Faith

Nourished to Nourish – Friday, 3rd Week in Easter – Acts 9:1-20/ John 6:52-59

The bread of life discourse took place in the synagogue of Capernaum, a stone’s throw away from the home of Peter. Jesus has already declared that he is the bred of life (John 6:35) and reiterated that this bread is not just the bread that fills one’s stomach but a ‘living bread that assures us of eternal life….. IF we believe in Jesus.

As a concept, one may find it hard to mentally negotiate this teaching but when Jesus says that the bread that he gives is his flesh to bring life to the world; well, that creates a new set of challenges. Most of you who read or listen to this teaching are Catholics by convention. You have a faith that has been handed down. This teaching, of eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood doe not sound alarming, if not cannibalistic to you. That reality changes drastically for a person who embraces the Christian faith by conviction. Their acceptance of the body and blood of Jesus is truly one steeped in faith, for mentally they have accepted that they must partake of Jesus body and blood in order for them to have eternal life.

A study done several years ago among Catholics indicated that a large percentage of those interviewed admitted to receiving Holy Communion as merely ‘symbolic;’ as the body and blood of Christ. The teaching on the bread of life discourse is clear and unambiguous. There is no symbolism in the sacred species that we receive. Our acclamation of faith is in the response that we say when the priest offers us the body of Christ. The Amen that follows as our response is our “so be it,” our acceptance that this is truly Jesus. St Thomas captured our sometimes-faltering faith when he said, “senses cannot grasp this marvel, faith MUST serve to compensate. “

In presenting himself as the bread of life, Jesus says to us, “truly I tell you.” Notice that Jesus begins with an emphatic assurance. He pauses and stresses to tell us what he wants to communicate. He wants to assure us that what he says is a matter of truth and should weigh in heavily on any person who doubts the real presence of Jesus. It is the Lord who himself speaks this truth when he says, “truly I tell you.” But what follows is very important for Jesus declares that “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you can have no life in you.”

If you look at this text in its Greek translation Jesus uses the word “esthios” to describe the manner of eating; one that requires normal biting and chewing. But to make his point even clear he says in verse 55 “those who eat (trogos) my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day.” Note that when Jesus uses the word ‘eat’ the second time he no longer uses the word ‘esthios’ but now uses the word ‘trogos.’ Trogos indicates that one needs to eat like as if one’s life depended on this eating; that one had to munch and gnaw like a hungry animal would. This is what Jesus is telling us, eat me like your life depended on it.

Perhaps all this is a bit too much for many to understand or accept but Jesus does not water down his teaching (as we will be told in a few lines from the text of today) nor does he play to the gallery. He is emphatic! If you wish to have eternal life, if you wish to be raised on the last day then you must eat his flesh like as if your life depended on it.

Many years ago, one of my professors, while teaching and explaining this, threw up what I thought was a preposterous suggestion. I get what he says today because while it managed to shock me then, in doing so, he made his point crystal clear. He suggested the celebration of Holy Mass and the reception of the Eucharist be administered and celebrated only once a year. His point was that we would then long for that which we would be deprived of having. Jesus on the other hand wanted to nourish us daily so that being nourished by him, we could nourish others.

Blessed are those who come to his table every day ….

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A revelation and a promise – Thursday, 3rd Week of Easter – Acts 8:26-40/John 6:44-51

Please read https://www.pottypadre.com/why-stand-in-the-way/ based on the first reading

Much as you may want to, you can’t read this text in isolation even though the text brings you much consolation especially since it holds a mighty revelation and a promise of God. Chapter six of the Gospel of John is most aptly called the bread discourse. Yet the word discourse seems to be a very tidy word considering the stubbornness of heart that had filled the Jews and the disrespectful way in which they argued with Jesus

At the top of the chapter, we learn that Jesus has fed the Jews, all five thousand of them. They then seek him; not for who he is but for what he can give them. Jesus calls them to acknowledge that he is the Messiah; he asks them to believe in him whom God has sent. (6:29). On their part, the Jews demand a sign or some work that he could perform (6:30) They wanted a magician yet Jesus was their Messiah, a fact they refuse to acknowledge.

