The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life

Therefore many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?"  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe."  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?"  But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"  He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.

- John 6:60-71

We are currently reading John chapter 6, which began with the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness.   Yesterday we read that those among the religious leadership (or perhaps their followers) quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, 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 at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent Me, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.

Therefore many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?"  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe."  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  My study bible remarks on the fact that even His disciples took Christ's teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and that many walked with Him no more.  It notes that to this day, there are many who continue to struggle with this teaching regarding eating His Body and drinking His Blood, and so do not walk in His teaching.  So difficult is this mystery -- but to attempt to give a rational definition of its nature or to explain away Christ's words purely as metaphor is incorrect, and not in keeping with the explicit words of the text in the teaching of Christ.  My study bible says that to reject this sacramental teaching is to reject the witness of the Scriptures and also the unanimous teaching of the Church throughout history.  In yesterday's reading and commentary, we remarked upon the mystical nature of this reality given to us by Christ.  Here, Christ affirms the mystical, spiritual nature of the Eucharist, when He says that the Spirit gives life -- it is how we are to understand the mystical presence in the sacrament, and that He is not speaking of something on purely worldly terms.  And there is a kind of theophany in today's passage, because Christ also links the working of the Father within us to our capacity to grasp the mystery of the Eucharist.

Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?"  But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"  He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.  So difficult is the teaching regarding His Body and Blood that Jesus turns to the twelve.   Here is John's version of Peter's confession, and the faith of Peter which assents and affirms Christ's teaching about the life present in His words:  "You have the words of eternal life."  But immediately the note of betrayal is interjected at this point, something we don't like to hear but must accept as part of the reality of this ministry and Christ's work in the world.  Christ doesn't mince words when He says that "one of you is a devil."

Betrayal is a part of life in the world.  Even Jesus remarks explicitly about His own choosing of the twelve, and yet one of them "is a devil."   Wouldn't we truly expect that Christ, who knows all things, would have chosen only loyal disciples?  And yet there is this mystery that somehow links to the mysterious hiddenness of God the Father:  that "no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."   There is something mysterious in us -- in the depths of the place where we connect even to God the Father -- that works in faith, or not.  This depth of connection that we don't see and don't know on clearly conscious terms works in a mysterious way to draw us to Christ, or not.  As we remarked in yesterday's reading and commentary, we "have ears to hear" -- or not.  Christ wishes to draw those with a capacity for mystical engagement, for a kind of love in the heart that responds to God, to the life in His words conferred by the Spirit.  There is an interesting connection in His teaching, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life."   All throughout chapter 6, Jesus has been teaching us about the Eucharist, that He is the bread that came down from heaven, and that those who consume His body and blood and abide in Him -- and He in them -- will be raised up with Him to eternal life.  The connection here is the work of the Spirit, and Jesus' words affirming that the Spirit gives life.  In other words, our capacity for the full gift of eternal life with Christ is also linked to our ability to perceive the Spirit and therefore the life in Christ's words.  There is a seamless circle of life in all of these things, a presence of God that is present to those who may grasp it, who "have ears to hear."  John's Gospel, right from the beginning, when Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about the work of the Spirit in chapter 3, gives us the viewpoint of the early Church in its experience of the work of the Spirit among them.  It was the last Gospel to be written, and the theology present gives us the mindset of the Church in the first century.  We experience already the fullness of the theology, particularly of the Eucharist and the presence and work of the Spirit.  Jesus has also made clear several times that it is the Father that draws to Himself what is truly Christ's -- so we have the Trinity at work among us already powerfully present in the understanding of the Church at the time of the writing of the Gospel and its witness.  What we ourselves draw from the Gospel is its realistic depiction of the work of God, and also its rejection by human beings.  The betrayal of Judas -- even one hand-picked by Christ as part of the twelve -- is also something that tells us about depth.  That is, that deep inside of ourselves we are also capable of blindness, deafness, darkness, betrayal and rejection of God.  When we experience betrayal and abandonment in our own lives, a rejection of the good, we must see that we stand in the same place of the Cross that Christ will go to.  Our Gospel is not a fairy tale of a utopian possibility for this world.  It is, rather, quite the opposite:  it offers us a choice.  It speaks of the darkness and of the Light (John 1:1-18), and its protagonist Jesus Christ is the light that shines for us in the darkness.  It gives us the clear picture of our reality:  that God is present with us, and that we may abide in Christ and He in us.  But it also teaches us that we have a choice, and that there are many who will reject that choice -- the life in His words, the Spirit that works among us -- and be blind and deaf to the light and His teachings.  In the early Church, which at the time of John's writing was under the strain of persecution, their experience was one of tribulation -- but faith through it all.  This is what the Gospel offers to us, not a false picture of perfection on worldly terms, but a faith that grapples even with the worst the world can offer us, even the betrayal of those whom we consider brothers or sisters, those to whom we have offered the grace and mercy He teaches.  Let us remember He went first to the Cross so that we take up our own in faith -- and that the Spirit remains with us at work in His words of life, if we have the ears to hear for ourselves.   There are those who claim as well that the devil doesn't exist, but I would beg to differ.  Beware of those who offer utopian abstraction; life is not abstract.   We need to remember that "we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter" (Romans 7:6).  The world is now as it was, but the light is also still with us -- and we yet may abide in Him and He in us, even in the midst of betrayal.