21ST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

IT’S NOT EASY, BUT I WILL TRUST

Jn 6: 60-69

 

 

 

One of our lay ministers suffered a stroke. I regularly visited him, prayed for him, and consoled him. Time passed and he began to question why his recovery was slow. When will I get well? Why did this happen? Why to me, of all people? In the next visits, he refused to talk to me, even avoiding to look at me by staring on the wall.

 

Even Jesus’ disciples found something hard to take in the sermons he gave about himself being the Bread of Life. Things in our lives, even when considered from the optic of faith, becomes difficult to understand, to accept, or to reconcile.

 

Why do we get sick or have many problems or lose loved ones or fall into the hands of cruel people? Since we cannot get an immediate answer, we begin to doubt, to get angry, to rebel and then to turn away from the Lord. But Peter exemplifies the sentiment of disciples who go through all these things but take another route. They continue to trust, to believe, to surrender. “Lord to whom shall we go…”

 

When confronted with confusion, problems, puzzles of life and faith, do we stop believing? Do we look somewhere else for easy answers? Do we abandon our faith just because we cannot understand things now?

 

Life will always be full of such things… and we will struggle to reconcile God’s Word and our situation. Let us pray not to be swayed in the direction of doubt or unbelief. With prayer, let us resist this temptation and hold fast to our conviction. We have Jesus with us… He is present in His Body and Blood in the Eucharist… To whom shall we go? He is the Bread of Life!