Every Sunday, Bishop Edward Malesic writes a Scripture reflection for the faithful. Follow the bishop on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Decisions, decisions. We make them every day. Some of them are of little importance, like the flavor of ice cream we pick. Others are of much greater importance, like the career we choose.
Today’s readings are asking for the supreme decision. In the first reading, the people were asked to choose sides on religion. They were given the choice of the God of Israel or the pagan gods of their past. Joshua was clear in his decision: “As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” The others in the crowd agreed with him, recalling all that the LORD had done for them along the journey out of Egypt into the Promised Land. They too said, “Therefor we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
The Gospel today also calls for a decision. We have been reading from John 6, which is also known as the Bread of Life discourse. After feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus went with his disciples to the other side of the sea (and walked on water for a while to get there!). The people followed Jesus looking for more bread. Jesus used the opportunity to talk about a different bread. He was going to talk about himself as the “the bread come down from Heaven.” In that sermon, he told the people not to work for food that perishes, but food that “endures for eternal life,” food that he would give to us. He pushed further and said, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This was not well received, but Jesus pushed ahead, saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. . . . for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
Because of our Lord’s teaching on the Eucharist we find people in the Gospel saying, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” And then, for me, one of the saddest lines of all scripture describes what happened next, “As a result of this, many his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.”
Yes, the Eucharist, which is meant to gather people, sometimes divides us into camps of believers and non-believers, those who take the Lord at his word and those who think he must have meant something else. St. Thomas More said this: “For surely if Christ was not God, he was not a good man either, since he plainly said he was God.” People left Jesus because they would not accept him as the Bread from Heaven and must have thought that he was either a liar or a lunatic, but certainly not the Lord (to borrow from a phrase from G.K. Chesterton)
In the Gospel for today, Jesus turned and said to his Apostles, “Don’t you also want to leave?”
Peter said it well, when he replied, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Now there is the decision for all of us, the most important decision really for our lives. Will we accept the teaching of Jesus that he is the Bread of Life? The Son of God? Lord of our lives? Will we accept that the bread we eat at Mass is his flesh and the wine we consecrate is his blood? In short, should we stay or should we go?
Many have left. Many no longer believe. Some leave because of Church scandals. Some leave more slowly, simply drifting away. What about us? Can we muster the faith of Peter, who called Jesus, “Master”?
I have been encouraged recently to see that so many of our young people have found Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. It is not an easy article of our faith to accept, yet it is the most profound teaching of Jesus himself. We come to place ourselves before our Lord and our God whenever we approach the Eucharist because we have come to believe and are convinced that Jesus is the Holy One of God. And so we stay, do our best to remain faithful, and build up the Church of Jesus on earth in the ways that the Lord has asked of us. And I know that is much, much better to be with Jesus than to be away from him.
Have a blessed week everyone.