Gospel according to Saint John 6,24-35:
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
Gorgons, Tam-tam and Artificial Intelligence
Luis CASASUS President of the Idente Missionaries
Rome, August 04, 2024 | XVIII Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ex 16: 2-4.12-15; Eph 4: 17.20-24; Jn 6: 24-35
In a desperate effort to capture our attention, the History teacher in High School would show us spectacular images of the Gorgons, monsters from Greek mythology with fearsome teeth and snakes for hair, whose blood on the right side could raise the dead, while the blood on the left side was an instantly fatal poison. I must confess that it was not very successful, but the image stuck in our adolescent imagination.
Years later, on the mission we had in Chad, I remember that one night it was impossible for us to sleep because of the sound of some tam-tams that a nearby community was beating to scare away evil spirits, as they did not want them to have contact with a chief who had just passed away that day. They wanted him to live happily ever after in the next world.
Now, I see in the news that, for 3000 dollars, “you can have conversations with your deceased loved ones, if you allow us to synthesize their voice and image, using an Artificial Intelligence program“.
In four thousand years, it seems that the human desire for eternal life has not changed. That explains why, in today’s Gospel, Christ says to the crowd that only wanted at that moment to obtain from Him “the food that perishes”: This is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.
But we should not judge the lack of vision of these people. In the first place, because their desperate hunger, their urgent desire for food for the body, was real, not a whim. And, furthermore, because our situation and our attitude is very similar to that of these people. What is essential, however, is to see how Christ responds with patience and tenderness, just as in the Old Testament Yahweh responded with manna to the complaints and lack of trust of the people.
It is not just about food; each of us desires to have control over the future, to live calmly and securely, especially with health and people who love us, for sickness, pain and loneliness are signs of death. In those moments of suffering, it is often precisely when we stop looking to Christ and focus all our attention on personal suffering, on the limits imposed on me by illness or my own spiritual mediocrity. Surely I do not fully believe that eternal life has already begun, in this world, in the midst of my tears, in the midst of what I did not expect to go through, what seems to overcome me and seemed to me only “things that happen to others”.
This is also evident in many people who are apparently not interested in the spiritual life, i.e., the so-called indifferent and unbelievers. For example, because of this hunger for control, few people are able to accept the help of another with simplicity. The root is in our Instinct for Happiness, which is – like every instinct – indispensable for the human being, but its strength can only be controlled by a state of prayer; otherwise, it becomes our lord and master. Let us note what the First Reading tells us:
They all began to murmur against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, “Would that the Lord had caused us to die in Egypt! There we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill, but you have brought us into the wilderness to starve us all to death.”
That is sometimes our aggressive reaction against God and against people who want to help us! The instinct for happiness triggers in us the fear of losing fame, of being stigmatized (as weak, ignorant, dependent on others…) and another fear no less powerful: having to face truths that we are afraid of(I have done wrong all the time; I was wrong in my conclusions; I have hidden for a long time something of my history or my intentions...).
But the example and the word of Christ are clear: I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly (Jn 10: 10).
Unexpected healings, which are attributed to the intercession of the saints, are welcomed as a sign of eternal life, a miracle that anticipates the fact that death does not have the last word. We need not only to be certain of this, but also to experience it. Otherwise, the only alternative (??) is to anesthetize or narcotize ourselves with some activity that absorbs our attention for a while.
Let us take good note of the realism of St. Paul, who invites us today to recognize that our life is a continuous struggle (our instinct for happiness does not like this and tries to deny it) that leads us to permanently strip ourselves of deceitful desires and to clothe ourselves with a new nature… this is subtle and at the same time profound, because good desires refer to the necessary control that I must have over my life… but this shower of desires can easily blind my sight and make invisible the need and pain of those who are close to me. Only those who accept this reality and take a small step towards the hunger and thirst of their neighbor can experience the closeness of the Divine Persons.
