Church Fathers Commentary John 6:55-59

"For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven: not as the fathers ate, and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum." — John 6:55-59 (ASV)

The Venerable Bede: He had said above, Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life. Now, to show the great difference between bodily food and drink and the spiritual mystery of His body and blood, He adds, For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.

St. John Chrysostom: That is, this is no enigma or parable, but you must truly eat the body of Christ. Or, He means to say that the true food was He who saved the soul.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Or, consider this: while people desire food and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, this is only truly accomplished by that food and drink which makes those who receive it immortal and incorruptible—that is, the society of the saints, where there is full and perfect peace and unity.

For this reason, our Lord chose things that become one out of many to be types of His body and blood: bread is a quantity of grains united into one mass, and wine is a quantity of grapes pressed together. Then He explains what it is to eat His body and drink His blood: He that eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, dwells in Me, and I in him.

To partake of that food and drink, then, is to dwell in Christ and for Christ to dwell in you. He who does not dwell in Christ, and in whom Christ does not dwell, does not eat His flesh or drink His blood. Instead, he eats and drinks the sacrament of it to his own damnation.

St. John Chrysostom: Or, having given a promise of eternal life to those who eat Him, He says this to confirm it: He that eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, dwells in Me, and I in him.

St. Augustine of Hippo: As for those—and indeed there are many—who either eat that flesh and drink that blood hypocritically, or who, after eating, become apostates: do they dwell in Christ, and Christ in them? No, but there is a certain way of eating that flesh and drinking that blood in which he who eats and drinks dwells in Christ, and Christ in him.

That is to say, such a person eats the body and drinks the blood of Christ not merely in the sacramental sense, but in reality.

St. John Chrysostom: And because I live, it is clear that he will live also: As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father, even so he that eats Me, even he shall live by Me. It is as if He said, "As the Father lives, so I live," adding, lest you should think Him unbegotten, "by the Father," meaning that He has His source in the Father.

In the phrase, He that eats Me, even he shall live by Me, the life meant here is not simply life, but the justified life, for even unbelievers live, who never eat of that flesh at all. Nor is He speaking of the general resurrection (for all will rise again), but of the resurrection to glory and reward.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He did not say, "As I eat the Father and live by the Father, so he who eats Me shall live by Me." For the Son does not grow better by partaking of the Father as we do by partaking of the Son—that is, of His one body and blood, which this eating and drinking signifies. So His saying, I live by the Father, because He is from Him, must not be understood as detracting from His equality. Nor do the words, Even he that eats Me, the same shall live by Me, grant us the equality that He has. He does not make us equal, but only mediates between God and man.

If, however, we understand the words I live by the Father in the sense of the later verse, My Father is greater than I, then it is as if He said that His living by the Father—that is, referring His life to Him as His superior—is caused by His humiliation in the incarnation. But he who lives by Me does so by virtue of partaking of My flesh.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Therefore, no room for doubting the truth of the body and blood of Christ remains, for by the declaration of our Lord Himself and by the teaching of our own faith, the flesh is truly flesh, and the blood is truly blood. This, then, is our principle of life. While we are in the flesh, Christ dwells in us by His flesh, and we shall live by Him in the same way that He lives.

If, then, we live naturally by partaking of Him according to the flesh, He also lives naturally by the indwelling of the Father according to the Spirit. His birth did not give Him an alien or different nature from the Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: So that we, who cannot obtain eternal life by ourselves, might live by eating that bread, He descended from heaven: This is the bread which comes down from heaven.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: He calls Himself the bread because He is the origin of His own body. And lest it be thought that the virtue and nature of the Word had given way to the flesh, He calls the bread His flesh. He does this so that, since the bread came down from heaven, it might be seen that His body was not of human conception but is a heavenly body.

To say that the bread is His own is to declare that the Word Himself assumed His body.

Theophylact of Ohrid: For we do not simply eat God, since God is intangible and incorporeal; nor, again, do we simply eat the flesh of a man, which would not profit us. But God has taken flesh into union with Himself, and that flesh is life-giving. This is not because it has exchanged its own nature for the divine nature. Rather, just as heated iron remains iron while having the action of heat within it, so our Lord’s flesh is life-giving because it is the flesh of the Word of God.

The Venerable Bede: And to show the wide interval between the shadow and the light, the type and the reality, He adds, Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eats of this bread shall live for ever.

St. Augustine of Hippo: The death meant here is eternal death. For even those who eat Christ are subject to natural death, but they live forever, because Christ is everlasting life.

St. John Chrysostom: For if it was possible to preserve the lives of the ancient Israelites for forty years without a harvest, the fruit of the earth, or any such thing, how much more will He be able to do this with that spiritual food of which manna is the type. He knew how precious life was in people's eyes, and therefore He often repeats His promise of life, just as the Old Testament had done. The difference is that the Old Testament only offered length of life, whereas He offers life without end. This promise was an abolition of the sentence of death that sin had brought upon us.

These things He said in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum, where many displays of His power took place. He taught in the synagogue and in the temple with the goal of attracting the multitude, and as a sign that He was not acting in opposition to the Father.

The Venerable Bede: Mystically, Capernaum, which means "beautiful town," stands for the world, and the synagogue stands for the Jewish people. The meaning is that our Lord, by the mystery of the incarnation, has manifested Himself to the world and has also taught His doctrines to the Jewish people.