- 52 - John 16: 25: ‘These things have I told you in figurative speech; but the hour is coming, when I shall no longer speak to you figuratively.’ Do you recall when it was that he spoke these words? As you will be able to confirm, it was on the occasion of the Last Supper, but a few hours before his death. As a man he said everything in parables. Matthew 13: 34: ‘All these things Jesus spoke unto the crowds in parables; he said nothing to them without using parables.’ Moreover, on the eve of his death he spoke not only of bread and wine as symbols of his approaching death, but in another parable he described his living relationship with the disciples: John 15: 5: ‘I am the vine, and you are the branches.’ So, if you are not willing to accept the bread and the wine in a figurative sense, you may also not assign a figurative meaning to his words of the vine and its branches; instead, you would have to claim that by speaking the words ‘I am the vine and you are the branches’ Christ was transformed into a vine and his disciples into its branches. The mode of expression is the same in both cases, and one transformation is no more difficult than the other, both being equally impossible. It is understandable that the Catholic Church should look for even the most far-fetched evidence from the Bible to support its preposterous doctrine. Thus, it accepts other figurative expressions literally, where Christ says of himself that he is the ‘bread’ that came down from heaven, and also where he says that his flesh is really a food and his blood is really a drink. This is all to be taken in a spiritual sense, as Christ never wearied of repeating. John 6: 63: ‘It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh contributes nothing. The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.’ Speaking of himself, he says that it is his ‘food’ to do the will of his heavenly Father. He promised the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well that he would give her ‘water’ that flows to eternal life. These are all symbolic expressions that must never be taken literally, as that would lead to the sheerest absurdities. • Christ is not truly a vine and his disciples are not truly its branches. The bread and the wine at the Lord’s table are not actually his body and his blood. All of this is to be taken spiritually and figuratively, and it was so understood by the Apostles and by all the Christians of the early centuries. The Divine service that centres on the alleged transubstantiation of bread and wine into the person of Christ is known to Catholics as the ‘Mass’. It is also referred to as the re-enactment of the Crucifixion. • There is no such thing as a re-enactment of the death of Christ, not even a bloodless reenactment. Just how do you think Christ’s death on the Cross could be re-enacted bloodlessly? You really do not think at all in this, because the subject does not lend itself to reasonable thoughts.
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