The Jews now harken to the signs worked by God through Moses. For the Jews it was Moses who gave them bread and Jesus corrects their false ideas. Yet behind all of this it is not God that they seek but what God can provide for them. “Give us this bread always” (John 6:34) they ask.

Jesus now declares the first of the seven “I am” statements in the Gospel of John (6:35) declaring himself to be the “bread of life” a bread that once accepted will never know hunger and the person of Jesus, when believed in, will never cause us to thirst. Sadly, the Jews could not be mentally dislodged from their material need of bread. Even the promise of eternal life does not seem to get their attention, rather they complaint because he said he was the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:41). They claim to “know” who Jesus is, who his father and mother are. Their ‘self-assured’ knowledge stands in the way of seeing the truth and little knowledge, we know, is dangerous.

Our text of today must be read in this background. Jesus is emphatic that the reason why the Jews, or for that matter humanity today, cannot recognize him is because we are not drawn to God; we are drawn to the world but not to God. To be drawn to God demands an openness on our part. A sportsman does not have to be convinced to accept free tickets to the world cup finals nor does an art historian turn down a guided tour to the Vatican Museum; they do so because they are drawn passionately to what they love. If we are open to God, we are drawn to him and he draws us then further into his love.

To the Jews who cling on to Moses and the one-time meal of bread that he provided in the desert, Jesus once again reiterates in verse 48 that he is the bread of life and then again in verse 51 says “he is the LIVING bread that came down from heaven”; not like the bread their ancestors ate and are now dead. He is the bread that comes down from heaven and we who eat of him will never die but live forever, for this bread that he gives is his own flesh, his own body. Words that he will repeat on the last night of life, “take and eat for this is my body.”

As I read this text I am struck by the triple proclamation of Jesus. Not once, but thrice he declares that he is the bread of life. There is a reason why he repeats this teaching; he does it so that we may not think that this is some off the cuff remark but the very foundation of our faith. Nothing else that we consume, not even from the silver platters from Buckingham palace can compare with this humble yet most divine gift that can nourish and sustain us in this life and the life eternal. It is with this sense of the sacred that I bemoan the sadness with which our Lord is often treated in the reception of Holy Communion at holy Mass.

Call me traditional, but every ciborium, ever chalice, ever corporal, every tabernacle, every bit of sacred vestment made in the past (rarely in the present) expressed this single truth, that these sacred objects hold Our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore only the best was made and used to adore him. And the same could be said in the way we received this “living bread come down from heaven.”

While one may rightly make a case for the interiorization of this divine revelation, the fact remains that what is interiorized is expressed externally and that for me is lacking….. way lacking in the Church today.

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Faith

A rejected gift – Wednesday, 3rd Week of Easter – Acts 8:1b-8/John 6:35-40

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/dont-shut-shop/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

The Gospel has narrated how Jesus heads to Capernaum, his de facto headquarters in Galilee and is quickly followed by the Jews. At first Jesus confronts them. “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26), I do not think Jesus was scolding the crowd for seeking bread because they were hungry. I think Jesus was disappointed that the crowd did not expect more, not more bread but something more. Sadly, because they found a source for food, they were not looking for Jesus, they are looking the man who could keep feeding them. One would have also thought that the multiplication of the fish and loaves would be a sign enough for them to realize that Jesus is the Messiah.

Like us too, who have experienced the Lord, the crowds have many questions as they have doubts. When did you come here? (Vs 25). What must we do to perform the works of God? (vs28) What sign will you give us? What work are you preforming? (vs30).

