Meditations on the Bread of Life

• How many ways was bread used in the Bible? (e.g. shew bread, manna, unleavened bread, Jesus born in Bethlehem = house of bread)
• Is Jesus exhorting us to cannibalism when he encourages us to eat his body?
• What does it mean to eat Christ's body at communion?
• Why do Catholics kneel during the Eucharist?
• Why do they believe that the bread and wine become literally the body and blood of Christ?
• Why do Catholics take the Bible literally when it says "this is my body...this is my blood" even when Protestant literalists do not?
• It is recent vocabulary, first approved in 1215 by the 4th Lateran Council. So why do they not also believe Christ is literally a door or a vine or that the leaven of the Pharisees is literal too?
• Does taking this literally make Christians cannibals?
• Is the cup then also literally the new covenant? Let's be consistent.
• Is the bread only symbolic, literally Christ's body, or something in between?
• What does it mean to only eat Jesus once and thereby gain eternal life?
• How can true bread, Jesus be consumed yet also be eternal?
• How does eating Christ's flesh grant us eternal life?
• Does partaking of communion in some way give us eternal life?
• Is this magic, or superstition?
• Is the bread of communion, food of immortality?
• Is there something deeper such as faith and a relationship that is hinted at here?
• How are we related to Jesus as a person is related to bread?
• How does living bread live in us?
• As we consume immortality, do we become immortal too?
• Were people offended only at the thought of cannibalism, or also that Jesus' said his origin was heaven?
• If this was scandalous, would that same body ascending to heaven offend them more?
• Is substituting the word believing for the word eating just too simplistic, or is there something more here?
• In a consumer society, we consume the world and remain empty. How does internalizing Christ combat our poverty in wealth?
• What does grain go thru to become bread? Could that picture what Jesus went thru to become our bread?
• Why did Jesus not say, I am the candy or the honey of life?
• Why did Jesus reveal this bread in 3 steps -- there is bread from heaven, he is the bread, his body given for the world is that bread?