Breaking the Word

As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.  (Jn 15:9-17)

Jesus is exactly like the father. He is so because he loves as the father loves him and he keeps the commandments of the father. Jesus wants his disciples to be so. He wants them to love as Jesus has loved and keep his commandments. Jesus has seen the father and so he follows him and the disciples have seen Jesus and hence they should follow him and do as he has done.

Jesus has called them friends and not servants. Servants are like slaves. They only follow the order given to them and they do whatever is told to them. They will not know the reasons for doing what they are doing. Jesus has taken his disciples to be his friends. Friends are they those who know everything of their friends. There are no secrets among friends. There only revelations. Jesus has revealed everything of the father.

Disciples are chosen by Jesus and they are chosen to be friends and hence they receive all the revelations. They come to know the father as Jesus himself knows the father. So whenever they love and follow the commandments of Jesus they are like Jesus and in turn they will be like the father. To be a disciple of Jesus is to know the father and be like the father. 

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever." These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. (Jn 6:52-59)

It is interesting that Jesus, a Jew, is talking about drinking blood. Jews would not drink the blood and drinking blood was absolutely forbidden (Lev 17: 10-14). Even the flesh of the animal that is eaten should be drained of all blood. Blood was offered only to God and God drank the blood. Jews believed that blood contained life in it and only God drank blood.

“Eat my flesh” and “drink my blood” could mean a lot of things in the biblical context. One is that it has a reference to the last supper of Jesus. Another could be the sacramental food and drink in the Eucharist. Jesus also means that eating his flesh and drinking his blood could also mean being united with him.

Those who eat of his body and drink of his blood are they that form the people of the new exodus. In the old exodus the ancestors of the Jews ate and drank in the wilderness but they died. But the difference with the new Israel is that they will never die and they will possess eternal life. So union with Jesus or the sacramental relationship with Jesus or the communion with him in his last supper will reward the individual with eternal life.