Blog & Pastor Letters

We continue a month-long hearing from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, which began with Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed a multitude in a deserted place. When the crowd recognized the miracle as a sign that God’s Messiah would reenact the wonders of Exodus and again feed them heavenly bread, Jesus quite simply disappeared. He fled from their adulation, their plans to make him their king. He went deeper into the wilderness, higher up the mountain, to pray to his heavenly Father in secret.

When hunger overtakes you, the importance of what you were doing fades until you find the satisfaction of a filled stomach. Whatever you were doing, that day’s pursuit, succumbs to the simple need for sustenance. A life spent primarily on the pleasures of food and drink is meanly lived, yet no one can go without eating. Wisely, we often combine caloric intake with the good of eating together, changing the meal into a communal repast of joyful conversation. We do well when the replenishing of the body is joined with true communion with others, the one thing really worth living for.

“This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” For a moment the crowd in today’s reading from the Gospel of John seem to have experienced an epiphany of faith: an insight into Jesus’ identity like Andrew and Philip in John chapter 1 (John 1:41, 45) or the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4 (John 4:29). But then Jesus is obliged to withdraw from them — to not entrust himself to them, just like he has before with shallow followers who believed in him only because “they saw the signs which he did” (John 2:23). Jesus “knew what was in” people like that; he knew their faith was in signs, not in Jesus himself.

Have you ever felt like a sheep without a shepherd?

Have you ever felt lost or alone in your faith? Abandoned, even? Do you know the feeling of going to Mass, perhaps at an unfamiliar parish — or perhaps not — and bracing yourself for what you might experience? Ever had a particularly bad experience with a priest, or looked at problems in the Church, or our nation, or the world, and wondered, “Why don’t the bishops do or say something?”

“A plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” This amazing sentence in the second reading, from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, is the climax to a magnificent passage that comes up in the Sunday Mass readings just once every three years — today being that day — though this passage is prayed by priests, deacons, and religious typically every week in the Divine Office, during Monday Evening Prayer! So it’s a key passage in the heart and mind of the Church, even though we hear it so seldom at Sunday Mass.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the section on the First Commandment, lists atheism as “a sin against the virtue of religion” — not just a false belief or an error, but a sin. Now, the Catechism is quick to acknowledge that culpability in particular atheists “can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances.” In praying for “those who do not acknowledge God” in the Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday, the Church asks that, in “following what is right in sincerity of heart, they may find the way to God himself.” So disbelieving in God’s existence doesn’t automatically mean that someone isn’t sincere in seeking to follow what is right and true.