Do the Words of Jesus at the Last Supper support Catholic notions of the bread and wine turning into Jesus?

The gospels if they can be believed say that on the day before he was crucified, Jesus took bread saying, "Take and eat for this is my body." They then carry on with the normal meal. At the end Jesus takes a cup. He says, "Take this and drink for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that will be poured out for you."
 
The Church claims this was his way of saying, "This food and drink is me, Jesus." They point out that in his time, to say something was your body was the same as saying it was your whole self. I answer that it would not have been necessarily so. Also, if the people in those days meant "me" by "my body" it would mean living breathing bodies. It would not mean that anybody calling bread his body was claiming that the bread was him. The bread shows no signs of life or anything. In fact, if people meant me by body they would need to be routinely hearing of people trying to turn things into bodies without any visible physical change if we want to argue, "Jesus meant this is my body literally for that is how he would have been understood."

The Catholic Church has the nerve to be selective with repeating the last supper at Mass. It rips the words from their context to make it seem that it is about making Jesus present in some real and physical way. In fact, Mark, Matthew and Luke are not focused on that at all. It is about the bread and cup reminding you that Jesus is absent and because he is not there we need those things. It’s the real absence not the real presence. Jesus is clear that he wants to toughen up his disciples to face his absence and it will be a long one for they will eat again in the Kingdom of God (Matthew 26:29, Mark 14:25, Luke 22:16). The saviour the bridegroom is leaving and his departure is a serious matter and is long enough to be devastating and significant and is not just a three day break to Heaven (Matthew 9:14-15, Mark 2:18-20, Luke. 5:33-35). Jesus is clear that when he is on earth that it is time for joy like a wedding but if he goes there is to be only fasting. In Luke 5, Jesus says this “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days” (RSV).

Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:14-33 speaks of communion with demons by eating from their altars.  He allows eating meat offered to demons for they are nothing but is clear that going to a ceremony to eat is making communion with demons and their followers.  He cautions that you must not eat the meat if the person giving it to you will think you are taking it to unite with his gods.  Otherwise it is fine.  He clearly thinks it is unloving and harmful to do anything to encourage pagan faith. 

Deuteronomy 32:17 says that the people of Israel sacrificed to shedim not Eloah. Shedim means demons. Eloah is God.

The verse says they had sacrificed to demons rather than gods Elohim who they had not known.  So even if they meant to adore gods they were adoring something darker.

The doctrine that worship for false gods goes to the real one if you have good intentions is decisively rejected. There is no notion here that God will take your worship if it is directed to a distorted version of him.  There is no notion here that he wants your worship so much that he decides to be bigger than your mistakes and accept the worship.  If God matters then knowing some main things about him matters.  Otherwise you can pray to anything and expect God to deal with it.  That would not be a relationship with God.  It would be too one-sided, all about you, for that.

 Is Paul saying the demon is nothing and yet something?  If it is really nothing then why can you eat the meat and not go to the sacrificial ceremony?  He seems to mean the demon is as good as nothing before God and you owe loyalty to God and his truth.  To support false religion is to support lies and corruption.  The doctrine does not rule out that demons can paranormally or spiritually harm you.  It says you have to invite them in by going to worship but eating the meat and treating it as mere food is an implied rejection of demons and thus harmless.

So Paul speaks of the supper of demons being an attempt at communion and then of communion with Jesus by taking the supper of bread and the cup in memory of his body and blood. The meat from the altars is not turned into the demon but you unite with the demon by taking the meat for what it was intended to be, a sign of fellowship with the demon.  This does not apply if you get the meat in the market and eat it in the house.

The oldest account of the supper is written by Paul who says the bread is the body and the cup is the new covenant in the blood but he does not call it the blood.  The idiom he uses is how we say something we love is in the blood. So the words for Paul have Jesus saying, "This cup is the new testament/covenant in my blood."  Here the cup reminds of the blood of Jesus but is not called his blood in any sense at all.

Paul never says it is wine in the cup which is significant in the light of "do not drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak".  These things do not help support later Catholic ideas of the Lord's Supper.

Did Paul write that Jesus said the bread was his body broken for those at the supper?  Some sources say yes.  Now as the New Testament and the "prophecies" of Jesus say that not a bone of the Messiah can be broken the wording is a clear indication that the broken bread is to be distinguished from the unbroken body of Jesus.

It is strange how the Church does not take Matthew 12:40 literally when it says Jesus will lie dead for three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus was part of two days and one full day in the tomb. And he was not in the heart of the earth. The text shows that Jesus could sound literal and not be literal. That devastates the argument that this is my body has to be literal.  It has less hope than what Jesus said about the three days.
 
