TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: John 6:60-69

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Jesus gives a discourse describing his total self-giving to us, and the response of his listeners is to complain that his words are too hard to accept. Why do we have trouble grasping the unconditional love of God for us? Don Fabio says that this passage points to two different attitudes we can take when contemplating the words of Jesus. The first attitude (that which originates in the flesh) is to understand his words in terms of normal human relations, where people only give when they receive something in return. This attitude views the self-giving of Jesus with suspicion and incredulity. The second attitude is the one displayed by Peter and is an attitude that originates in the Spirit. We must place ourselves in faith before the Son of God, acknowledging that only he has the message of eternal life, and seeking to understand his Eucharistic words in terms of the unconditional self-giving that is foreign to purely human relations.

Why are Jesus words regarding his self-giving so hard for us to accept?

Jesus had just made one of the most beautiful discourses that is to be found in the Gospels, the statement of the complete, unconditional giving of himself to us as our food. The response of the people is to complain, "This is intolerable language! Who can accept this kind of talk!" Why are Jesus words so hard to accept? Because they are surprising and do not fit in with our normal idea of how to relate with others. We expect human inter-relationship to consist in a form of exchange between equals. We do not expect, nor do we really want, to be offered something as a free gift. We are embarrassed or suspicious when someone gives us a gift without reason. When we go into someone else's house we feel that we have to bring something with us. The idea of only receiving without giving in return is not something that comes naturally to us.

There are two attitudes we can take when contemplating Jesus' words: An attitude informed by the Holy Spirit, or an attitude informed by the flesh

We continue to place ourselves before God with the attitude of not wishing to abandon ourselves completely to his love for us. The Holy Spirit seeks to teach us a different attitude, and this is what Jesus is referring to when he say, "What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?" Jesus is asking that his followers inform their attitudes with a contemplation of the redemptive self-giving of the Son of Man that is unfolding before their eyes. Instead, his followers are interpreting Jesus words according to the "flesh". Jesus here does not intend to disparage the flesh. We are Christians, not Platonists, and we believe that the human being is a union of body and spirit. But what Jesus is warning about here is an attitude that springs from the flesh, that springs from human relations, and he is contrasting it with an attitude that comes from the Holy Spirit. In fact, later on he says, "No-one can come to me unless the Father allows him." In order to understand what Jesus is saying regarding the Eucharist, it is not sufficient that we base our thinking on our experience of human relations. Instead we must base our thinking on a contemplation of what God has done in giving himself to us unconditionally. Most of us have been Christians for a long time, but we have never really opened our hearts fully to God, to his self-giving, to his love that has no conditions.

Peter demonstrates the right attitude, and places himself before Jesus in the faith that only Jesus has the message of eternal life

Peter replies "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the message of Eternal Life, and we believe and know that you are the Holy One of God". In Peter we see the correct attitude for following the Lord. This attitude does not seek to understand everything Jesus says in human terms. It consists rather in the acknowledgement that there is no life to be found anywhere else except in Jesus. If Jesus is the source of life, then all our belief and our understanding must be founded on the words of eternal life that come from him, the words that help us to believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God. I invite all the readers to place themselves before God in this way that Peter has done, contemplating what God has done for us, what God has gifted to us. Our attempts to understand the words of Jesus must find their point of departure in this attitude, and not in the natural instinct of the flesh to view all things suspiciously, even that come from God.

TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: John 6:51-58

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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The words of Jesus seem difficult to understand, but it is only because they are difficult to believe

Jesus words in this passage from the Gospel are so direct that they seem difficult to understand. "If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." These words are shockingly clear and direct, but we nevertheless have trouble comprehending them. Why is this so? Because we have not developed the mental categories to grasp the concept of someone who can love us in this way. The Eucharist proclaims, shouts, cries aloud the nature of God. We are to eat bread and drink wine in memory of him, and this bread and wine have the real presence of Jesus in them. This notion is so simple that we cannot understand it, and it even seems absurd and scandalous. The idea that God places himself at my complete disposition, and becomes completely assimilated by me, is a shock to our normal way of thinking and leaves us bewildered. The immense God who created the galaxies and who cannot be contained by the universe places himself at my complete disposal! This is so scandalously beautiful that we do not have the courage to believe it. 

Our ability to believe in these words of Jesus is hampered by our difficulty in believing that God accepts us unconditionally

All of us have wounds of love. All of us have been traumatised in our relationships. We have grave difficulties receiving affection and in considering ourselves to be completely accepted by others. These wounds hamper our ability to grasp the notion that the ultimate action of God towards us is one of  unconditional acceptance, an acceptance that asks only to be believed.

"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives for me". Certainly! Just as a child believes simply in the unconditional love of his parents for him, so we too must cling to the love of God for us and believe in it without qualifying it. These words of Jesus are not difficult but scandalously simple! The problem is not understanding them but believing in them, and Jesus entreats his listeners to believe in him. Why is it so difficult for us to believe these words? All of us latently believe that God really wants us to be food for him. We believe that God created us so that we would serve him. We think of God as being a source of authority and power who in the end requires that we do certain things for him. We go to church and listen to the Scriptures, and we constantly think, "When is the payback? What is it that I have to do to get the benefits from God that I want?" But in this Gospel passage Jesus is telling us that there is no payback! He places himself at our complete disposal and asks nothing except that we believe. We are not God's food, he is ours. Jesus has become our servant. He has died so that we can have life. This passage calls us to live with Christ without feeling that we are constantly under scrutiny, feeling that we are insufficient and unacceptable to the Lord. There is someone who loves us simply because we are, not because of how we are.

We have a choice: we can murmur against these words of Jesus and say they are absurd; or we can believe that God give's himself to us totally regardless of our actions

To refuse this love is the most foolish thing we can do. In last week's Gospel we read how the people murmured against these sayings of Jesus, closing themselves in the narrow confines of their own intellects that could not comprehend love of this sort. Instead of murmuring against Jesus' words, we must head in the opposite direction - towards the clamorous, unexpected, scandalous love of God for us. God does not keep an account of our actions, holding back his love until the account is in his favour. God is father, a father without limits, and Jesus is our servant.

NINETEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Gospel: John 6:41-51
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
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It is hard for our minds to grasp how Jesus becomes bread from heaven for us in the Eucharist. One of the great obstacles to faith, according to Don Fabio, is over-attachment to my own presuppositions about things. But God's saving action cannot be limited to what we can understand on the basis of our own presuppositions! That would be like confining a doctor to treatments that his patient could understand. In order to come to a deeper understanding of how Jesus is bread from heaven, we must be willing to accept new teaching from the Lord, opening ourselves to things that go beyond our normal categories of understanding. Eventually a deeper understanding of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist will come, but only if we take the leap of faith first, opening ourselves to  where Jesus wishes to lead us.

Attachment to my own narrow convictions is an obstacle to growth in the faith

Jesus offers himself as a life-giving bread from heaven. The Jews begin to murmur among themselves. "Murmur" is a word that comes from the Greek and refers to the sound that pigeons make. It came to signify also the grumbling sounds made by people who do not want their complaints to be directly heard. Their main bone of contention is that Jesus has said "I am the bread that has come down from heaven". They react to this claim, stating that they know Jesus' family circumstances, and therefore they know exactly where he has come from.

Here we are presented with one of the major stumbling-blocks to growth in the faith: the obstinate attachment to what I "know". Sometimes the things we are convinced about are obstacles to belief in certain truths of the faith. Maturity in the faith requires the acceptance that our most deeply-held convictions cannot be the ultimate criterion for what is the truth.

God's saving plan for us involves things that we will not be able to understand immediately. 

In the text the Jews attach too much significance to what they know. "We know everything about you," they say. "We know that you are the son of Joseph and Mary. Don't start telling us that you are something different" This is the narrow-minded insistence that Jesus is exactly as they understand him to be. But if God is restricted to doing only that which we can understand, then how can he possible hope to save us? That would be like limiting a medical practitioner to treating his patients only on the basis of that which his patients could understand. Just as a doctor must use his superior level of understanding when curing his patients, so too God's saving action towards us must involve steps that we will not be able to understand immediately.

I must broaden my conceptual categories and allow myself to be taught by God. A student does not understand everything before he enters the classroom, so why should we think that God should conform to our presuppositions about him before we discover who he truly is?

Jesus does not condemn the hard-heartedness of his listeners in this passage. He tries to explain himself as clearly as possible. "Don't murmur among yourselves," he says. "You grumble because you cannot understand. But what is at stake here is the resurrection, and that is something that you cannot understand, nor is it something that you can make present in your lives by your own efforts. Only the Father can achieve this in you."

Grumbling is an illness that is very prevalent among us. There is a widespread tendency to continually interpret things in a negative way, based on a narrow perspective on life. Jesus wishes to counteract this tendency towards grumbling, this habit of understanding things on the basis of a narrow set of criteria. The set of criteria can be broadened, he says, by allowing ourselves to be taught by God. It is essential that we allow ourselves to be taught by him. It is vital that we rediscover the type of learning attitude that was typical of our childhood when we naturally allowed ourselves to learn new things.

Jesus is not part of the conceptual categories with which I normally interpret life. We must throw open the doors of our minds in order to be able to come to an intuition of Christ, and such an intuition will only come if we allow God to instruct us. A student does not enter a lecture believing that he knows everything already. We must cultivate the capacity to be able to continually learn and be continually surprised. We cannot understand the mysterious and holy Eucharist, the wonderful presence of Christ among us in the Mass, the celebration of the events of Easter, without stripping away our natural presuppositions, abandoning our original intuitions, and accepting a new way of looking at things from God.

Understanding of the Eucharist will come, but first we must take the leap of faith and believe that Jesus is the bread from heaven that gives life to the world

"I am the bread of life," says Jesus. "Your fathers ate the bread in desert and they are dead." In order to eat bread and not die, we must emerge from the narrow confines of our own intellects and be open to something that God wishes to bestow on us - understanding of a more profound sort. That understanding will eventually come, but only if we make the leap of faith first.

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: John 6:24-35

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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The crowd are following Jesus because they want to satisfy their physical hunger, and they are hoping he will perform another miracle like the multiplication of the loaves. Physical hunger can be satisfied today, but will return tomorrow. Jesus exhorts the people to strive instead after a food that satisfies eternally. Much of our sinful behaviour derives from trying to satisfy our hungers with "food" that is transitory. Don Fabio tells us that trusting in the existence of a providential Father, and of a Son that offers us salvation, rids us of the constant "hungers", anxieties and fears that are felt by those who do not believe in a loving God.

The crowds follow Jesus in order to satisfy their physical wants

The multitude are following Jesus as a result of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. When they catch up with him, Jesus gets straight to the point. "You are following me not because you saw the signs, but because you had all you wanted to eat". In other words, the crowd was pursuing Jesus in order to satisfy their material wants. They had utterly failed to recognize the wider significance of the multiplication of the bread for their existence. Jesus tells them to stop putting their efforts into seeking food that doesn't last, but to strive instead after the food that endures to eternal life.

The human being has need of different kinds of nourishment 

In order to live we must eat. Without nourishment we cannot survive. There is a direct relationship between living and eating. It is an absolute necessity for us that we nourish our biological existence with food. But on a broader level there are in fact many different kinds of "food" with which we are nourished, and there are many different appetites that we seek to satisfy. The human being strives to see, to listen, to understand, to touch. We become frustrated if we are deprived of these other sources of nourishment. In every moment we assimilate into ourselves all of these various "nutrients" that we encounter in our daily lives.

Much of our disordered behaviour derives from trying to satisfy our hungers with "food" that is transitory

Despite this continual nourishment, our beings are never fully satisfied. No matter how much we eat, we will never get rid of our hunger in a final, definitive way. No matter how many ideas our minds assimilate, we will never arrive at a point where we attain a full understanding of life. No matter how much our eyes see, our hunger to see more completely and more deeply will remain unsatisfied. We eat today and are full, but we do not know if we will eat again tomorrow. We think we understand something now, but we do not know if this "understanding" will still make sense tomorrow. Our anxieties about how we will be satisfied influence much of our behaviour in a negative way. Sin often involves trying to obtain satisfaction from life in a way that is disordered and illegitimate. In the Gospel passage Jesus tells us to stop seeking after "food" that does not satisfy us in a definitive way.

Believing in Jesus satisfies our deepest hungers, anxieties and fears

There is another food, however, and Jesus offers himself as this new form of nourishment. In next Sunday's Gospel, the offering of himself as food is made more explicit. But in the Gospel we are considering this Sunday, the emphasis is placed on the importance of believing in the one whom God has sent. Jesus is the bread of life, altogether different from the manna in the desert that satisfied for one day only. If my daily existence is dependent on my own efforts to provide for myself, then I need sufficient energy and personal resources to eke from life the bread that I need to survive. If, by contrast, I believe that God is my father and Jesus is my saviour, then my life becomes completely serene. I know that I have a providential father. My life is not in the hands of nothingness or chance. I am freed from the latent anxieties, fears and desperations of those who do not trust in a providential God.

To live with faith in a God who provides for our deepest needs is a key to another type of existence altogether. Many of our errors and sins derive from pursuing solutions to hungers that are not definitive solutions at all. We pursue possessions and objects, thinking wrongly that they can give us the securities that in the end only God can give. My ultimate security consists in my relationship with God. I feel secure when I consider that God is my father, when I consider that every aspect of my future is in his hands, and that he will never abandon me. I am at ease when I reflect on the fact that Jesus is bread for me, that he is all I need, that he is the imperishable nourishment that I yearn for. Christ is the food of eternal life. He is what dissipates the persistent anxiety about how I am to be satisfied tomorrow. I find peace and fullness in believing in the paternal love of God for me, and in the salvation that the Lord Jesus offers me.