Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
This is too hard
When was the last time you were at Mass, maybe even in this church, and found yourself hearing something that was so difficult to believe and to accept that you were tempted to go back to your former way of life? Not the life of the gospel, not the life of faith, but to something else.
Because that’s the situation we get in John’s gospel. Now, this is all part of the sixth chapter of John, which is known as the bread of life discourse. What they’re really struggling with is something that quite frankly, without faith, without grace, and without the experience of the resurrected Jesus, is in fact quite hard to believe.
Jesus tells the disciples that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they have no life in them. Now, they don’t have any concept at this point in time of what that means in terms of the Eucharist. So it is hard for them to accept. They do kind of scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with this Jesus that he is speaking this way.
Notice even that the 12 who are asked, “Are you also going to leave?” Don’t say, “We understand perfectly what you mean.” They simply say, “We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Christ.”
If we haven’t had that kind of challenge, then I’d like to suggest that perhaps we haven’t really had the experience of having the gospel preached to us in a way that demands us to accept it. That’s not to suggest that all preaching should go out of its way to help people become angry.
But it does mean that we need sometimes to be challenged by the readings we hear. For example, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Now, we’re at a time in American politics where it seems that spreading falsehoods, which both sides of the aisle do, about the other makes it almost impossible for us to love someone who doesn’t think the way we do.
That I think is the biggest threat to our democracy. That we have gone away from the ability to talk about significant disagreements in charity, seeking real dialogue in our conversations with others, identifying the values behind the dialogue, which we may discover we share even if we disagree with its application.
Has the gospel really caused you to scratch your head and say, “I don’t know if I can do this.” You see, because it’s not just loving your enemies, it’s praying for persecutors. It is in fact recognizing that the way we treat others is very much the way we treat Jesus.
I’ve been in parishes, for example, they’re very generous to the poor, as long as they don’t ever have to see the poor or interact with the poor. Because sometimes the poor are difficult to see and hard to interact with.
Joshua puts in the first reading, this choice right front and center. What are you going to do? Will you choose to follow God and the commandments, which we will see over the course of the Old Testament, they were never up to completely following. Will you choose that or will you choose to reject that?
See, our faith is really something that should challenge us from time to time. In fact, if we aren’t challenged by some preaching or another, perhaps it’s the case that the preaching that’s given is simply to make us feel better. Not to challenge us, but to cause us to hear those things which we have already accepted.
Following the gospel is not for the faint of heart. I used to put in the back of the high school religion classroom where I taught, a big, big phrase on sheets of paper. Every paper was one letter to this phrase in the back because I wanted to make a point. The phrase was, Christianity is not for wimps.
Because to follow it is quite difficult indeed. To truly live the way of life that Jesus came to give us is quite difficult. So when we find ourselves struggling with this or that in the scriptures or the teachings of the Church, I think we first have to ask ourselves, what is the basis for my belief? Why does this cause me such difficulty to hear this thing with which I do not agree? How can I see that what I believe today can be traced through the thread of Christian thought? How is it that I can accept the sacramental experience of the church?
Very early, the church started to celebrate the Eucharist. They probably thought of this day when many left. Jesus was not always successful in his preaching, despite the fact that he was the divine Son of God. What are the things where you need to hear the message that Jesus gives us? Because there’s a very important line that Jesus speaks today that’s a reminder of the grace of God.
For this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father. Let me say that again. For this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father. That’s a statement about God’s grace.
As a good Dominican, I have a very high view of God’s grace. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, would say we can’t do any good action without the grace of God. That it is always God who impels us to seek the good and to reject the bad. It is always God’s grace that is leading us forward to accept the message of God in faith, and to live like Jesus wants us to live.
How is it that today you will ask for the grace of God and allow God to challenge you, maybe to confront you with what it means to believe? How is it today that maybe you’ll decide to take some concrete action that moves you closer to accepting God’s way of life? There are so many instances in the gospel that I find quite difficult to be honest. I know I should follow the gospel, but I don’t always want to. Maybe the beginning of grace, the beginning of accepting the grace, is recognizing what I don’t want to hear, and asking God for the grace to deepen and strengthen my faith.
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