Do the Words of Jesus at the Last Supper

support Catholic notions

of the bread and wine turning into Jesus?
On the day before he was crucified, Jesus took bread saying, "Take and eat for this is my body." They then
carry on with the normal meal. At the end Jesus takes a cup. He says, "Take this and drink for this is my
blood, the blood of the covenant, that will be poured out for you."
The Church claims this was his way of saying, "This food and drink is me, Jesus." They point out that in his
time, to say something was your body was the same as saying it was your whole self. I answer that it would
not have been necessarily so. Also, if the people in those days meant "me" by "my body" it would mean
living breathing bodies. It would not mean that anybody calling bread his body was claiming that the bread
was him. The bread shows no signs of life or anything. In fact, if people meant me by body they would need
to be routinely hearing of people trying to turn things into bodies without any visible physical change if we
want to argue, "Jesus meant this is my body literally for that is how he would have been understood."
Some of the Pharisees believed that the soul living in the body was the real person not the body. The
Sadducees who did not believe in the soul would have thought that to say my body is the same as saying me.
Neither side though was dogmatic about the issue. They were only schools of thought and debate within the
one religion - Judaism. Jesus was not one of the Sadducees. It is said he was of the Pharisees. But did he
really belong to the Pharisee clan? There is nothing to indicate that he had any loyalty to it if he was. There is
no mention of him engaging in Pharisee activities. He was a critic of both the Sadducees and Pharisees. But
that aside, his thinking was more in line with the Pharisees than the Sadducees. If so, then it is more likely
that Jesus was claiming he was putting his soul which was his real self into the bread in such a way that the
bread could be called his body. Just as his soul lives through his body it will live through the bread. The
bread is not his actual living breathing body but becomes his new body by his soul being united with it.
Jesus used the bread to picture his body and the wine to picture his blood. You are not your blood so Jesus
was hinting that he was not intending to give himself but his body and blood meaning its symbolic. Only a
nutter would want people to eat his body and drink his blood without it being a case of them trying to eat and
drink to nourish their intimacy with him. Eating the flesh of a chicken means you are eating a body but not
wanting to get close to the chicken. The body you eat is not the chicken but what is left behind after life has
gone. "This is my blood," rules out the notion, "This food and drink is me."
Catholics claim that the bread and wine of communion are both the body and blood and soul and divinity of
Jesus Christ. So the bread can be called the blood of Christ and the wine the body of Christ. The Church does
not do this.
Jesus may have used the word body for flesh. People do that. "This is my flesh". Evidence for that would be
way he described his body and blood as being separate. A body without the blood is dead. It is flesh. He was
speaking about his blood meaning he was not on about giving his whole self. Thus the correct understanding
is that body meant flesh.
Jesus broke the bread BEFORE saying it was his body. It would make more sense for him to say it was his
body and then break it if the rite was about getting fed by the real body of Jesus.
Jesus speaks of the chalice of his blood being poured out. He is actually using his blood as a reminder of the
wine poured out. He is really saying, "This wine is not a symbol of my blood or my blood. Like wine being
poured out from a cup so my blood will be poured out for you." The wine is not the blood of Jesus or a
symbol but Jesus blood is treated as a symbol or reminder of wine.

