Old Testament Symbols
St. Augustine wrote that “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.” For example, when we read of the priesthood of Christ in the New Testament Book of Hebrews 5-7,
it notes that Christ is an eternal priest-king according to the order of
Melchizedek. Who is Melchizekek? He is the one to whom the Patriarch Abraham after a military victory (about 1800 B.C.) brought his tithe. He is a “a priest of God most high” and a king who brought out an offering of bread and wine and gave Abraham a blessing (Gen 14:18). Because Melchizedek is a type of Christ, his offering of bread and wine is seen as a type of the Thanksgiving offering
(Todah in Hebrew), which Jesus offers to the Father at the Last Supper. During the forty years of wandering in the desert, Moses said God “fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the
Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3). The manna was considered holy and was kept in the ark of the Covenant but Jesus said:
Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not
die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6: 49-51)
This is not the bread which was offered in the temple every day by the priests. It is not the holy bread of the Presence which David fed his men
(Matthew 12:1) on the Sabbath, exercising priestly authority. What is this bread that Jesus spoke of in the New Covenant?
Bread from Heaven
Could God Almighty, whose Son took on human flesh to save us, a great mystery of our redemption, actually offer us that flesh
[body, blood, soul and divinity] as a saving banquet? Those with faith believe God’s word in the New Testament which narrates how he changed water into wine at Cana, fed thousands from a few fish and loaves of bread, and raised others from the dead and then, Himself. Still, this would certainly be a stupendous and miraculous gift from the God who created the world out of nothing and whose word is life-giving. This “bread from heaven” or manna (Ps 78:24), some of which was kept in the ark of the covenant in a gold jar (Heb 9:4), was a form of divine assistance for God’s people. The Passover meal,
which the Jews celebrated each year to commemorate the sparing of the first-born sons of
Israel ( who were supposed to be priests and spiritual leaders of the family-- Exodus 19:6 and Hebrews 11:28; 12:23) in the great drama of the exodus from Egyptian slavery to freedom, had to be consumed for the first-born to live. The Passover was the occasion for Jesus to offer his Apostles the Bread of Life, but not just his life-saving word which He had been giving to them throughout His three year ministry, but His own Body and Blood, since Jesus is the
Logos, the Word. Can this be so or have Catholic Christians gone off the deep end? Is it worth noting that Jesus was born in a manger, which is a feeding trough, in the town of Bethlehem, which means “house of bread?” Or that the Passover meal, which Jesus celebrated with His disciples in the Upper Room, known as the “Last Supper,” is a form of
Todah, a thanks offering of food and drink (usually bread and wine), a form of sacrificial offering. Like the other Old Covenant sacrifices, namely the sin, peace and burnt offerings, it is a prototype of the New Covenant sacrifice of the Cross. God instituted both and designed the first as a
foreshadowing of the second. These are not mere coincidences for all of history is
Christocentric, that is all history is centered on Christ, our
Savior.
The New Testament Eucharist In John 6
What if anything does the New Testament teach us about the sacrament of the
Body and Blood of Christ received by Catholics and Orthodox Christians at Mass
and referred to as the “Eucharist?” The Gospel of John was the last one written and is theologically the most sophisticated. This is reflected in John’s treatment of the Holy Eucharist in chapter six of his Gospel. John pointedly introduces the subject after the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand and at the time of the Passover celebration [a thanks offering or
Todah], one year before the Last Supper, also a Passover meal, and hence easily recalled at that time. In the famous “bread of life” discourse, Jesus contrast the bread which perishes or the manna
(John 6:27) with the bread from heaven which gives life to the world (John 6:33). Just as death came into the world by eating the forbidden fruit so eternal life (which Adam and Eve lost because of their sin) is restored by eating the Bread of Life. Jesus is clear in His message:
I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this
eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the
life of the world. (John 6:51)
When the Jews, who took him at His word, began quarreling about the problem of offering
one’s flesh, Jesus said:
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 [trogon in Greek]
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 real drink. The man who feeds [trogon]
on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the Father
who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father so the man who feeds
[trogon] on me will have life because of me. . . (John 6:53-57)
Jesus gives us his solemn assurance (some translations say “truly, truly I tell you” which is a Hebrew oath formula) that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, but some argue this is symbolic language as when Jesus describes himself as “the door” or “the way”. But the word John uses for the Greek verb “to eat or feed”
[trogon] is not the regular verb for eating, phagon.
