Thursday May 4
The richness of the bread of life discourse is still unfolding in today's Gospel. Jesus reminds that only those who have faith in him, who is swayed by the inner voice of the heavenly Father, can adhere to Christ and share the gift of the bread of life. But he goes a step further: returning to the contrast between the manna and the bread of life, Jesus introduces a new teaching, which baffles his listeners: the bread of life is his own flesh, that is, his person, his being, his body. The people did not expect to hear this and are shocked, while Jesus already points to the mystery of the Eucharist that only faith can enlighten us.
Alternative
A few days after I found the catechism that I mentioned yesterday, I met the man who had it republished. He had been present at a Mass where I made much the same complaint as yesterday. He approached me, holding a copy and smiling! I knew him, a good and forgiving man, and he was not at all aggrieved! He was disturbed, though (as I knew already) by the lack of knowledge of our religion among many people. And that is certainly grounds for being disturbed.
In other times it was believed that we could be pushed into faith—or at least pushed towards it. Strange to say, being pushed makes a person resist. I often thought that if good were forbidden, more people would do it! The best way to move a person is to attract rather than push: we are more easily drawn from in front than driven from behind. “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father” (today’s reading). St. Augustine commented on this verse, “Do not suppose here any rough and uneasy violence. It is gentle; it is sweet; it is the very sweetness that draws you.”
Attraction is always less clear and less satisfactory than compulsion, but that’s our life. Jesus rejected the way of compulsion and chose the way of love. It’s messier than any other, sometimes almost chaotic. But the wisdom of the Gospel: tells us it is the only one that has no trap built into it.
Alternative
When speaking and writing about the search for God, people mostly use metaphors of climbing: “The Ascent of Mount Carmel,” “The Ladder of Perfection,” etc. This expresses one side of it: that we have work to do. The other side of it is that it is all gift, ‘grace’, given without our deserving (see Mar. 12). To express this second side, we might use metaphors of falling. We talk about ‘falling’ in love; there is a sense of being swept beyond oneself. “No one can come to me unless the Father draw him.” Imagine sometimes that you are falling towards God - in some such awkward way as the prodigal son fell into his father’s arms.
