All the readings for today’s Mass demand a choice.
Joshua has led the Israelites through the Jordan River as Moses had led the people through the Red Sea. God had cleared the way such that the people were getting ready to settle in the new land. It was not by the might of their military that they prevailed. To thrive in this new land, they needed to fulfill the promise of Abraham, God would make of Abram a great nation if he and his descendants would be faithful to him alone.
Joshua, now nearing his death, called the people to decide. Who were they going to worship and dedicate their lives to? The gods that the true God defeated to win their freedom and the idols they were still holding onto from their time of enslavement in Egypt, were they going to serve the gods of the new land they were now going to inhabit, or were they going to follow Joshua and his household and “serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
The people chose to serve the LORD and Joshua established a covenant with God and the people. Although, their faithfulness would not last as the following accounts in the book of Judges attests.
In our second reading, Paul outlines to the Church of Ephesus the ideal covenant of marriage. Unfortunately, the phrase that often puts a screeching halt to this reading is: “wives are to subordinate to their husbands” What is missed is the line before in which Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters: be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” And the words after “wives are to be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.” And, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over to her to sanctify her” (cf. Eph. 5:21-32).
The language and ideals that Paul presents are about the self-sacrificial nature that a man and woman are to approach the sacrament of marriage. A better translation of the original Greek for hypotasso, is surrender or to entrust oneself to. They are to surrender, trust each other, and serve one another with their whole selves holding nothing back. They are to love one another unconditionally as Christ loves his Church, and this union of self-gift to one another can then result in the beautiful gift from their union which is a third person, a child.
This intimacy and union of love is a communion of persons that mirrors the trinitarian communion of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Where this breaks down is our fallen nature. The knee-jerk reaction to “wives are to be subordinate to their husband in all things” is because of the horrific abuses in the time of Paul writing this letter up to and including our present day. Paul is not talking about a power differential regarding who is to be first, who is to be the boss. He is reminding husbands that they are to love their wives as they are to love Christ and their very selves, and reminding wives that they are to respect their husbands as they respect Jesus and themselves. Also, women are not to be submissive to men generically, but to their husband specifically with the responsibility and communion that entails in their mutual self-surrender.
Do the first and second readings then have anything to do then with our final installment of the Bread of Life Discourse we have been journeying through these past four weeks? Very much so! First and foremost, in our lives, every day and every moment, we need to decide, who are we going to serve. Are we going to serve the enemy, who seeks to enslave and kill us? Are we going to serve our unassisted, fallen nature, where we decide to walk this journey alone apart from God? Or will we decide with Joshua and his household to serve the LORD?
Will we lower the bar of marriage and define it by our weaknesses, our failings, our fallen nature, or give our lives to Jesus, make a covenant with him, enter into a sacramental bond so that he becomes the center of our marriages. Do we recognize that each of us as members of the Church are the bride of Christ? Jesus meets us in our imperfections and sin, he empowers us to be faithful, so that we give of ourselves fully, holding nothing back in self-sacrificial love, to allow his grace to build upon our fallen nature, and to raise us to the height of the beauty, fullness, and wonder of what God created marriage to be as Church and when a husband and wife give themselves to Jesus and each other in the Sacrament of Matrimony.
As with the Israelites that Joshua gathered around him, as Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus, the crowd that has been “grumbling” and “disputing” among themselves about the teaching that Jesus has been presenting, have now come to the point in which they too need to make a choice.
The opening line of today’s reading does not bode well. “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it”(Jn 6:60)?
The teaching that they are talking about was the doubled down version of Jesus saying he was not just the bread of life come down from heaven, but that if the people wanted eternal life, the life we have all been created for, they had to believe in the words of Jesus we heard proclaimed last week, which is worth repeating in full:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me, and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate, and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:54-58).
With each stage of his presentation, Jesus increases the vigor of his teaching. There is one last chance for those who might be hoping that Jesus is just speaking metaphorically. As Jesus explains further, he says, “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” Is this then just a spiritual matter, so not really are they to eat the flesh after all? Before they could even ask, Jesus closes that last door. “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life” (Jn 6:63).
What words? “Those who ate my flesh and drink my blood abide in me.” The flesh he is referring to here, as is also seen elsewhere in this gospel and in the writings of St. Paul is referring to “the unassisted, fallen human nature” (Bergsma). The flesh, our fallen human nature is useless. Even at our best, we are finite and limited. We cannot grasp the things of the spirit with our intellect and senses alone. That is why so many here are struggling. They are not opening themselves up to the spiritual truth that Jesus is sharing. Referring to the flesh, humanity’s fallen nature, is different from when Jesus says that they will my flesh, and my blood.
When Peter, Bartholomew, and Martha say that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. They got it, not because they were the best and brightest of the bunch. The light bulb went on because they had been in a relationship with Jesus, not just bystanders looking for miracles and signs. Like any good marriage and solid relationship, they trusted Jesus, even when they didn’t fully understand, and they were open to the move of the Holy Spirit speaking to them.
Jesus finished his discourse. This was no metaphor or figurative language. His message was clear, and the crowd understood exactly what he was saying. Now decision time. “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (Jn 6:66).
The teaching was too hard, they could not make that leap of faith, or they could not trust Jesus even though they could not conceive of what he was talking about. The majority, like the rich man who was unwilling to sell all he had to follow Jesus, walked away. Jesus then turned to the twelve.
“Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:67-69).
Peter was not responding with any great insight. He nor the others who stayed did so not because they understood any better than those who had left what Jesus meant by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. The difference was that they had been through a lot with Jesus, they had developed a relationship with, and they trusted him. They decided to stick with and follow Jesus.
Now Jesus and the twelve turn to us. What will be our decision? Do we trust that God spoke creation into being out of the outpouring of his love? Do we believe that through Mary’s yes and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit the Father sent his Son to take on flesh in the womb of Mary? Do we believe that Jesus is the Son of God who became human, who lived, taught, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven so that through the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ words spoken in the first person by the priest he will again be present on the altar at each Mass?
Do we believe that the bread and wine become substantially, really and truly, the Body and Blood of Christ? Will we too walk away or will we, like Peter and the Apostles, trust in Jesus and continue this amazing journey by giving our lives to Jesus who gave his life for us, so that he could continue to nourish and transform us in his Body and Blood?
Photo: First time as a priest sharing the Body and Blood of Christ who is present in each consecrated host: First Mass of Thanksgiving, May 4, 2024, St. Peter Catholic Church, Jupiter, FL.
John Bergsma quote from The Word of the Lord episode for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time. St. Paul Center digital library, stpaulcenter.com .
Spiritual Stepping Stones 