—ooOoo—
Christ invites us to live soberly, without accumulating or becoming attached to anything, to any wealth or to any custom or way of doing things. Those who truly desire to be missionary disciples take this completely seriously, making it a continuous element of their ascetical struggle, not an eventual recourse “in case of temptation”. Let us take an example of a saint of tender heart and relentless asceticism.
The way followed by St. Ignatius to cultivate detachment from our instinct he called, with Latin expression, agere contra. That is, “to do exactly the opposite”; it is to act directly against non-life-giving behaviors. St. Ignatius was well aware that he was attached to his career, reputation and appearance. For 11 months, he lived in a cave (now a famous pilgrimage site) to fight hard and “act against” his attachments by wearing sackcloth, growing his hair long and not daydreaming about personal honor, but meditating deeply on God. Note that the criterion is not whether something is morally wrong, but that it does not produce life.
He tells in his autobiography that he had touched with his hand a sick person with plague and he began to be persuaded that he had been infected. Then he put his whole hand in his mouth, saying: If the hand is infected, let the mouth be infected too. And the obsession went away. A spectacular way to eliminate fear.
Without having to go to these extremes, peculiar to some saints, the essential is clear in today’s Gospel: Christ ALWAYS finds a way to nourish, to give life to all. Not that the Eucharist is a symbol, it is His sacramental presence, but it also represents and signifies how your life and mine can nourish others with life, that is, with small gestures of forgiveness and mercy that confirm to them that they are not alone, that someone on earth and in heaven cares for them, does not overlook their pain and weariness.
To give a simple example, it is like what happens on a flight, when the plane begins to pass a zone of strong turbulence and, instinctively, everyone looks at the stewardess. The simple serene smile of that crew member is enough for everyone to calm down a little, in the midst of the discomfort and ignorance of the extent of the difficulty.
When Yahweh reveals himself to Moses, he tells him: I am who I am (Ex 3: 14). This is not a play on words or an enigma; it means, and this is how the chosen people understood it, that God is always at their side. On the contrary, other beings, other creatures, pass away, disappear. We too perceive his presence, not in the form of manna, but in the form of forgiveness, of trust that does not destroy our infidelity, of a small light in the darkness, that confirms to us that the shore awaits us.
Trust is expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, where we pray for strength and bread for today, not for the whole week; just like the manna, which fell daily from heaven. You and I want to understand not only what is happening to us now, but to see before our eyes the whole plan that God has laid out for the rest of our lives. We don’t need to, if we truly believe the words we utter: Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For Jesus, his food is to do the will of the one who sent him and to carry out his work (Jn 4: 34). To call doing the will of the Father “food” is not the same as calling it “obligation” or “activity” … it signifies a true and profound need, which, if it is not continually fulfilled, the hunger and thirst for eternal life will never cease.
Certainly, this is something that we gradually learn, as one learns to know a friend or a teacher. The disciple becomes more and more a son, and therefore is able to know not only what is in agreement with the Father, but also what constitutes his preference, what truly satisfies him.
Something that St. Paul often reminds us of is our tendency to return to the past life, to the old man we once set out to leave behind. It is clear that this necessarily happens, unless that will of the Father is truly the air we breathe, an unceasing desire. This does not occur naturally, neither flesh nor blood permits it.
This explains why Christ tells us today, in a very revealing phrase, that God’s work is that we believe in the one He has sent.
This trust in Christ means trusting the situation in which I live, with its challenges and its unknowns, its joys and its sufferings, for I must remember that this mysterious and sometimes overwhelming reality IS my life and is more authentic than my plans, my best wishes or my noblest efforts. Yes, one can certainly understand what it means to embrace the cross.
Neither the Samaritan woman at the well understood what was the water that quenched thirst forever, nor the crowd today in Capernaum understood how Jesus could be the bread of eternal life. Let us not forget: we too cannot understand or experience it, unless we taste the little crumb that we find in this hour, in this moment, that seems insignificant, not indispensable. Our faith in Jesus is manifested by choosing (there is always a choice!) between something really reasonable for the world and the folly of a gesture, a silence, or a generous act that heaven expects of me. God is also thirsty.
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In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Luis CASASUS
President
