***
Gospel: John 6: 44-51
Jesus said to the crowds:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
They shall all be taught by God.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
***
***
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him” Jesus says.
This verb, “draw,” in Greek helkuein, always implies a type of resistance.
It’s the same word John used to describe the effort it took for Peter to draw in a net full of fish. First, Peter met the resistance of the fish and the water, then the resistance of the sand as he dragged his catch ashore.
***
So, what does Jesus mean when he says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”?
That, literally, we must be dragged into belief.
***
In today’s Gospel, for example, Jesus reveals one of his most important teachings, certainly for Catholics: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”
Jesus lays it out there plain and simple – he wants us to eat his “Flesh,” the living bread come down from heaven.
To us it sounds strange. To Jesus’ first listeners, very strange. So much so that the crowd of five-thousand that followed him dwindled down to twelve.
Then he turns to his disciples and says, “Do you also want to leave?”
***
In what ways do I resist the Lord?
Maybe I’m adverse to one of his teachings. Maybe I resist giving up a particular habit, a favorite temptation. Perhaps I fail to trust.
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him.”
May the Spirit weaken our resistance so that we can go deeper with God today.
***
***
Image credits: (1) NeverThirsty (2) Steve Dusek, Podcast (3) St. Francis of Assisi Church