Tuesday, August 27: “Spiritual Body”

John 6: 63: “It is the Spirit Who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.“

When Jesus said that His followers must eat His flesh, His body, the Bread of Heaven, many of them could not accept the statement. This is because they thought he was referring to His natural body which they saw before them. But Jesus was not saying to partake of His natural, pre-resurrection body, but the body seen after His resurrection, which had ascended into heaven and returned to them for forty days. (John 20: 17; 27). While still His body, human flesh, able to be seen and touched, this body had been converted as a sprouted seed. As St. Paul says, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15: 44), and this is the body of which we partake. We must not stumble over this!