The Church has taken us on an extended meditation of John 6 in these last five weeks. Today we come to a point of decision. Just as Joshua asked the people of Israel who they were going to serve, inviting the people to make a judgment, so the Lord asks His disciples whether they are going to stay or leave.
In the weeks of reading John 6, we have heard again and again about the food that the Lord wants to provide for us. Moses gave the people manna in the desert but Jesus is going to give us the true bread from Heaven, His flesh for the life of the world. Jesus is the living bread come down from Heaven. His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink.
We have been invited again and again in the Responsorial Psalm in these weeks to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord” (Psalm 34). Jesus takes us deeper and deeper into the reality of this food, teaching us that we will really be one body with Him in the Eucharist.
Many have tried to explain away this teaching of Jesus. It is awkward, isn’t it? What exactly is Jesus asking us to do? Those who read John 6 today might want to read Jesus’s words about understanding what He is saying in a spiritual way to mean that He does not really intend us to eat His body and His blood. But this is false. We cannot say that “spiritual” means “unreal” and thus say that He does not really want us to eat His flesh. What Jesus means by spiritual is that the transformation of His body into food will be accomplished by the Holy Spirit and that we can only understand His true presence (real presence) in the Eucharist by means of that same Spirit.
The reason I know that Jesus means what He says is that His words are so offensive to people. It says in the Gospel that many of His disciples went back to their former way of life after this teaching on the flesh and blood in the Eucharist. Why would they walk away if He only meant eating and drinking in a figurative, “merely” spiritual way? Why would they say that His teaching is hard and who can accept it if this teaching was not really that hard?
And Jesus responds after so many walk away by doubling down for His disciples. “Do you also want to leave?” He is asking them to make a choice, to make a judgment. He asks this of us because He loves us, because He knows that making this judgment is a first step on the road to true spiritual freedom. As Father Giussani says, “Let us begin to judge. This is the beginning of freedom.”
Jesus’s question “Do you also want to leave?” solicits the free response of Peter. And Peter makes his confession of faith. This is the Gospel of John’s version of Peter’s confession. We all know the confession of Peter in Matthew’s Gospel, after Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?” There, Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In John’s Gospel, Peter responds, “Where else would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that You are the Holy One of God.” Wow! What a judgment!
Jesus knows the heartbreak of those who would leave Him, just as so many people in the Church know the heartbreak of family members and friends who have left the Church. Many have rejected Jesus, have found His teachings too difficult, have gone back to their former way of life. So many times in Confession people ask me what they can do for those who have left. How do we bring them back?
I think one of the first steps for brining back those who have left is to know why we stay. That is, to make a judgment. I am using the word judgment in the sense of decision, or better yet, in the sense of a comparison. Quite literally, we compare what we know of Jesus with what we know of all the other things this world holds up as lords and saviors, as gods. The judgment that Peter makes can become our judgment too. And this is good not only for us but for all those we meet. When we know why we stay, we can tell others about the food we found. I think of the people on the street who know all the places to go to get food or water or to get out of the heat or to get some new clothes or a shower. And these folks tell others they meet in similar situations where they can go to get help. And so the work of evangelization is just one beggar telling another beggar where he can get food. This is the judgment: the true food is there!
What form does this judgment, this comparison, this decision take? Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life.” The Psalm says, “I have tasted and have seen the goodness of the Lord.” Ray LaMontagne says, “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.” Okay, that last one is not a song about God, but I think it sums up perfectly what Peter was getting at in his confession of faith. (Only if you don’t mind calling God “baby” sometimes! [I only learned after I said that in a homily that it was a reference to South Park!]).
You are the best thing that ever happened to me!