One of the best ways to celebrate the Easter Season is to continue to conform our lives to the one who gave his life for us that we may experience and be engaged in our life to the full. We can accomplish this better by putting into practice what we read in the Gospels as well as being open to encountering God in our daily experiences and one another.
Today’s Gospel reading continues after Jesus not only fed the 5,000 but also after he had walked across the Sea of Galilee and guided his disciples safely to the shore. Those who had eaten as a result of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, got in their own boats to follow Jesus to Capernaum as well.
When the crowd found and gathered around Jesus, he continued to teach them, guiding them to “not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” The people asked him what they could, “do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent” (cf: Jn 6:27-29).
To believe in the one he sent. The response of Jesus may not appear to fit the request of how to accomplish the works of God. But to believe is not passive. Belief is to be followed by action. If we say that we believe in Jesus, we are invited to pray with him, worship him in communion with fellow believers, sing songs praising him, give to and serve one another by practicing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Believing in the one God the Father sent, believing in his Son, also means that we allow Jesus into our minds and hearts, we allow his light to shine in our places where there is darkness and pain, where we are in need of confessing and healing. When we believe in Jesus, we are willing to submit our will to his will. The good news is that Jesus knows what is the best for us, what will truly fulfill us and give our lives meaning. The challenge is, are we willing to trust Jesus with the direction and path of our lives?
To accomplish the work of God, we must believe in the one whom he sent. To believe in Jesus, we need to trust him. As we spend time reading, meditating upon and praying with the recorded accounts of Jesus in the gospels, are lives become transformed when we then put what he has taught us into practice. We will accomplish the work of God by trusting, learning from, and following his Son, Jesus, who the Father sent to be one with us in our humanity so that we can become one with him in his divinity.
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Photo: Blessed to be following Jesus and serving him each day as his priest for the past year!
Spiritual Stepping Stones 