Jesus refuses to answer the question which they have asked, but instead redirects the conversation to more important issues. Because they have focused on the wrong “bread,” Jesus redirects them toward the bread which “endures.” Then they ask Jesus to perform a sign, like Moses did when God provided the Israelites with a miraculous food in the desert. It seems strange for the Jews to ask for a sign considering that Jesus has just performed a sign like the one they demand. Jesus was offering them what they needed; they were focused on what they wanted.

Jesus does not give up on these disbelieving crowds who want their kind of answers. Jesus answers with a different kind of information. He seizes the opportunity once again to teach. Jesus uses the bread that filled their stomachs to become the primary extended metaphor in order to stretch their understanding.

Think about it, we have a God who never tires of us, never tires of the questions we have and of how often we question him. We have a God who bears our iniquity and carries our sorrow. The question is, how long will we try his patience?

To all these questions, Jesus responds to us as he did the crowd: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom God has sent” (John 6:29). To believe is to trust that God is doing something new; that human-created conditions and circumstances cannot undermine or negate. To believe is to submit everything, even our highest-stake issues, to God’s saving work in Jesus. To believe is not so much what we do as being open to what God is doing. Yet we know from today’s Gospel that Jesus is aware that the Jews do not believe in him.

Today, Jesus declares, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus is clear; it is he who sustains life, he does not sustain bread in our lives and because he sustains life, he will declare in verse 39, “and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Jesus is the gift of the Father a gift that he wants everyone to truly embrace. It is not God who drives us away, it is we who reject the gift of God, Jesus.

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So little has changed; perhaps much is the same! – Monday, 3rd Week of Easter – Acts 6:8-15/ John 6:22-29

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/hate-rid/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

The narrative of today is a continuation of the narrative on the multiplication of the fish and loaves. While the text of yesterday was a chronologic flow of Jesus’ life, the text of today is what a story book would entitle as, ‘meanwhile…”

Jesus has fed the five thousand and sent the twelve away….meanwhile the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea (the side where the multiplication had taken place) saw that there had been only one boat there. We are told in 6:41 that the ‘crowd’ is a reference to the Jews who not only noticed that that there was one boat but his disciples had taken the boat and gone away ‘alone’. They assume that Jesus is in the vicinity unaware that he has walked on the water to his disciples during the night. When boats were made available, they went to seek him in Capernaum.

It’s interesting to note that the Jews knew where to look for the Lord even though as we will be told in verse 26 that they don’t seek him as much as they seek the food he provided. Ironically, the children of light (hopefully that is you and me) also know when and where to seek the Lord. Sadly, and mostly the reality of our seeking him is when our stomach is empty or a need has to be fulfilled. So little has changed; perhaps much is the same!

Jesus is open in his confrontation (of the Jews and us). There is no ‘CAREfrontation’ for it is clear that Jesus does not believe in mollycoddling the Jews to appease them; that sadly seems to be the order of today; appeasement politics, both in government and in Church. Jesus is direct and decisive.

When Jesus confronts his ‘seekers’ he picks his words very carefully. “You are looking for me not because you saw the signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” They have missed the point of what Jesus was doing. They have seen the things that Jesus has been doing but have missed the ‘sign’; the deeper meaning behind what he did. The food they are looking for is not the food that counts and it is but this that they seek Jesus for.

For those who followed my teaching on the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, last Friday, will remember that I said that in the Gospel of John the multiplication is not a miracle as much as it is a sign. A sign points to something and in this case to Jesus the Messiah; the new Moses. Yet it is the food that ‘Jesus could provide’ (the human Jesus) and not the ‘Son of God who he was’ (the divine son of the father), that the Jews sought after. For them it is one not the other, for us it must be both and.

Jesus is emphatic; simply working for the food that perishes is futile but not if one also seeks the food of eternal life that endures. In the Gospel of John, in the bread of life discourse, Jesus will declare, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35).

Jesus asks us not just to ‘believe’ but to ‘believe in’. It is not just a question of accepting certain statements about Jesus and who he really is. ‘Believing in’ involves a total and unconditional commitment of the whole self to Jesus, to the Gospel and the vision of life that he proposes and making it part of one’s own self. This is where the real bread is to be found.

