“This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.”
John 6:58 — Greek Interlinear
Church Fathers on John 6:58
and now to show the great difference between bodily meat and drink, and the spiritual mystery of His body and blood, Ho adds, For My flesh its meat indeed, and My blood its drink indeed.
i.e. this is no enigma, or parable, but you must really eat the body of Christ; or He means to say that the true meat was He who saved the soul.
Whereas men desire meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, this effect is only really produced by that meat and drink, which makes the receivers of it immortal and incorruptible; i.e. the society of Saints, where is peace and unity, full and perfect. On which account our Lord has chosen for the types of His body and blood, things which become one out of many. Bread is a quantity of grains united into one mass, wine a quantity of grapes squeezed together. Then He explains…