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Jesus lost followers over one sentence. In John chapter six he says, "my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." The crowd hears it literally, and they argue about it. If he meant a symbol, this was the moment to say so. He doesn't soften it. He says it more strongly: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And verse sixty-six says many of his disciples walked away.
About twenty-five years later Saint Paul writes that whoever eats the bread unworthily will answer for the body and blood of the Lord. You can't sin against a picture that way.
Then around the year one hundred and ten, Ignatius of Antioch, who learned the faith from the apostles' generation, warns about people who stay away from the Eucharist "because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ."
That's what the Church still teaches: Christ truly, really and substantially present. Not a symbol. Him.
Fair to the other side
Many Protestant Christians read John 6 alongside John 6:63 ("the flesh profits nothing; the words I have spoken are spirit and life") and take the chapter as a call to believe, not a teaching about the Lord's Supper. Lutherans hold a real presence but not transubstantiation. The Catholic reply is that 6:63 contrasts the flesh with the Spirit, not a symbol with reality, and that the disciples who left heard the words literally and were not called back.
Sources
- John 6:51-56 and 6:66
- 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 11:27-29
- Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7 (about 110 AD), tr. Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (public domain)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 1374, 1376
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Jesus lost followers over John 6. If it was only a symbol, why didn't he call them back? Sources and the strongest objection on the page.
On-screen text: John 6:55 · Many disciples drew back (John 6:66) · 1 Corinthians 11:27 · Ignatius of Antioch, about 110 AD · Catechism 1374