I WANT TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD!
QUESTION?
A Jehovahs witness told me there is a prohibition in the Old Testament (Leviticus) regarding the drinking of blood? Why do we drink the blood of Jesus at Holy Mass?
ANSWER!
A) Four ways to respond:
1) First, any divine command that comes later modifies commands that came earlier. When Jesus declared all foods clean [Mark 7: 19], his command superseded the earlier command that certain foods be regarded as unclean [Lev 11: 1-8]. If Jesus today commands us to drink his blood, his command supersedes any prior command concerning drinking blood.
2) Second, the command against drinking blood, like all of the Old Testament dietary regulations, has passed away, for "These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Therefore, let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink [Col 2: 16-17]. The mention of not eating blood in Acts 15: 20, 29 was a pastoral provision suggested by James to keep Jews from being scandalized by the conduct of the Gentile Christians. We know that these pastoral provisions were only temporary. One concerned abstaining from idol meat, yet later Paul says eating idol meat is okay so long as it doesn't scandalize others [Rom 14: 1-14; 1 Cor 8: 1-13].
If it is objected that blood is not a food [though it is in some cultures], note that Jesus was asked [Mark 7: 5] why his disciples ate with unwashed hands. He replied, "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from outside can make him unclean? For it doesn't go into his heart but his stomache, and then out of his body" [7:18-19]. In context this refers to a non-food substance [the dirt on one's unwashed hands].
3) Third, the O.T. is very specific about why one was not to eat blood: "The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore as I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is in its blood" [Lev 17: 14, cf Deut 12: 23]. The Israelites could not eat animal blood because it contained the animals life, but there is one Person whose life you must have in you, "Christ who is your life" [Col 3: 4].
4) Finally, even if the Jehovahs Witnesses were right that drinking blood were intrinsically evil instead of a temporary prohibition, they would still have problems with John 6 because, in their interpretation, Jesus would be commanding us to eat his flesh symbolically and drink his blood symbolically. He would be commanding us to act out symbolically an intrinsically evil deed as part of a sacred worship service. But this leads us to a ludicrous conclusion, so it must be that drinking Christ's blood is permissible and desirable.