This is the this followed right after the multiplication of the loaves and the fish. And our lord told him that unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you.
And, of course, the Jews said, how is in the world? Is that possible? And so Jesus then replied, let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.
The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the father father who has life sent me him. And as I have life because of the father, so the man who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and died, nonetheless, the man who feeds on this bread shall live forever.
Jesus said this in a synagogue instruction at Capernaum, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, when you have two texts like this, what do you do? Either or or both and or what? I wanna just call your attention to to two rightfully important points.
I've just read yesterday the reply of the bishops of The United States to a questionnaire sent out from Rome with reference to the universal catechism. As you know, they're calling it so far, it's being called a catechism, which we following Vatican two is going to be a summary of the Catholic faith for the universal church. Now the copy that that came to The United States is a translation, I guess, from the Latin, and that's not made clear what the original language was. Now, I read it. It's a long pretty long document.
That is the reply that the bishops of The United States are taking responsibility for it. I don't think one of them had a hand in writing it. But anyway, they call them the professionals. Their reply, stress among a lot of other things, because this this catechism is not a popular idea with many people, is this. What is the significance of the of scripture, the written word, and especially the New Testament?
Is it history, or what is it? And almost paragraph by paragraph, this document, which is the response of the bishops of The United States, if they vote for it, then it's their responsibility whether they've written it or not, is that the document doesn't show contemporary biblical scholarship. In other words, it does not rest its case upon this form criticism, where whatever you're dealing with, you mustn't think of it as history. Now there's a tremendous point here. A tremendous point because it's very pervasive.
Very pervasive. Now you take this text today of Saint John, you know there's a great deal of discussion about words. Words, logical positivism, Wittgenstein, and all that stuff. But the thing is, this it was a talk of our blessed lord following the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, spoken to a multitude of Jews in Capernaum who understood him to be talking about cannibalism, eating his flesh and drinking his blood, who couldn't believe it, who said they couldn't believe it. Then he explains what he meant, and you just heard what he said by way of explanation.
There's no watering down. There's no suggestion that they misunderstood him. There's no attempt to to to use a metaphor or to explain away the literalness of his statement. And they leave him. And then following the text which I just read, even the disciples are about to leave Jesus.
They can't swallow this either. And our lord says even to them, will you also leave me? Now if Christ did not mean these words as they seem in plain English, and there's no difficulty here with the Greek, it's just as good as what I've read to you in English. Just as clear. There's no problem there.
If if the Jews misunderstood it because Christ did not clarify, then it's his responsibility. As I say it, coming back to C. S. Lewis, Christ can't be just a good man. Because here, if he didn't mean what he said after all this explanation, then who's guilty of misleading multitudes and multitudes of people?
But how often when you hear a discussion of those institution of the blessed Eucharist, how often do you hear Saint John's text brought in? This text I've just read. So keep that in mind. When you talk about the meaning, this is my body and this is my blood, you cannot confine your argument simply to the last supper. There's an antecedent to it.
There is the last supper, and then there's a consequence. What happened afterwards? Now the second point I want to make is another one that very few people revert to. If these good biblical scholars and many of them are Catholics, you know, plenty of them are. If we cannot take the New Testament for history, then what do you do with Saint Paul?
Because remember this, keep this very much in mind. Saint Paul, at least on three or four at least three or four occasions, explicitly, explicitly says that what I'm teaching you, I did not get from any of the disciples. I didn't get it from any of the apostles. I got it direct from the revelation of Jesus Christ to me personally, personally. Now here is the force of that.
If what Paul is saying is true and if it's not true, he is a liar. Absolutely. Then you have two separate witnesses, two categories. You have the witnesses who wrote the New Testament and who established the tradition of the church and and who got their knowledge either directly from Jesus from knowing him or from those who did know him somehow, wherever they got it. And then completely independently, you have Saint Paul saying, what I'm telling you, I got directly from Jesus Christ and his revelation to me.
You have two separate channels. And when you compare them, for example, on this matter of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, look how they agree. You talk about the resurrection. You see, there's some who say, Well, you know what, it wasn't physically. It's a religious, it's a mystical experience and all that.
And Lewis would say moonshine. I would call it something else. It has to do with the barnyard. You can't escape this. You can't escape the facts.
We're dealing with facts or we're not dealing with facts, and it's all a terrible mistake. There's nothing in between. Let me tell you, in spite of what some of the critics have to say about that. It's an either or situation. And this is I'm going to repeat it because it unless you get into this, you get it sounds complicated, but it's not really.
On the one hand, you have the three Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They're called the synoptics. Then you have Saint John who's a separate witness. Then they are all pretty much in a in a in a in the same category. They either knew Jesus or they were very close to those who did know Jesus.
Totally independent, you have Saint Paul who says he got his information directly from Jesus, and you have the account of that in today's first reading. I tell you this because it our faith is being assaulted. As I said, I just got finished reading the critique of the universal catechism, which is going out which is going to Rome over the signatures of the bishops of The United States. And they're constantly holding up this idea that modern contemporary biblical criticism does not support the gospels as history. Well, if it's not history, then what is it?
Then they bring in this stuff about myth. You see, it's not an accident that the church put these two readings together today. There's nothing so central to Catholicism and the faith of Jesus Christ as the real presence of Jesus. And let me tell you, that is being attacked within the Catholic church. Plenty of people come into this church and never genuflect to the altar anymore.
I've heard people say, oh, well, you know, Christ's presence on the altar, it's a mystical thing. It's an act of faith, whatever that means. They don't know what they're talking. They don't know what they ask them what they mean by faith. You'll you'll see.
It's all moonshot. Catholic religion is historical. We didn't start yesterday. We didn't start in the sixth sixteenth century. We didn't start with a book.
Keep this in mind. Catholicism doesn't rest on a book. If we had no New Testament, if we had no epistles of Peter or John or Saint Paul, the Catholicism would be still here because it doesn't rest upon the written word. We don't have any of the written word until of it until the end of the first century. What happens in between?
Our faith rests upon factual truth. Factual truth. If it doesn't rest upon that, it is, as Lewis says, moonshine. And the sooner we get rid of it, the better. But as Saint Paul says, unless Christ be risen, vain is your faith.
But I can tell you, I'm aware of the problems. It isn't all simple. Of course, it isn't. But the point is anyone who was willing to look at the text and take it the overall view cannot escape the fact that Jesus rose from a tomb that those women found it empty, and Jesus appeared bodily to his disciples and to as many as 500 at one time. Never forget it.
Our religion rests upon fact. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.