Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
A wise retreat master many years ago shared the story of his Abbot who often told the monks of his Abbey, “The problem with the good news is that for many, it’s just too good to be true!”
For the past weeks we have reflected on the 6th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, known also as the “Bread of Life” discourse. In this multi-layered Gospel, Jesus through the recollection of his beloved disciple, reveals the meaning of the Lord’s greatest gift to his Church, the gift of the Holy Eucharist.
In the past Sundays, I have taken this timely opportunity to offer my own reflections on the meaning of the Eucharist against the background of my 46 years as a priest and pastor as well as a student of the Liturgy.
With outstretched arms, the Lord from age to age extends his loving invitation to “Taste and See” the goodness of his living presence in the simple gifts of bread and wine now transformed by the power of his Spirit into the deepest reality of his presence.
To some of his hearers in today’s Gospel, it was ‘just too good to be true’ and sadly, they walked away. They were measuring the immensity of God’s unfailing love and presence by the often smallness and pettiness of our own humanity. They were unwilling to surrender in vulnerability to the transforming power of love and preferred to stand back, in the false security of their little worlds of judgment and doubt.
The God who knows our deepest secrets and is aware of all the shadows of our human heart, nevertheless, offers his living presence as food and drink for our pilgrimage to our eternal home. He offers us the medicine of immortality to all those who humbly pray with the centurion of old, “Lord, I am not worthy….”
So great a gift is, indeed, too good to be true, but it is true for all who are willing to surrender in faith to the Lord of life and love.
My friends, rather than expending needless and exhausting energy on singling out those among us who are ‘unworthy’ of the Sacrament of Unity, and endless liturgy wars that, in my opinion, have far more to do with nostalgia, aesthetics and a spiritually dangerous ‘holier than thou’ attitude, let us simply listen anew to the words of Peter, the rock, who reminds us: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”