Word to the Wise
Thursday, April 22, 2021 - 3rd Week of Easter - Thurs
[Acts 8:26-40 and John 6:44-51]"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will life forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world." [John]
Time and again in the Gospel According to John, faith in Jesus is tied in with encounter with Jesus. It is the "seeing and believing" that are wound together. The believing may not happen instantaneously. The Samaritan woman at the well engages Jesus in conversation which gradually "spirals" toward belief. We may be in the position of the Man Born Blind in chapter nine who struggles to understand what his initial encounter (the washing and healing) means in the face of the questions from Jewish authorities. As he "spirals" toward full belief, he has a second encounter with Jesus: "'Do you believe in the Son of Man?' He answered and said, 'Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?' Jesus sai to him, 'You have seen him and the one speaking with you is he.' He said, 'I do believe, Lord,' and he worshiped him." We could recall the encounters of Mary Magdalen and Thomas with the Risen Jesus.
The encounter that the Gospel According to John offers today is the encounter with the very Body and Blood of Christ - his flesh for the life of the world. This reality, as we will see, will create a crisis for the audience at the time and for the disciples who thought they believed in Jesus [John 6:66-69]. The crowd states the question simply, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Just as they misunderstood the loaves and fishes, they are challenged to move beyond the manna in the desert to a new manna. As a matter of faith, it is not HOW Jesus gives us his flesh to eat, but THAT he does it. If he is the one whom God has sent, he can do this.
I once received a young woman into the church. We had to do the formation privately because she was unable to attend the RCIA program. When we finished our conversations and she declared herself ready, I asked her what she had found to be the greatest challenge to her faith. She replied immediately, "The Eucharist. If you accept that, the rest is easy." Her words should challenge us "cradle Catholics" to realize the depth of encounter that is opened to us in our celebration of the Eucharist. AMEN