Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal 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 the 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

 

Yesterday we read that the religious leaders in the synagogue in Capernaum complained about Jesus, because He said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven."  And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven'?"  Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves.  No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.  Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

 

  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 the Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.   My study Bible comments that even His disciples took Christ's teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and many walked with Him no more.  It says that today there remain those who reject these words of Christ which concern the sacramental eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood, and so do not "walk" in this teaching.  The Eucharist is a truly deep Mystery, and this is something to accept.  To attempt either to define its nature in a rational sense, or to explain away these words altogether as purely metaphorical, are both in error.  My study Bible comments that either extreme is dubious; to reject the sacramental teaching is to reject the witness of the Scriptures and the unanimous teaching of the Church throughout history.  From the beginning, this was understood and accepted; we read in Luke 22:19-20 the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus, and find reference to the celebration of the Liturgy as "the Eucharist" in the Didache, a first century teaching document.  

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.  My study Bible comments that Peter's answer to Jesus' question defines Christianity altogether.  If Jesus is uniquely the Christ, the Son of the living God,  Christianity cannot be seen as simply an alternative philosophical system or path of spirituality.  It in fact excludes all compromise in this sense of authority that conveys, the Source of wisdom for all else that may be true (John 14:6).  My study Bible adds that Peter's understanding cannot be achieved by human reason, but only by divine revelation through faith (1 Corinthians 12:3).  Let us note also that the Gospel gives us a picture of the reality of this world, that amidst these chosen disciples is also the one who would be betray Him, whom Jesus calls a devil.

 

Here in today's reading is the faith of St. Peter speaking out for the rest of the disciples.  Let us pay attention to his distinctive language in preface to his confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God:  "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."  To my mind, it is a visceral response to Christ's words and teaching from one who receives His grace with faith.  It is similar to the response of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus appeared to them in a form unknown to them, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32).  Let us remember here that Jesus has emphasized throughout this chapter that "no one can come to Me unless the Father draws him" (John 6:44), and this is confirmed at the report of St. Peter's confession of faith in St. Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus replies to him that "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 16:17).   In today's reading, Jesus affirms this yet again, teaching, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to Him by the Father."  So we may presume that St. Peter's perception of the "words of eternal life" is also evidence of the Father at work in him, while we know that his great faith made him a leader among the disciples.  John's Gospel emphasizes this dichotomy around belief in Christ:  there are the disciples who follow, and those who cannot retain that faith in Jesus as the Christ.  Jesus' words teach us what makes the difference, the work of the Father within.  Moreover, the Spirit is also included in this dynamic work, for Jesus tells the unbelievers, "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."  Those who can receive and know Christ's words as those of "eternal life" are also those who are responding to the Spirit, and this again gives us a sense of what it is that separates those with faith from those who are unbelievers.  Similarly to Christ's teachings on the Eucharist, these elements of the Scripture today are teachings of things which contain deep mystery which is ungraspable to us in terms of its precise working or mechanisms.  But nonetheless we're given the blunt "facts" of faith by Jesus:  His words are from the Father, it is only the Spirit that gives life and this life in His words, and the Father draws those who will have faith, a mysterious grace that grows within us.  How do such things work?  Does grace work upon the soul, or the spirit?  Do human beings make choices that in turn open us up to this deeper work, or does the deeper work of God work in us first?  None of us can understand the true workings of such things, but we do have Christ's language and teachings given to us here to accept.  All of these things combine to give us the wisdom of the Church from all of her earliest centuries, to teach us that faith is a substance which grows in us; it becomes powerful and solid even as we witness through the Scriptures the changes in the disciples throughout Christ's ministry and afterward, as well as the conversion of St. Paul and the extraordinary power of his faith even today to shape how we understand Christianity.  Let us learn -- we who are so enamored of the scientific and factual -- that there are mysteries linked to things we may come to know through experience.  While it may not be apparent to us how they work, we do know from experience that they work -- and through the conviction of faith and a faithful life we may grow in that substance as it shapes us and in turn shapes the good things we do in the world.  Faith is not merely a one-time rational understanding, but something that must be lived and grown into, with mistakes along the way -- for we have the whole story in the Gospels of those who came before us, even the first called who make plenty of mistakes shown to us, including those of the faithful Peter, named "Rock" by Jesus for that faith (see Matthew 26:69-75).  Faith is a journey of life experience, a learning curve, an experiential way to come into wisdom which contains mystery that is inexplicable in its workings.  We can read this through the stories of the people contained in the entire Bible, and right from its beginning in Genesis.  Let us seek to accept the ways of knowing which we cannot fully explain, but are nonetheless present to us through grace and the experience of living faith -- even if we live among the faithless (John 1:4-5).