Dear Friends,
Today we are presented with something very disturbing. St John tells us, in today’s Gospel that our Lord’s teaching about the Eucharist, which we have been following over the last few Sundays, was so difficult, so shocking, that “many of his disciples” simply refused to accept it. And as a result, they stopped following Jesus and they returned to “their former way of life.” There was a large crowd of people surrounding our Lord in the synagogue of Capernaum. Many of them had witnessed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves just the day before. And yet, when he tells them about the Eucharist, so that his divine life will become our nourishment, they turn their backs on him. God’s creatures turn their backs on their Creator.
And so, then he looks at his closest disciples, he looks to the Twelve Apostles, the ones he has chosen to become the foundation of his Church. He doesn’t offer some kind of watered-down explanation of the Eucharist to convince them to stick around. Instead, He simply asks them: “Do you also want to leave?”
It was a moment of crisis. The Twelve didn’t understand, rationally speaking they didn’t understand the mysterious doctrine of the Eucharist any more completely than everybody else. So why did they continue to follow the Lord? They continued to follow Him, because they trusted in Him. They put more faith in the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord, than in their own limited ability to understand God. And that was a wise thing to do. By consciously exercising their faith amid that crisis, and not just depending on their own limited, their own error-prone understanding, they lifted their spiritual maturity to a whole new level. Trusting in God during a moment of crisis, they grew in faith.
In the famous Frick Collection of art, located on Fifth Avenue in New York City, there is a small renaissance painting by Jan van Eyck that illustrates this well, faith in the midst of crisis. In the center of the painting the Blessed Virgin Mary holds the child Jesus. They are enthroned and she is wearing rich and beautiful gowns. Kneeling in front of Mary and Jesus, in an attitude of prayer, is depicted the Carthusian monk Jan Vos who paid for the painting. He is most likely praying for the monastic community of which he was the superior, and where this painting was originally placed.
Two saints are also included in this painting. On the left is St Barbara. She was an early virgin martyr, and devotion to her was very popular during the middle ages. Hoping to discourage young men from bothering her, St. Barbara’s temperamental and jealous father had locked her in a tower. Locked in the tower her only visitors were her father and her maid. Her maid was a Christian and very talkative and they would talk for hours about Jesus and the Catholic faith. Barbara became a believer and asked for baptism.
After her baptism St. Barbara had three windows installed in the top of the tower in honor of the Trinity, which became one of her symbols in art. When her father found out that St. Barbara had become a Christian, he was furious. No daughter of his was going to become one of those Christians. He used torture to make her recant her newfound faith. When that failed, he executed her with a sword. He died too not long after, he was struck by lightning. In Christian art, the palm branch, a sign of victory, is the symbol for martyrs. In this painting, St Barbara is holding a palm branch. And she offers it to Jesus and Mary.
On the other side of the painting is a depiction of St Elizabeth of Hungary. She was a noblewoman from the Middle Ages who was widowed at an early age. She was so beautiful and revered, that princes, kings, and even an emperor sought to marry her after her husband had died. But she turned all of them down – even the emperor. She turned them down because she felt that God was calling her to serve the poor. So, she spent the rest of her short life as a Third Order Franciscan, feeding, visiting, and serving the poor and needy of her deceased husband’s kingdom. In this painting, she his holding out towards Jesus and Mary a jewel-encrusted imperial crown, the crown that could have been hers.
As portrayed in the painting, then, both saints are joining the monk in his petition to the Lord. And what do they use to give weight to their prayers? They use the symbols of their suffering, of what they gave up out of love for Christ. St Barbara’s faith had been tested by her martyrdom, and St Elizabeth’s faith had been tested by the emperor’s proposal. And now, in heaven, these tests are their greatest glory. They offered to God their struggles and that trust in offering their struggles became their path to holiness and glory in Heaven.
When we stay faithful to Christ through difficulties, through temptations, and through tests, we too grow in holiness, and store up treasure forever in Heaven. Times of testing are meant to be times of spiritual growth.
When faith grows in the heart of a Christian, a lot of other virtues start growing too: wisdom, courage, humility, hope, and Christ-like love.
If we want to grow in these virtues, our faith must become more conscious, more mature. How can we help that to happen? We do it the same way that Peter and the other Apostles did. Their moment of crisis occurred after they had been living and traveling with Jesus for two years. During that time, they had gotten to know Jesus in a very personal way. The Lord was not distant or abstract; the Lord was their companion, their leader, and their friend; they had a personal relationship with him.
And so, when that moment of crisis came, that moment in which their faith was challenged, they were ready to respond. Even when they couldn’t see the whole picture themselves, they believed that Jesus could, and they knew that Jesus, the good shepherd, the Holy One of God, would guide them well.
Sooner or later, every Catholic, faces a religious crisis, a situation in which our faith is challenged, in which we don’t understand fully why God does what he does or asks what he asks or why He has let something happen.
When that happens, that is the moment when we can rise to a new level of spiritual maturity. But only if we have been nourishing our faith by getting to know Jesus Christ, the person, knowing Him through a conscious life of prayer, Eucharistic adoration, study, and a sacramental life. If our Catholic faith has been reduced to following a list of rules and routines, it will be much harder to survive and thrive in those moments of testing.
Certainly, God will never give up on us, but unless we have a real relationship with him, we may end up giving up on him. And there is no greater tragedy in life than that.
Our Lord is asking us what he asked the Twelve: “Do you also want to leave… as so many others have done?” I hope we say NO! I hope we say that we believe in the One who died for us. We believe in the One who has the words of eternal life, the One who feeds and strengthens us with His own Body and Blood. My prayer for us today is that our friendship with the Lord will grow always stronger, a friendship that is a strong comfort and anchor in any difficulty or crisis we might ever face.
Let us be great Saints,
Fr. Christopher J. Ankley