The Catholic interpretation of the last supper words do not match the faith culture of Palestine in those days.  Thus it is necessarily wrong.  Some of the Pharisees believed that the soul living in the body was the real person not the body. The Sadducees who did not believe in the soul would have thought that to say my body is the same as saying me. Neither side though was dogmatic about the issue. They were only schools of thought and debate within the one religion - Judaism. Jesus was not one of the Sadducees. It is said he was of the Pharisees. But did he really belong to the Pharisee clan? There is nothing to indicate that he had any loyalty to it if he was. There is no mention of him engaging in Pharisee activities. He was a critic of both the Sadducees and Pharisees. But that aside, his thinking was more in line with the Pharisees than the Sadducees. If so, then it is more likely that Jesus was claiming he was putting his soul which was his real self into the bread in such a way that the bread could be called his body. Just as his soul lives through his body it will live through the bread. The bread is not his actual living breathing body but becomes his new body by his soul being united with it.
 
Jesus used the bread to picture his body and the wine to picture his blood. You are not your blood so Jesus was hinting that he was not intending to give himself but his body and blood meaning its symbolic. Only a nutter would want people to eat his body and drink his blood without it being a case of them trying to eat and drink to nourish their intimacy with him. Eating the flesh of a chicken means you are eating a body but not wanting to get close to the chicken. The body you eat is not the chicken but what is left behind after life has gone. "This is my blood," rules out the notion, "This food and drink is me."
 
Catholics claim that the bread and wine of communion are both the body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. So the bread can be called the blood of Christ and the wine the body of Christ. The Church does not do this.
 
Jesus may have used the word body for flesh. People do that. "This is my flesh". Evidence for that would be way he described his body and blood as being separate. A body without the blood is dead. It is flesh. He was speaking about his blood meaning he was not on about giving his whole self. Thus the correct understanding is that body meant flesh.
 
Jesus broke the bread BEFORE saying it was his body. It would make more sense for him to say it was his body and then break it if the rite was about getting fed by the real body of Jesus.
 
Jesus speaks of the chalice of his blood being poured out. He is actually using his blood as a reminder of the wine poured out. He is really saying, "This wine is not a symbol of my blood or my blood. Like wine being poured out from a cup so my blood will be poured out for you." The wine is not the blood of Jesus or a symbol but Jesus blood is treated as a symbol or reminder of wine.
 
The cup is actually a reminder of the body of Jesus. As the wine is poured out from the cup so the blood is poured out of Jesus' body. Nobody says that the cup is the body of Jesus.
 
The Catholic Church says that only the risen body with its supernatural powers can be present in the Eucharist but this contradicts the actual words of Jesus where he denies that it is his risen body that is present. He said this is my body as it is now - normal and human. Is the Catholic Church lying? Does it intend to feed people with the ordinary body or corpse of Jesus? It can't admit that for it is morbid and occult. Jesus says the cup is his blood, the blood of the covenant, that WILL be shed. If we drink the blood that was in Jesus' veins at that moment then the whole edifice of Catholic theology collapses. It would follow that Jesus wants to be remembered as a normal man and not a risen one. He mentions that he will give his body and blood for others but that is incidental. It is only detail. It is not what the rite is about.
 
If the Lord's Supper was about focusing on Jesus' violent death by crucifixion then why did he give the bread and carry on with the supper and only bother with the cup at the end? The imagery could only be served by giving the bread as his body and then taking the cup. His behaviour shows it was thinking of him that mattered not so much the words he said or even the bread and wine. There was no magical or sacramental intent in his behaviour.
 
Christianity however has treated the Lord's Supper as a memorial of the violent death of Jesus. Suppose for the sake of argument that it was right to.
 
Those who think Jesus pictures a dead Jesus in the Supper base themselves on the following. His body and his blood are separate for the bread and wine are separate. They think Jesus said the bread and wine were his body and blood which were being given up - present tense. If so, the Catholic claim that the Last Supper and the Mass is about giving us a living union with Jesus and that we must meet the living and risen Jesus in the Mass is refuted. Jesus was not resurrected when he supposedly instituted the Mass at the Last Supper. The Church officially rejects the notion that the dead body of Jesus and his blood are given in the Mass. That would be morbid and occult. It would be cannibalism. To feed on a living Jesus filled with the power of God makes it more spiritual and about intimacy. To feed on a dead one is superstition even by Christian standards.

