For this is my blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.' And taking the chalice he gave thanks: and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. Matthew's account of the establishment: 'Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said, Take ye and eat: This is my body. What he had provided is the account we have just been considering of Our Lord's first promise. John, who gives the longest account of the Last Supper, does not mention the institution of the Blessed Eucharist his Gospel was written perhaps thirty years after the others, to be read in a church which had been receiving Our Lord's body and blood for some sixty years. Paul tells it to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10 and 11).

What he said and did then is told us by Matthew, Mark, and Luke and St. Then his meaning was most marvellously made plain. There is no hint that Our Lord ever raised the matter again until the Last Supper. When he asked the Apostles if they would go too, Peter gave him one of the most moving answers in all man's history: 'Lord, to whom shall we go?' He had not the faintest idea of what it all meant but he had a total belief in the Master he had chosen and simply hoped that some day it would be made plain. They simply left him, probably thinking that for a man to talk of giving them his flesh to eat was mere insanity. For many, it was the end of discipleship. Needless to say, all this meant nothing whatever to those who heard it first. In some way he himself, living, was to be the food of their soul's life. He went on: 'It is the spirit that quickens: the flesh profits nothing.' We know what he meant: in saying they must eat his flesh, he did not mean dead flesh but his body with the life in it, with the living soul in it. He saw that many of his own disciples were horrified at what he was saying.

He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him' 'He that eats me shall live by me.' For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give, is my flesh for the life of the world' 'He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. Here we quote a few phrases: 'I am the Bread of Life' 'I am the Living Bread, which came down from heaven. The next day, in the synagogue at Capernaum on the shore of the sea of Galilee, Our Lord made a speech which should be read and reread. He had just worked what is probably the most famous of his miracles, the feeding of the five thousand. John tells us (ch 6), Our Lord gave the first promise of it. Without it, one petition in the Our Father-'Give us this day our daily bread'-lacks the fullness of its meaning.Įarly in his ministry, as St. It is precisely food, which explains why it is the one sacrament meant to be received daily. Baptism exists for it, all the others are enriched by it.

Real presence