21st Sunday or Ordinary Time
In the First Reading this weekend Joshua challenges Israel to choose who they wanted to serve, the gods of their ancestors or the gods of the Amorites Joshua tells them that he will serve the Lord and the people reaffirm their commitment to the Lord, recalling His deliverance and protection. In the Second Reading from Ephesians we hear about how Christ’s love guides marital roles: wives respecting husbands as the church respects Christ, and husbands loving wives as Christ loves the church, symbolizing unity and sanctity. In this Gospel reading, Jesus puts the choice to His apostles of following Him, or of leaving Him that is also the choice he gives to all of us as well.
Jesus did not give an easy remedy for the doubts his disciples had in reaction to his words, nor did he water-down impact those words had on them. After hearing Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life, many of the people find Jesus’ language intolerable how could anyone accept it. As a result of this intolerable language some of them choose to leave him. In a similar way today so many people find the words of Jesus to be intolerable language as many people have got up and left their faith behind them and some may never return again. No one who accepts that Christ is the Son of God has any difficulty in believing that he left us himself in the Eucharist. He promised to give his body and blood in the Eucharist as an everlasting memorial to be our spiritual nourishment and our means of offering an acceptable sacrifice to God every time his body and blood are made present by the words of the priest. He fulfilled that promise at the Last Supper. He gave to his Apostles and their successors the power to repeat this act of divine love when he said: “Do this in memory of me.”
When Simon Peter answered Christ’s challenge will you too go away?” he spoke not only for his fellow Apostles he also spoke for us when he said “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. and we believe; and we know that you are the Holy One of God.” We are the people who really believe that Christ was the incarnate Son of God. Peter made his act of faith before he was fully convinced of the divinity of Christ, but he already knew that Christ was close to God and spoke nothing but the truth. We have the proof of Christ’s divinity which Peter and the Apostles later got, he gave them the bread of life and he went to the cross and rose again. We also have the witness of the early Christians whose belief in Jesus was at the very center of their Christian lives as it should be the center of ours. We can trust that what Jesus taught is true, even if we do not fully understand how it could possibly be.
Many people who became saints died for their belief in Jesus; hopefully we can live our faith fully, even in times of doubting the actions of some of those in the Church. So today we say Lord, You have the message of eternal life” and we believe; and we know that you are the Holy One of God and we will follow you.
Fullerton T 