We are at our final Sunday of hearing
the 6th Chapter of John's Gospel; we've been following this chapter
5 Sundays in a row now. This chapter teaches us a great deal about our Catholic
faith, which is why our Church devotes so much time to it in our Sunday
lectionary cycle.
In this discourse that we've been
following these 5 weeks, Jesus tells his followers that he is the bread of
life, that his flesh & blood are true food & true drink that bring us
everlasting life, that he will remain in us & we will remain in him if we
partake of his body & blood. In
today's Gospel, we hear 2 very different responses to Jesus' words. While some of his followers turn away after
hearing what he has to say, others pledge their devotion to him, convinced that
he is “the Holy One of God.” Today's
Gospel tells us several things about our own faith as followers of Christ.
First, we're faced with real choices to make as believers in our faith. Second, we need to consider the perspective
we use in approaching our faith and Jesus' teachings. Third, we need to be aware of how God's grace
is constantly at work throughout our lives.
Our first reading from the book of
Joshua gives us a good sense of the choices before us, as Joshua tells his
people that they can choose to serve the true God of their ancestors, or
alternatively, they can choose to follow their neighbors' foreign gods. We as modern believers have so many earthly
gods that some choose to follow instead of the one true God: the gods of
material possessions and worldly achievements, the gods of power and
self-interest, the gods of amusement and pleasure, or the gods of vanity and
pride. Our Catholic faith demands that we choose our Lord, Jesus Christ, as our
one and only teacher. Our faith demands
that we give him our constant, undivided attention. This is not a choice we make only once in our
lifetime, but one we must confirm every day through our words, thoughts, and
actions, through our openness to an on-going process of conversion and renewal
in our spiritual lives.
What a difference perspective makes, as
getting someone else's fresh and different perspective can make a huge difference
in our faith. Our own perspective is not
enough; we're nourished and challenged in our faith by the perspective of
others as well. I remember that when I'd
been working as a missionary in Ecuador for about a year, a graduate student in
botany from the United States came to our village for a few months to do
research on the herbs & flowers found in the rain forest jungle. She asked
me to take her to one of the remote villages where I worked each weekend. I took her to that village, introduced her to
the community groups that I worked with, and showed her many of our projects. While I could often get frustrated by what
appeared to be a lack of progress or growth, she was able to give me a fresh
perspective on my missionary work, giving me a lot of encouragement and
allowing me to see how my faith was being impacted by these experience. I learned a lot from this graduate student's
perspective, which was so very different from my own.
Look at the 2 very different
perspectives at work in today's Gospel.
After hearing Jesus tell them to eat his flesh and drink his blood so
that they will have life in him, after hearing that Jesus is the bread from
heaven that will allow them to live for ever, many of the disciples respond:
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
They could not get beyond the shock of Jesus' words, the radical ideas
that challenged them. Yet, another group of disciples have an entirely
different perspective; they see these words as bringing them to the loftiest
ideal that can be achieved: an unceasing, endless life with God, removed from
all corruption. Peter sees these words
of eternal life as pointing him to Jesus as the God's Holy One. When Jesus asks Peter and the others if they
also want to leave, Peter responds: “Master, to whom shall we go?” After hearing these words of Jesus, Peter
realizes there is no other teacher, or master, or spiritual guide who could
fill that place in their lives & in their hearts.
As the disciples were divided into 2
perspectives in today's Gospel, our world today is divided as well. As Catholics, we're challenged to see
everything in our lives and our world through the lens of our faith, rather
than to view them from the perspective of our secular society. Many times, looking through the lens of
faith, we will disagree with what our secular world values or cherishes. We are challenged to stand by Jesus' side
rather than to dessert him. With the pressure of our modern world bearing down
on us, sometimes this is not an easy choice to make.
In responding to those who see his words
as hard, Jesus responds: “I've told you that no one can come to me unless it is
granted him by my Father.” In other
words, we can't do it alone; we need God's grace to help us on our
journey. The disciples in today's Gospel
all made an initial commitment to Christ, but many returned to their former way
of life in response to Jesus' declaration that he is the bread of life. We can only live out these Gospel values of
loyalty, commitment, and solidarity with the grace we receive from God; we
cannot do it alone.
We celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday
as a faith community to provide us grace and spiritual food. The Eucharist sustains us and nourishes us on
our journey of faith. It's so easy to
get into a rut in anything in our lives, including our faith. We can become complacent and stagnant in our
spiritual lives. We can end up just
going through the motions of living our faith, without it truly enlivening us
and challenging us.
God's grace stretches our minds and
asks us to be open to his presence in our lives and throughout creation. Through God's grace and through our Catholic
faith, we enter into a relationship with Jesus; we can stay committed to that
relationship through a process of repentance and conversion that keeps us
growing, learning, and reaching out.
Like Peter and the other disciples who remained with Jesus, if we
believe that his words are the words of eternal life, if we believe that he is
the true bread of life, where else could we go?
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