When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them,
Does this offend you?
All Commentaries on John 6:61 Go To John 6
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Many therefore went back. Hard, i.e, austere, rigid, oppressive, unmerciful. The Arabic has difficult. Euthymius, can scarcely be admitted. And who can hear it. "Who can," we do not say, "do such a thing, but even bear to bear it?" What Jesus said concerning His Flesh, and especially the command to eat It ( John 6:54), except ye eat, &c, seems too difficult to be believed, and too horrible to be done. For what butcher will slay Christ? Who can bear to eat human flesh, or drink human blood? These are the feasts of cannibals, such as the heathen who did not understand the mystery of the Flesh of Christ in the Eucharist in after times reproached Christians with, and so were imitators of those Capharnaites, as Tertullian and other Fathers testify.
This saying was not hard in itself, but hard to the stupid Jews, who imagined that the Flesh of Christ was to be cut by a butcher, and mangled by the teeth like the flesh of an ox. But they greatly erred, for Christ neither said this, nor meant it. But He wished us to eat His Flesh sacramentally, i.e, hidden in the Sacrament under the species of bread and wine, a thing which is not dreadful, but which we who daily offer and communicate find by experience to be most easy and sweet. The Jews ought therefore humbly to have asked Christ to unfold to them the manner of doing this. If they would have done this, they would have heard it, and might have received it, and not thought the saying hard. As Cyril says, "They thought that they were called to the savage manners of wild beasts, and were urged to eat raw human flesh, and drink blood, things too horrible to hear of. Such were their thoughts as to how the flesh of this man would bestow eternal life, and bring them to immortality."
