It’s not a suggestion, and it’s not a metaphor. Not a parable. Not hyperbole. Not a symbol. Our Lord is clear and in earnest: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall have no life within you.” He is so in earnest on this point, in fact, that he is willing to lose every one of his followers. And he does lose every one of them, except the Twelve. They too were shaken by this mandate (some scholars posit that this moment was the final straw for Judas), but under the steadiness of Peter’s leadership, they stayed.

All his followers knew he was serious; they knew it wasn’t a symbol—that’s precisely why they left him. They knew he meant his actual flesh and his actual blood. How did they know? Because they already believed that, at every Passover, they were eating the actual flesh of the actual lambs their ancestors had eaten in Egypt. They already believed that, at every Passover, they were participating in the actual Passover–the one, first Passover. Thus they also knew, as Jesus spoke, that he meant his actual flesh.

To this day, Christ’s followers draw back from this teaching. To this day, they say to their Lord, we’ll follow you on everything else, but on this we will not follow. And yet, the bare fact remains: if you want to have life with in you, you must eat his flesh.

This message is part of The Trad Store’s Catholic series, which unequivocally proclaims the Catholic Church as the one true religion.