Fr Eugene Lobo SJ –
Twenty First Sunday of the year August 25, 2024
Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18; Ephesians 5:21-32; John 6:60-69
Faith, a gift of God, serves to lift up our soul and spirit above material and corporeal contingencies. It is to this supernatural attitude that Jesus tries to lead his disciples. Faith is a supernatural virtue which resides in our intellect: faith requires some human support, that of our human knowledge, a knowledge which may consist of simple ideas, but which is often made up of more or less elaborate judgments. Faith is always a matter of choice. We choose to believe in persons, in institutions, in values and causes. All our real and good relationships, our good commitments arise out of such choices. This process of faith invariably involves certain amount of risk. To believe in nothing and go ahead as if nothing exists is the end of the path and thus a type of death. Our life in order to progress demands a risk of each one of us. In the Gospel we have Peter who makes the choice and the commitment on behalf of the disciples in a time of change and tension. He sees the wavering of their faith and commitment to Jesus and moving away from him and speaks boldly on behalf of the twelve of their loyalty and faith in him.
In the first reading of today, Joshua declares that he and his household serve only the Lord. The passage tells us that the people of God had just entered the Promised Land. For all outward appearances the conquest of Canaan was complete. The people already living there had their own gods, the gods who may have looked very attractive to the Israelites. Joshua has called together the elders, leaders, judges and scribes of Israel and presented them with a choice: either they could continue to serve the God who brought them out of Egypt and through the desert to the land where they were now settled, or they could adopt the gods of the Amorites whose land they had conquered for themselves. The choice was very crucial in the sense that the people had already shown their infidelity to God and to Moses. Under the leadership of Joshua and at the thresh hold of Promised Land they had to make the choice. Of course there was no real choice for them.
In today’s second reading Paul shows the Ephesians the right way, namely of unity with each other in Christ. He tells them to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven them. Christ emptied himself even to death out of love for his Father and his brothers and sisters. Therefore it was not surprising that Paul would tell Christians to be subordinate to one another. In the light of Paul’s statement about Christ, it becomes clear that husbands are to be just as subordinate to their wives as wives to their husbands, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. As the Church is subject to Christ, the husband is subject to his wife and wife to the husband. The husband will fulfill his role as the head when he serves his wife just as Christ gave himself in service to the building up of the church. All these truths have been revealed to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the writing of the sacred Scriptures.
In the narrative Jesus the Bread of Life, John presents to us the Eucharist as the source of summit of our faith. It began with the multiplication of loaves and fish which satisfied the physical hunger of people. Now Jesus offers to satisfy their spiritual hunger where he prepares to give his own body and blood as their food and drink. This leads to the murmurs of objection among the multitude, the ordinary people. How could this man they said give them his own flesh to eat? They were unable to accept this and Jesus did not go to explain it to them either. He simply demanded faith in his word. He had come down from heaven and he was more than a mere man. He is also God and he had the words of eternal life. Today’s reading gives us the objections among his disciples, the outer band of followers who had been continually with him for some time now. They were a group distinct from the Apostles. Their reason for objecting was the same as that of the multitude for they considered him as a mere man. He knew their thoughts easily and told them that some of them did not believe in him.
John in his Gospel is fully aware that that the teaching of Jesus about himself as the bread of life was not easy for people to understand and accept, even to his own disciples. The gospel passage of today presents to us some of the responses that emerged. Much like the Israelites in the desert, some of the disciples complained about the incomprehensibility of what Jesus had just said. Others went beyond complaining to expressing their disbelief to what they had just heard. Finally we are told that some of the disciples quit following Jesus and rejected him over the claims he made about being the bread that came down from heaven. Jesus clearly indicated to the disciples that Eucharist means being one with him and united to him.
At this juncture Jesus turned to the inner circle of the Twelve to whom he had been talking at a deeper level and giving his followers a glimpse of who he is and what he is about on a supernatural level. The Twelve are portrayed as accepting the teachings of Jesus and confessing that he is the Holy One of God. There is no indication that they were more intelligent than the other disciples but it is obvious that they have been given that initial grace of faith that is required for being able to believe in Jesus. His teaching was difficult and he knew that it would take more than a normal understanding to grasp the matter. They needed the faith which is the gift of the Father. This initiation to faith can come only from him through the Spirit. Without the grace of faith and openness the words of Jesus the teachings of the Lord make no sense. So he turned to his close inner circle of disciples and asked them whether they too wished to go away from him. Peter, speaking on behalf of the Twelve makes the profession of faith: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
We are all members of the Body of Christ. As such, our membership requires that we tend to those under our authority in the same way as we take care of our bodies. No person hates his or her own body. They nourish it and tenderly care for it, just as Christ does with the Church. Hence Jesus says that unless we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we will have no life within us. Through these words, Jesus was preparing the way for the revelation of his continued Divine Presence in the world through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus was inviting them to a new life through his very person but many failed to understand him and left him. But those who had faith in the Lord, those who had been called by the Father, they trusted in Jesus. They trusted that in time, their hearts would be open to what Jesus was saying.
John the Evangelist in the gospel wants to make it clear to his own community and ultimately even those who were physically present with Jesus and had heard him teach had difficulty in believing him. We today are at no disadvantage because we are attempting to follow Jesus centuries after he was on earth. The key was never his physical presence. The key has always been the faith and from that perspective we are absolutely at no disadvantage. Jesus had explained and described what communion with his Body and his Blood consisted of, and what its fruits were: to live in him in his own divine life which he himself gets from his Father. Jesus had said: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” The Eucharist, therefore, is this: a Mystery of Faith. In the holy Eucharist with which this chapter is closely linked, we recognize in our going to communion the accepting of that challenge to be totally one with Jesus.
Down the centuries we have people who have taken the risk and made their commitment for the Lord in the midst of tensions and wavering of faith. We need to have the faith of Mary and Paul and the great saints of old who had remained loyal to the divine call even at the cost of risking their lives. Today they all invite us to reflect and choose continuously our faith and trust in Jesus. As believers we stand with Joshua and Peter and others in accepting that risk in our ongoing adventure of faith and hope.
A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. “I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So, I think I’m wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all. “This started a real controversy in the “Letters to the Editor” column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher: “I’ve been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this. They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!” The entire controversy ended with this response.