Trogon means “to munch or gnaw” and is no doubt a deliberate device employed by John to underline the reality of the flesh and blood of Jesus. The tense of the verb
trogon implies continuous action and a word study shows this verb is never used in a symbolic fashion in the Bible.
Jesus Said it Four Times!
When his disciples began murmuring about how impossible it was to take Jesus seriously, he responded in John 6: 62-65:
What then if you were to see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before. . .?
It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words I spoke to you are
spirit and life. Yet among you are some who do not believe. . .
. This is why I
have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.
Flesh alone, human flesh, is of no avail, but Christ’s resurrected, glorified flesh is united to and an instrument of the Holy Spirit. The Protestant interpretation that “flesh and blood” are merely a Hebrew idiom for “life” might make sense if Jesus had not taken the trouble to clarify his meaning for his disciples. He has repeated his message four times
(John 6: 51-58) fully aware that the eating of flesh and the drinking of blood was prohibited by Levitical law (e.g.,
Leviticus 3:17) with the severe penalty of being cut off from your people. Nowhere else in Scripture does Jesus say anything four times. Moreover, even after “many of his disciples broke away and would not remain in his company any longer” unable to accept this apparent gross violation of Mosaic law, Jesus did not change His meaning! This is the only time in the New Testament that the message of Jesus caused such a mass exodus of his followers. Just as the announcement that Jesus was going to be taken and crucified scandalized them, so too did Jesus teaching about the Eucharist. Both the Cross and the Eucharist are stumbling blocks which can only be overcome with the help of the Holy Spirit. “Will you also go away?” Jesus asked the twelve. Or could it be that Jesus meant what He said? But some protest, He said that “it is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is
useless.” Truly, the Spirit gives life and there is no life without Him and life is a supernatural gift, but Jesus just said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day”
(John 6:53-54). So how can He now say “the flesh is useless.” Have we caught the Messiah in a contradiction? No, because in the first instance He is talking about divine flesh without which there is no eternal life, and in the second instance He is referring to human flesh, which is, indeed, useless to save man.
The Medicine of Immortality
The Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ, has always taught that these words are to be taken literally and this is evident if you study the words of the early Church Fathers, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who provided the first written evidence that the Church called itself “catholic’ which means “universal” and who referred to the Eucharist in the following terms in his letter to the Ephesians written before 110 A.D.:
"Come together in common, one and all without exception in charity, in one faith and
in one Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David according to the flesh, the son of
man, and the Son of God, so that with undivided mind you may obey the bishop and
the priests, and break one Bread which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote against death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ."
The institution of the Eucharist is found in the synoptic Gospels accounts of the Last Supper
(Luke. 22:14-20; Mt.26:26-30; Mk.14:22-26). In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, we read:
During the meal Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples
‘Take this and eat it,’ he said, ‘this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks,
and gave it to them. ‘All of you must drink from
it,’ he said, ‘for this is my blood,
the blood of the new covenant, to be poured out in behalf of many for the
forgiveness of sins.’ (Matthew.26: 26-30)
Notice that Jesus does not say this is a symbol of my body or this represents my blood, but He is very literal in his description. The gift of himself, was symbolized by the “breaking of the
bread,” and it was “this expression that the first Christians used to designate their Eucharistic assemblies.”
As St. Paul says by eating “Because there is one bread, we who are many
are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”(1 Corinthians 10:17). This is the fulfillment of the words of Jesus, when he said, “. .
.I am with you always, to the close of the age”
(Matthew. 28: 20).
The Church, taking Christ at His word, teaches that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of Christian life” and that Christ gave it to us “to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Pascal banquet ‘in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, p.334, para.1323).
St. Paul and the Eucharist
What does Paul say on the subject? In his first letter to the Corinthians he urges them to shun the worship of idols and asks pointedly, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation [Greek:
Koinounia–participation or communion] in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break is it not a participation [Koinounia] in the body of Christ?”(1 Corinthians 10:16). St. Paul’s words underline the sublime mystery of the Eucharist, namely its sacrificial character and the real presence of Christ. Because Jesus is really present in the meal they share “in remembrance of me.”
St. Paul
scolds:
"When you assemble it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper, for every one is in haste to eat his own supper. One person gets hungry while another gets drunk. Do you not have homes where you can eat and drink? Would you have
contempt for the church of God. . .?”
He then reminds them how he had taught them about the institution of the Eucharist:
"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the
Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he
had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for
you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup,
after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this,
as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you
eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until
he comes (1 Corinthians 11: 23-26).
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