Peter’s Choice
Twenty-first Sunday of the Year. Fr Dominic Ryan suggests that the same decision faces us now as was faced by those who followed Christ 2,000 years ago.
Today’s gospel reading, like those of the previous few weeks, is taken from chapter six of St. John’s Gospel. The chapter is an important one and it consists of four sections – the feeding of the multitude, the walking on water, the Bread of Life discourse, and the reaction to the Bread of Life discourse. It intends both to locate Christ within the context of God’s previous saving actions and to suggest that God’s future saving actions will occur through Christ. In effect, therefore, it’s linking Christ’s activity with God’s.
At this point, however, things start to become tricky for those who had been following Christ. Up to a point, they could just have accompanied Christ to enjoy the free meal, so to speak. Bread is what they wanted, we might suppose, and bread is what they got. There would have been no need to reflect on the way those miraculous events connected Christ to God’s earlier saving actions, much less to reflect on the Eucharistic overtones of those events themselves.
Yet once Christ started to speak about himself as the Bread of Life, or the ‘living bread’ which had ‘come down from heaven’, and to say that people must partake in that bread in order to be saved, once he had said things like that, then it would no longer be possible to sit back passively and enjoy the ride. At this point one had to make a choice about what Our Lord was saying. Either accept it and commit oneself to it or reject it and leave it behind.
Now that’s the point at which today’s gospel picks up the narrative. Some of the people who heard this were shocked and said, ‘this is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’ They decided it wasn’t for them and they left. Indeed in some cases they started to plot against Christ. On the other hand, some reacted like Simon Peter, who, when challenged by Christ replied, ‘Lord who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life.’
Clearly the people who responded in this way took a different route; they decided to give what Christ was saying a try and put it at the centre of their lives. Notice however, they just tried to follow Christ fully – they just made the attempt. It doesn’t mean they always succeeded; Simon Peter, after all, was the perfect example of that. Even though basically he was very committed to Christ, he would have to pass through many trials and endure a tough learning curve before he achieved the great things for Christ which we know he did go on to achieve.
So fundamentally, it’s not whether one succeeds in following Christ or not that distinguishes these two responses. Rather it’s whether one is willing to try. And if one is willing to try, then ultimately it’s the grace Christ shares with us through his salvific death that makes it possible for us to be successful, not anything we do of ourselves.
Moreover it’s not just the people who accompanied Jesus at that time who had to make this choice. We do as well. Indeed the context of our choice is in some ways similar to the situation which those people in the gospel found themselves in. Being a Christian in today’s world isn’t likely to bring us earthly praise or riches. In some cases at least, it may even disadvantage us. So we aren’t likely to come along for the ride, so to speak. Ours is likely to be a deep-rooted choice, a habitual way of life. We follow Christ because we think that being a Christian is the best way to live and the best way to arrive at what’s most important – eternal life with God.
If that’s what we’re about, then we’ve taken Simon Peter’s option; the option of those who want to try to put Christ at the centre of their lives. Those who take advantage of the grace offered to them. Those who want to be ever better followers of Christ.
Readings: Joshua 24:1-2,15-18 | Ephesians 5:21-32 | John 6:60-69
Frances Flatman
Like this notion of trying – an antidote to catholic perfectionism
Andrew Foster
Yes I agree, Frances. Fr Dominic expresses it well in the following sentence: ‘if one is willing to try, then ultimately it’s the grace Christ shares with us through his salvific death that makes it possible for us to be successful, not anything we do of ourselves.’ One needs this spur to seeking to remain humble, (knowing that we have failed and will fail again), and yet simultaneously to setting no limit whatsoever to what God may work in us. Andrew Foster.
Catherine
Thanks Fr Ryan. I certainly keep failing. I have learnt that instead of allowing my guilt to make me feel it’s wrong to turn away from Jesus because of my shame, I’ve learnt to then turn to him. It always helps me to try harder, but now I’m thinking about how the graces I receive to do a better job has cost Him everything. I hadn’t quite put it that way to myself. I hope this helps me think much harder and pray more to be more thankful and to realise just how much He loves me and all of us. It really is astounding beyond words. Thank you for this piece, which is so helpful.
Alejandro
I identify myself with Catherine. We are not the owners of what happens, because everything in us is borrowed. All that is good in us is grace, to the point that what we do not do through grace, in reality, we can do only because we are exchanging essential graces for small, merely instrumental graces. Sometimes with good will, attitudes of tenacity and courage are proposed, affirming that one “builds one’s own reality”, in order to encourage people’s self-confidence. But this has a limit, because in reality even the most tenaciously worked and hard-trained skill is ultimately a grace from God. It is always God who, through him, if a person acts with tenderness, transforms adversity. Of course one has to take responsibility for situations in one’s hands, but by tenderness one recognizes that one is not the master of the moment, nor the despot of reality. In absolutely all circumstances of life one does, at most, the best one can with the means at one’s disposal.