6:58. As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.
6:59. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.
6:60. These things he said, teaching in the synagogue, in Capharnaum.
6:61. Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard; and who can hear it?
6:62. But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you?
6:63. If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?
If then you shall see, etc.... Christ by mentioning his ascension, by this instance of his power and divinity, would confirm the truth of what he had before asserted; and at the same time correct their gross apprehension of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, in a vulgar and carnal manner, by letting them know he should take his whole body living with him to heaven; and consequently not suffer it to be as they supposed, divided, mangled, and consumed upon earth.
6:64. It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
The flesh profiteth nothing.... Dead flesh separated from the spirit, in the gross manner they supposed they were to eat his flesh, would profit nothing. Neither doth man’s flesh, that is to say, man’s natural and carnal apprehension, (which refuses to be subject to the spirit, and words of Christ,) profit any thing. But it would be the height of blasphemy, to say the living flesh of Christ (which we receive in the blessed sacarament, with his spirit, that is, with his soul and divinity) profiteth nothing. For if Christ’s flesh had profitedus nothing, he would never have taken flesh for us, nor died in us nothing, he would never have taken flesh for us, nor died in the flesh for us. Are spirit and life.... By proposing to you a heavenly sacrament, in which you shall receive, in a wonderful manner, spirit, grace, and life, in its very fountain.
6:65. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe and who he was that would betray him.