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Is your voice recognition turned on? – Saturday, 2nd Week of Easter – Acts 6:1-7/ John 6:16-21

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/cafeteria-management/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles

Some time ago I wrote an article on ‘do we know that God is really speaking to us?’ The Gospel of John addresses this topic in both direct and subtle ways. Jesus is emphatic when he says in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” It is this voice that Mary of Magdala recognized at the Easter Garden when Christ called her by name and she, recognizing his voice calls out to him, “Rabboni.” Till this point of time, she thinks he is the gardener!

The text of today has Jesus encountering the disciples in a storm on the lake of Galilee and like Mary, they too are terrified, for they think he is a ghost until he speaks to them and they recognize his voice when he says, “It is I, do not be afraid.”

While we hear the comforting voice of God and recognize it, we also must confess to hearing the discomforting voice of God. Genesis 3: 8 speaking of the sin of Adam and Eve says, ‘then they heard the voice of the God walking in the garden toward evening.’ They knew they had done wrong and they heard it in the voice of God. Yet there are those who do not want to hear or recognize His voice no matter what the tone of his voice may be; they simply choose to reject it. As Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

We live in a world of voice recognition. Voice or speaker recognition is the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to understand and perform spoken commands. If a machine is clever enough to recognize our voice and obey it then how much more do we owe God when he desires us to hear his voice and obey it.

So, what’s with voice recognition and this reflection? The end of chapter four finds Jesus in Galilee. Chapter five moves to Jerusalem. Chapter six (from where our text is taken) sees Jesus move back to Galilee. In chapter seven Jesus will return to Jerusalem. It is in chapter six that we are told the disciples get into a boat row for about three or four miles. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus made or ‘compelled’ (anankazo) His disciples to get into the boat (Mark 6:45). Perhaps he saw that they were being infected with the crowd’s excitement.”

We are told that it was dark. John uses “dark” or “darkness” nine times in his gospel.
In John’s Gospel, darkness is more than the absence of physical light, it signals evil or danger. It is now dark, and Jesus is absent. Jesus has not yet come to them when the sea becomes rough and a strong wind begins to blow. There is no indication yet that the disciples are in danger but what is clear is that their journey will not be easy. It is in this unsettling moment that they see Jesus, walking on the sea and coming near the boat and it is now that they were terrified (v. 19). The Synoptic Gospels tell us that the disciples are afraid because they think that Jesus is a ghost (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49; Luke 24:37).

The sea of Galilee is 13 km east to west and about 21 km north to south. The point being made here is that the disciples are somewhere in the middle of the lake and the middle of a potential storm. They have rowed a considerable distance in the storm, but have a considerable distance left to go. Their group includes experienced fishermen who have surely been on the lake during storms. Yet it is not the storm that they are afraid of but Jesus who they think is a ghost. So many fears we face are not the ones that surround us but the ones we create in our head.

It is in the storm that Jesus speaks, “do not be afraid, it is I,” Here on the chaos of these troubled waters, Jesus is revealing himself on two levels. He is the leader whom the disciples have been following, but he is also the presence of God in their midst. He comes to help them in their distress as he does for us. Mercifully, they recognize his voice and invite him into the boat and “immediately the boat reached the land towards which they were going.” The Gospel does not mention that the storm has subsided but simply that once they recognized his voice in the storm and invited him in, he saw them to their destination. That’s a lesson for us to learn.

Jesus has spoken, is speaking, and will continue to speak in and to our modern world. We can be sure of that. The question is not “are people hearing the voice of Jesus today?” that is a given. The question should be, “How are people hearing the voice of Jesus today; for humankind has itchy ears! We know that Jesus has a life-giving voice. He has already proclaimed in John 5:25, “Truly I tell you, the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Our Lord has a life-giving voice but all that is ours only if our voice recognition has been turned on.

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