Today, we contemplate the Eucharist as the great everlasting encounter between God and man, where Our Lord gives himself as "flesh" so that, in Him, we can become "spirit". Through the Cross, He transformed himself into a new kind of humanity which blends itself with God's nature; in the same way, the Eucharist must be our way to the Cross in anticipation of a new life in God and with God.

At the end of Jesus' speech, announcing the incarnation, and eating his flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus concludes by saying that «it is the Spirit that gives life». This reminds us of St Paul's words: «The first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit» (1Cor 15:45).

—Only through the Cross and through the transformation resulting from it do we have access to this "flesh" and, in the process of such transformation, it drags us along as well.