Just because the doctrine is officially rejected, does not mean that the Church is sincere. It is clear enough from the words used in the Mass that it intends to give the dead Jesus. The Mass never specifies that it is the living and resurrected body of Jesus that is received. The contrary is the impression given, "Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognising the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ". Here we read that we need the Holy Spirit to benefit from the Eucharist so its no good by itself for its dead meat and dead black pudding.
 
Jesus was not seen as God by his disciples at that time. Thus if they intended to eat and drink him it was intentional idolatry. It was trying to be spiritually fed by a being other than God. It contradicts the angel in the Book of Revelation who said to John do not worship me but worship God.
 
Bolt says that when Jesus spoke of the blood being the blood of the covenant he was using a traditional rabbinical expression for the blood of circumcision. "The 'blood of the covenant' was, to the rabbis, a reference to circumcision" (page 105, The Cross from a Distance, Atonement in Mark's Gospel). Jesus could say the bread was his body and the wine was his circumcision blood that will be poured out or shed. He would mean the cup contained the circumcision blood that was destined to be poured out again on a cross. The cup contains the circumcision blood. It would be missing the metaphor to argue, "But Jesus wouldn't have thought the circumcision blood could go back into his veins again!" Jesus was actually reaffirming Judaism as the only religion approved by God. The Catholic Church had no right to hijack the Lord's Supper and strip it of its Judaism.

Another meaning is possible.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 refers to God refreshing the covenant with a new one but this new one is not an altered one. It is just one that reaffirms the laws in the Torah and makes a fresh start in getting them obeyed and requiring that obedience. The New Testament depends on Bible prophecy so it has to accept that doctrine. Jesus referred to this covenant when he gave the cup to his disciples saying it was the new covenant in his blood which is the main reason why Christian communion ceremonies are invalid and unJesus for they disobey the Mosiac covenant.

Jesus words over the wine saying it is his blood of the covenant refers to a rite Moses did. Moses murdered animals as sacrifices and then sprinkled the blood over the people saying, “Behold this is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has commanded you”/  The last supper is a vow to obey the Law of Moses.

The two meanings could be meant.  The current communion service of the Church is just an insult to the real meaning of Jesus' rite.  It insults him by repudiating his law.  The covenant idea is core to what the supper was about and matters more than any other issues such as, "Is the supper a sacrifice?" and "Did Jesus mean it literally when he called bread his body?"  What use is a sacrament if it is not about making a covenant or affirming one with God?

Some argue, "Compare Hebrews 9:15 which says of Jesus that he is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of his death with the text where we read that Jesus took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” (Luke 22:20). This is my blood then actually means this is my death." Think about that.

It is said that a covenant between God and people means both sides give themselves to each other as personal beings. To make a covenant with God is to have a personal relationship with God. Catholics say it means that the person of Jesus is being given. But covenant in the Bible refers to God being the God of Israel long before Jesus came. Jesus then meant that the cup was the new union with God sealed with his shed blood. This divorces union with God from the blood. The cup is about the covenant and not the blood as such.

Why does Jesus say after blessing the cup and saying it was his blood that he will drink the wine new in the kingdom? Some think the answer is when Jesus compared the Jewish religion to old wine and said he was offering new wine. If so, Jesus was indicating that the last supper was nothing special and it was the heavenly banquet that mattered. Thus Jesus denied that the last supper really was as sacred as Catholics make it out to be.
 
The Church imagines the Last Supper was the first Mass for therein Jesus turned bread and wine into his body and blood and offered his whole self as a sacrifice to God.
 
If the Last Supper was really the Mass which the Church says is the supreme antidote of evil then how come it bore no spiritual fruits? In the next few days, all the participants at the supper will sin beyond belief and leave Jesus dying alone. Jesus spelled out a test if something is really from God, by the fruits you will know. The only way to reconcile the bad fruits with the notion that God wanted Jesus to do the Last Supper the way he did is to hold that the Last Supper was never intended to give grace or supernatural strength.
 
The communion bread and wine are worshipped by Catholics as the body and blood of God. But we read in the New Testament that Jesus emptied himself of glory by adding a new nature, human, to himself (Philippians 2). Catholics say he was God and took on an additional nature, a human nature. Catholics then are honouring what Jesus saw as a degradation, taking human flesh and blood. They degrade him.
 
The resurrection and continued life of Jesus is the heart of Christianity. The Mass undermines that. Thus it is not Christian but pseudo-Christian.
 
The words of Jesus when examined deeply refute Catholicism's Mass. The Mass has been used to exploit the people and gain illegitimate support.

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