Cut off from Israel?
Why would the Jews seek to kill Jesus? Because they perceived that He was effectively urging them to reject the covenant God established with Moses on Mt. Sinai. His command to eat His Body and drink His Blood would be, they believed, a violation of Old Covenant law that would cut them off from Israel.
This was the same Israel they had anticipated that Jesus would at long last restore to kingdom status as prophesied (cf. Amos 9:11-12; Lk 1:30-33), a kingdom which hadn’t existed since 586 BC. But Jesus’s words about His Body and Blood had not merely disappointed many of them; it effectively served as a declaration of war. He hadn’t come to fulfill the law, as He had claimed (cf. Mt 5:17), but rather to abolish it, or so they thought.
The misunderstanding of many of the ancient Jews is, in part, understandable. Going back to the time of Noah, God had prohibited the consumption of blood (Gn 9:4). In Leviticus 17:10-14, this prohibition is reiterated and more fully explained. No Israelite, nor any foreigner who sojourned with Israel, could consume blood, lest he be cut off. Why? For God had taught them, “the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life” (Lv 17:11; cf. Heb 9:11-12). God designated animal blood to atone for the Israelites’ sins; blood represented the life of the animal, which was given for the sake of man’s life.
Offering the blood of sacrificed animals turned one toward God in repentance; consuming that same blood posed problems. To partake of an animal’s blood meant to seek the “virtues” of that animal, for example, the strength and courage of a bull. Such consumption would lead one to focus on certain animals in an idolatrous manner, as the ancient Egyptians did in serving their animal gods, which represented demons. In idolatrously seeking one’s life from a lower life form instead of God, man would be drawn down to the moral level of that species, to act like a beast, as is observed in the occult world.
Eternal Life Is in His Blood
When He first expounded on the Eucharist, Jesus was well aware of the long-standing biblical prohibitions regarding the consumption of blood. While many misunderstood Him as attempting to abrogate these laws, Jesus was actually seeking to fulfill these laws by calling the Jewish people to a higher level of communion with God. The Mosaic legislation of the Old Covenant was not intended by God to last forever. Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah had foretold of a “new covenant” that would fulfill the old one that God had made with Israel after liberating them from Egypt (Jer 31:31-34; cf. Ez 36:24-28). In bidding His Apostles to eat His Body and drink His Blood, Jesus signaled that the time had arrived to establish “the new covenant in My blood” (Lk 22:20).
Given the common perception that consuming the Eucharist would cut one off from Israel instead of fulfill the Old Covenant, Jesus’s invitation to His first disciples required great faith, an invitation that challenged them to move beyond their image of a political messiah and embrace Him as the true Messiah. No longer would the blood of animals signify life for man; rather, the Blood of Jesus Himself, poured out in the New Covenant, would actually provide life for man (Jn 6:51). What the blood of animals signified, the Blood of Christ provides. Because His Blood provides redemption, Jesus commands us to drink it (Jn 6:51, 54).
In contrast to a mortal sin like adultery, which is always wrong, there was and is nothing intrinsically wrong with eating animal blood. The prohibition regarding the consumption of blood was a changeable discipline that God imposed to prepare Israel and the whole world for the New Covenant (cf. Gal 3:23-26). (The main offense in drinking animal blood for a Jew was disobeying an Old Covenant precept of God, much like eating meat on Lenten Fridays for a Catholic today is disregarding the Church’s God-given, New Covenant authority to bind and loose on disciplinary matters for the good of the faithful (Mt 16:19; Mt 18:15-18).) With the coming of the Jesus, the blood of animals no longer had any sacrificial significance, because eternal life is in the Blood of the Messiah (cf. Heb 9:11-15).
From Ritual to Reality
The lifting of Old Covenant disciplines was further revealed to St. Peter in a dream, in which “unclean” foods were declared acceptable to eat by God Himself (Acts 10:9-16; cf. 10:1-48). What concerned God was not maintaining external ritual purity by observing disciplines that were passing away with the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, such as circumcision and ritual hand washing, but rather fostering internal purity from sin, which comes from Baptism and living a morally upright life in God’s grace (Mt 23:13-36). To avoid scandals with new Jewish converts and potential Jewish converts, the early Church maintained for a time the discipline prohibiting consumption of blood (Acts 15:28-29).
Jesus shed His blood and “died for our sins once for all” (1 Pt 3:18), yet He allows us to continue to partake of His timeless Sacrifice at Mass. We do not partake of Christ’s mortal flesh and blood in a carnal fashion; rather, we partake of His risen and glorified Body and Blood under the sacramental appearances of bread and wine. When the devil tempted Jesus to make bread out of stones after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, Jesus told him, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). But when the bread is actually the Word of God made flesh, the bread come down from heaven, it is also written that on this Bread alone man may live forever.
Thomas J. Nash is Director of Special Projects at Catholics United for the Faith. He is the author of Worthy Is the Lamb: The Biblical Roots of the Mass (Ignatius Press) from which this column is excerpted and condensed with permission of Ignatius Press. He is also a co-author of Catholic for a Reason III: Scripture and the Mystery of the Mass (Emmaus Road Publishing).