The cup is actually a reminder of the body of Jesus. As the wine is poured out from the cup so the blood is
poured out of Jesus' body. Nobody says that the cup is the body of Jesus.
The Catholic Church says that only the risen body with its supernatural powers can be present in the Eucharist
but this contradicts the actual words of Jesus where he denies that it is his risen body that is present. He said
this is my body as it is now - normal and human. Is the Catholic Church lying? Does it intend to feed people
with the ordinary body or corpse of Jesus? It can't admit that for it is morbid and occult. Jesus says the cup is
his blood, the blood of the covenant, that WILL be shed. If we drink the blood that was in Jesus' veins at that
moment then the whole edifice of Catholic theology collapses. It would follow that Jesus wants to be
remembered as a normal man and not a risen one. He mentions that he will give his body and blood for others
but that is incidental. It is only detail. It is not what the rite is about.
If the Lord's Supper was about focusing on Jesus' violent death by crucifixion then why did he give the bread
and carry on with the supper and only bother with the cup at the end? The imagery could only be served by
giving the bread as his body and then taking the cup. His behaviour shows it was thinking of him that
mattered not so much the words he said or even the bread and wine. There was no magical or sacramental
intent in his behaviour.
Christianity however has treated the Lord's Supper as a memorial of the violent death of Jesus. Suppose it
was right to.
Those who think Jesus pictures a dead Jesus in the Supper base themselves on the following. His body and
his blood are separate for the bread and wine are separate. They think Jesus said the bread and wine were his
body and blood which were being given up - present tense. If so, the Catholic claim that the Last Supper and
the Mass is about giving us a living union with Jesus and that we must meet the living and risen Jesus in the
Mass is refuted. Jesus was not resurrected when he supposedly instituted the Mass at the Last Supper. The
Church officially rejects the notion that the dead body of Jesus and his blood are given in the Mass. That
would be morbid and occult. It would be cannibalism. To feed on a living Jesus filled with the power of God
makes it more spiritual and about intimacy. To feed on a dead one is superstition even by Christian standards.
Just because the doctrine is officially rejected, does not mean that the Church is sincere. It is clear enough
from the words used in the Mass that it intends to give the dead Jesus. The Mass never specifies that it is the
living and resurrected body of Jesus that is received. The contrary is the impression given, "Look, we pray,
upon the oblation of your Church and, recognising the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to
reconcile us to yourself, grant that we who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with
his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ". Here we read that we need the Holy Spirit to
benefit from the Eucharist so its no good by itself for its dead meat and dead black pudding.
Jesus was not seen as God by his disciples at that time. Thus if they intended to eat and drink him it was
intentional idolatry. It was trying to be spiritually fed by a being other than God. It contradicts the angel in
the Book of Revelation who said to John do not worship me but worship God.
Bolt says that when Jesus spoke of the blood being the blood of the covenant he was using a traditional
rabbinical expression for the blood of circumcision. "The 'blood of the covenant' was, to the rabbis, a
reference to circumcision" (page 105, The Cross from a Distance, Atonement in Mark's Gospel). Jesus could
say the bread was his body and the wine was his circumcision blood that will be poured out or shed. He
would mean the cup contained the circumcision blood that was destined to be poured out again on a cross.
The cup contains the circumcision blood. It would be missing the metaphor to argue, "But Jesus wouldn't
have thought the circumcision blood could go back into his veins again!" Jesus was actually reaffirming
Judaism as the only religion approved by God. The Catholic Church had no right to hijack the Lord's Supper
and strip it of its Judaism.
Some argue, "Compare Hebrews 9:15 which says of Jesus that he is the Mediator of the new covenant, by
means of his death with the text where we read that Jesus took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the

new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:20). This is my blood then actually means this
is my death." Think about that.
It is said that a covenant between God and people means both sides give themselves to each other as personal
beings. To make a covenant with God is to have a personal relationship with God. Catholics say it means that
the person of Jesus is being given. But covenant in the Bible refers to God being the God of Israel long before
Jesus came. Jesus then meant that the cup was the new union with God sealed with his shed blood. This
divorces union with God from the blood. The cup is about the covenant and not the blood as such.
Why does Jesus say after blessing the cup and saying it was his blood that he will drink the wine new in the
kingdom? Some think the answer is when Jesus compared the Jewish religion to old wine and said he was
offering new wine. If so, Jesus was indicating that the last supper was nothing special and it was the heavenly
banquet that mattered. Thus Jesus denied that the last supper really was as sacred as Catholics make it out to
be.
The Church imagines the Last Supper was the first Mass for therein Jesus turned bread and wine into his body
and blood and offered his whole self as a sacrifice to God.
If the Last Supper was really the Mass which the Church says is the supreme antidote of evil then how come it
bore no spiritual fruits? In the next few days, all the participants at the supper will sin beyond belief and leave
Jesus dying alone. Jesus spelled out a test if something is really from God, by the fruits you will know. The
only way to reconcile the bad fruits with the notion that God wanted Jesus to do the Last Supper the way he
did is to hold that the Last Supper was never intended to give grace or supernatural strength.
The communion bread and wine are worshipped by Catholics as the body and blood of God. But we read in
the New Testament that Jesus emptied himself of glory by adding a new nature, human, to himself
(Philippians 2). Catholics say he was God and took on an additional nature, a human nature. Catholics then
are honouring what Jesus saw as a degradation, taking human flesh and blood. They degrade him.
The resurrection and continued life of Jesus is the heart of Christianity. The Mass undermines that. Thus it is
not Christian but pseudo-Christian.
The words of Jesus when examined deeply refute Catholicism's Mass. The Mass has been used to exploit the
people and gain illegitimate support.
Top of the Document
BOOKS CONSULTED
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Apologetics for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd, London, 1950
Bolt, P. G. The Cross from a Distance (IVP, 2004)
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Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Fr Charles Chiniquy, Chick Publications, Chino, 1985
Is Jesus Really Present in the Eucharist? Michael Evans, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1986
Handbook to the Controversy with Rome, Vol 2, Karl Von Hase MD, The Religious Tract Society, London,
1906
Living in Christ, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne, 1969
Martin Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940

Roman Catholic Claims, Charles Gore, MA, Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1894
Salvation, The Bible and Roman Catholicism, William Webster, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1990
Secrets of Romanism, Joseph Zaccello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Mass, Sacrifice and Sacrament, William F Dunphy, CSSR, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1986
The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments, Rev John A Gregg, APCK, Dublin, 1928
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This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith, California, 1986
Where is that in the Bible? Patrick Madrid, Our Sunday Visitor, Indiana, 2001
Why Does God? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls, Bucks, 1970
The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible