FOOD FOR THE FAITH JOURNEY

Reflections on the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:30—5:2; John 6:41-51)

It isn’t easy to believe. Our faith journeys do hit the occasional metaphoric bumps like doubts, hesitations, difficulties, disappointments, disillusions, etc.,  The Israelites are disillusioned in their journey through the desert to the point of regretting their decision to set out on the journey (last Sunday’s first reading). They murmur against Moses and grumble against God. This Sunday, Elijah faces a similar moment of disillusion on his faith journey to Horeb, the mountain of God. He is fleeing from Jezebel, who is seeking his life following the sacrifice and the execution of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Confronted with the difficulties of the desert paths, he prays, "This is enough, O LORD! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers”. He lays down seeking shade under a broom tree of all trees!

The same difficulty in believing also torments the contemporaries of Jesus. They ‘murmur’ about Jesus who claims to be the bread that came down from heaven. Their problem is slightly different though. They could not believe in him because they knew him too well, or at least they thought they did. He is one of their own and they have known him ever since he was a kid of Nazareth, starting as a carpenter’s son. He had lived with him for thirty years and now he returns from a trip claiming to be the bread from heaven. Here is the problem of familiarity. Aren’t we afflicted with the same issue too? Does the numerous rituals, pious practices, bible lessons, homilies, rosaries, and the like perhaps render God too familiar and too easily available that we have become ‘used’ to God? Does God still intervene in our lives in radical ways that upset our set patterns of believing and behaving?

The people of his hometown are faced with an enigma: the familiarity of his background and the radical nature of his claims about himself and his message. Faced with the incredulity of his fellow townspeople, Jesus invites them to take the leap of faith. To those who want to stay within their predefined conceptions, expectations, and judgements, Jesus extends the challenge of embracing the newness that he is about to offer. Jesus tells them, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”. He reminds them that their faith journey involves entering the dynamic of ‘being drawn out’ or ‘coming out’ of one’s closed circles and being ‘drawn into’ or ‘coming to’ God through the dynamic journey of faith. 

Faith is thus not about consenting to a set of precepts or creeds. It is neither a result of speculation nor a fruit of scrupulous attention to laws and rites. Faith is a continued human response to God’s permanent initiative. Every element of our institutionalised ecclesial living is aimed at helping us respond to God’s invitation. Faith is about being continuously ‘taught by God’, and to ‘see’ the Father in and through the one who offers himself to us as the bread of life. Faith is about ‘eating’ the flesh that Christ offers for the life of the world. The bread of life continues to offer himself for us in the scripture, the Eucharist, the Cross, and the mission of the Church and it is our responsibility to discover the radical newness of the gift that is being offered, although we could be too familiar with its wrapping.

Pope Benedict XVI would insist that it is not just the faithful who receive Christ in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is also the moment and place where Christ welcomes each one of us to himself and the Father (Sacramentum Caritatis, 2007). God not only gives himself up to be eaten but he is also hungry for us. Believing is the discovery of this mystical truth of God’s hunger for us. Eucharist is a sacrament of mutual communion. The best example of a disciple who lived this Eucharistic communion is Mary. She “advanced in her pilgrimage of faith and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son” (Lumen Gentium no58). From the Annunciation to the Cross, Mary is the one who received the Word, made flesh within her and then silenced in death. It is she, lastly, who took into her arms the lifeless body of the one who truly loved his own to the end” (Sacramentum Caritatis, no33). Following her example, let us welcome the bread of life who offers himself as food for our faith journey, helping us overcome the challenges of fatigue, doubts, hesitations, and familiarity.