The Lord's disciples
are giving us a great lesson this Sunday. They loved hearing the words of the
Lord. They loved experiencing the warmth of His Presence. They had just eaten
bread He multiplied. They had seen him heal people. They had heard about His
Kingdom. What was even better, they had heard Him call them to be leaders in
His Kingdom. But now Jesus had given them a teaching that demanded their
absolute trust in Him, their absolute faith in Him, even though this teaching
was completely against what their eyes, ears and senses were telling them. He
told them that He was the Bread of Life. He told them that they needed to eat
His Flesh and drink His Blood for them to have eternal life[1].
For some of the
disciples, this was too hard to accept, so they left Jesus and returned to
their previous lives. The Twelve told Jesus what was happening. Perhaps they
were implying that Jesus tone down His teaching some. Maybe they were just
pointing out that the Lord was losing followers.
Whatever. The
fact is that Jesus was not going to take back a single word. He came to make
the spiritual real. He came to bring a reality to the world that was beyond the
capacity of man to understand. He came to bring the Gifts of God that were far
greater than man’s fondest hopes. He
would not compromise the truth.
Will you
go, also, Peter he asks the leader of his Twelve. Lord, where can we go, you alone have the words of eternal life.
And with that
confession of faith, Peter stays on hope and faith. He did not know with his
senses how it is possible for Jesus to give His Body and Blood for the food
they would need for the journey to God. Peter did not know with his senses, but
he knew with his heart that all was beautiful with Jesus and that it would be
infinitely foolish to trust in the senses rather than trust in the Lord. And
Jesus said in today’s gospel, It is the
spirit that gives life, while the flesh is to no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and
life.
We are called to
believe in the Lord, to trust in Him. We are called to give an infinitely
greater credence to the spiritual we cannot see over the material we can see. We
are called to faith.
It is quite
normal for us to go through periods of doubting the teachings of the Lord. It
is normal for us to ask, “How is God only one, if the Father is God, the Son is
God and the Spirit is God?” It is quite
normal for us to ask: “How can Jesus be both fully God and fully man?” It is
quite normal for us to ask: “How can this bread and wine, material objects
before the Mass, now be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ?” It is quite normal for us to want to stand on
the material world of our senses and ignore the new world of the spiritual.
When these types
of doubts come to our mind, be they flashing through, or lingering and
challenging us, we need to stop and consider the Gifts of the Lord. We need to
reflect on our Savior, Jesus Christ. We reflect on the wonders He provides that
are beyond our imagination, too good to be true, but, yes, they are true. We
are children of God. We think about the peace that we have when we are united
with Him and the chaos we have when we turn from Him. And, so, we trust
completely in the Lord. We trust Him over our own senses. Where else can we
go? He alone has the words of eternal
life.
And so we
believe. We believe in that which we do not see. We believe in that which our
human senses cannot reveal. We believe
in the Lord, in His Love, and in His teaching. We believe that God exists for
eternity in a Trinity of Persons. We believe that the Second Person of this
Trinity became man to restore the spiritual to the physical, to restore man to
his rightful place in the spiritual world, and we believe He gave us His Body
and Blood, the Eucharist, as both an intimate sharing in His Presence and a
union of all believers into the eternal swell of His love.
And we come to
Church this Sunday and pray as we pray every day of our lives, saying I do believe, Lord, but help those parts of
me that do not believe[2].
We are human, yes, but we have been entrusted with the mystery of the Divine.
We have been given the Gift of the Eucharist.
For sure, we are
tempted to trust only our senses. We are tempted to stand on the material. We
are tempted to limit ourselves to the here and now. We are human. But we are
also spiritual. And deep within us, deep within every single one of us there is
the Voice of Faith prodding us to exclaim with Peter, I will not leave you Lord. You alone have the words of eternal life.
So today we
pray, as we do every day of our lives, for faith ■
