21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 Psalm 33:2-3, 16-23 Ephesians 5:25-32 John 6:60-69
In today’s Mass we read the final extract from the 6th Chapter of Saint John’s Gospel. His discourse on the ‘The Bread of Life’ ends with a division of the ways: the unbelievers drift away while the believers stay. We are called on today to consider the balance between our Faith and Choice. Firstly, Faith is a gift of God’s grace –‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father’. Christian Faith is based on the words and signs given by Jesus. But Faith has another element to it – our free cooperation with this gift of the Father and the teaching of Jesus.
Like those who followed the Lord after been fed with loaves and fishes and, who heard his teaching on the Bread of Life, we may sometimes be confused by ‘the intolerable language’ with which Jesus explains that He is the Bread of Life. There is a Choice! Joshua was a man who did not mince his words. ‘If you will not serve the Lord’, he asked them ‘whom will you serve? The gods of your ancestors or the gods of the Amorites?’ Joshua had no difficulty in deciding what god he himself would serve: he would serve the ‘The Lord.’ This strong assertion of his Faith in the One God gave the people the encouragement they needed to proclaim the same Lord as their God.
In the Gospel today, Jesus calls on his disciples for a proclamation of their Faith in him. ‘Do you want to go away too?’ Many of those who followed Jesus did so because of his miracles or because of their vested curiosity. When they heard him claim that he was giving them his flesh to eat, many of them left in confusion and incredulity. Because Peter and the other apostles had been drawn to Jesus by the Father, they were able to see beyond the miracles and the promises to the meaning of the mission Jesus to bring life to the world.
The Psalm today draws the distinction between those who choose to follow the Lord and those who don’t and the way the Lord treats them – ‘The Lord turns his face against the wicked … The Lord turns his eyes to the just and his ears to their appeal’. The early disciples must have understood that being disciples of Jesus entailed responsibilities and mission – ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, live in me and I live in them.’
The Psalm speaks of distress, of being broken-hearted, of being crushed in spirit, of suffering many trials. But we are assured that the Lord sees and hears. Jesus, living in each one of us desires to continue his mission to bring life to the world; to feed the hungry, to bring light to the darkness and to make all people whole.
During our celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord comes in Word and Sacrament to make us holy and worthy of him. The Bread and the Cup of salvation strengthen us in our Faith and relationship with the Lord himself. Faith tells us that the Lord is our companion through his body and blood. (Companion literally means one who shares bread with me.)
So, for us who have known the Lord, who have walked in his ways, who have learned from him and have been fed by him, is there a decision? To whom shall we go?
‘We know that you, Lord, are the Holy One of God’.