'You have the words of eternal life.' Sunday Reflections, 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 

My Dad, John Coyle

Taken a week before his sudden death on 11 August 1987

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel  John 6:60-69 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)  

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offence at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

My ordination day, 20 December 1967

With my parents John and Mary and my brother Paddy

My father, who was widowed in 1970, spent six weeks with me in the Philippines from mid-February to early April 1981. He spent most of that time in Tangub City, Misamis Occidental, where I had been parish priest for a few months and from 1979 to 1981 was in charge of Paul VI Formation House, part of the seminary programme in the Diocese (now Archdiocese) of Ozamiz but serving the neighbouring dioceses also.

One evening, along with some parishioners, we went to visit a family who lived maybe 400 meters from the church and the formation house. When we were walking back later, at a slow, relaxed pace, someone remarked that my Dad and I were walking in exactly the same way, with our hands behind our backs. I had never noticed that before.

When I thought about it later, I realised that I must have learned that when I was a child from Sunday morning walks  with Dad and my brother Paddy in the Phoenix Park, near where we lived in Dublin.

People's Gardens, Phoenix Park, Dublin

[Wikipedia; photo by Laurel Lodged]

The pond is knows to Dubliners as 'The Duck Pond' as there have always been ducks there along with some waterhens. On occasion, like countless other youngsters, I fed the ducks with bread.

My Dad often took me to soccer matches in Dalymount Park, about 20 minutes' walk from our home. This would be called 'bonding' today. But before I was of an age to attend football matches, when I was still a toddler, my Dad took me to Sunday Mass. My brother was a baby then and my mother would go to a later Mass. And on special days like Easter Monday and Whit (Pentecost) Monday Dad would take me to Solemn High Mass in the Dominican church or the Capuchin church. I didn't particularly appreciate that at the time, as I found those Masses very long. But I could see how important they were for Dad.

I also saw Dad go to early Mass every weekday morning before coming home to make his and my mother's breakfast. In the winter he would clear out the fireplace and then prepare it to be lit later in the day before cycling off to a long day's work on building (construction) sites. I was to join him on one of those during the summer before my ordination, when I was already a subdeacon. I saw there what I already knew, that he was a general foreman who respected the workers, never raised his voice to them and never swore, even though quite a lot of swearing went on. He led by example. And the workers deeply respected him, younger ones seeing in him a great mentor. 

Dad rarely spoke about his faith but I do remember telling me when I was still a child that the Apostles' Creed was very important.

The First Reading tells us that Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel, put it to them to choose false gods or the God who had led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land. In the gospel we see Jesus challenging the Twelve Apostles after many of his disciples had walked away, unable to accept the teaching of Jesus in last Sunday's Gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

St Peter spoke on behalf of the Twelve: Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

The Apostle Peter in Prison

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

The Hebrew people listening to Joshua accepted the One True God. They included many young children who would not have understood. But as they grew older they did and made their parents' choice for them their own. When I was a small child and my Dad took me to Sunday Mass I didn't understand very much but I was part of a believing community and as I grew older I made my own the choice my parents had made for me at baptism. The solemnity of the High Masses that Dad took me to has left a positive impact on me to this day even though at times the actual experience of what for me was a very long Mass wasn't entirely positive.

As I grew older I made my own choices in the faith I had received in baptism because of my parents' decision to raise me in the Catholic Christian faith. I knew what I was doing when I went to confession for the first time and made my First Holy Communion at the age of seven. I knew even more clearly what I was doing when I was confirmed at the age of ten, then the age for receiving that sacrament in Ireland. And when I entered the seminary at the age of 18 I knew I was preparing for a life-long decision. My parents had given me the example of their own faith and their faithfulness to one another in marriage, which St Paul speaks about so eloquently and deeply in the Second Reading, and left me free to make my own decisions for my Christian life.

In a homily on the Solemnity of the Assumption in 2005 Pope Benedict XVI said, This was also the great temptation of the modern age, of the past three or four centuries. More and more people have thought and said: ‘But this God does not give us our freedom; with all his commandments, he restricts the space in our lives. So God has to disappear; we want to be autonomous and independent. Without this God we ourselves would be gods and do as we pleased’.

Pope Benedict describes the contemporary Western world where God has to disappear, a world where each of us has to make the choice that Joshua asked of the Hebrews, that Jesus asked of the Apostles. We make this choice as individuals who are part of a believing community.

Benedict goes on to say, This was also the view of the Prodigal Son, who did not realize that he was ‘free’ precisely because he was in his father's house. He left for distant lands and squandered his estate. In the end, he realized that precisely because he had gone so far away from his father, instead of being free he had become a slave; he understood that only by returning home to his father's house would he be truly free, in the full beauty of life.

St Peter's choice and that of most of the Apostles led to their martyrdom, which they freely accepted. God doesn't ask that of most of us. He asks us to make daily choices in little things that come from our faith in Jesus Christ, God who became Man, the kind of choices I saw my parents make each day.

They and the many others like them whom I have known and who probably would not be able to articulate their faith in words were revealing to me where true freedom and authentic life lie. The apparent loss of freedom to two individuals who marry gives them the freedom to truly love each other as spouses and, as parents, to love their children and bring the whole family closer to God.

The response to the Responsorial Psalm today sums it up: Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Panis Angelicus

Words by St Thomas Aquinas, music by César Franck

Sung by Patricia Janečková (1998 – 2023)

The Janáček Chamber Orchestra

Panis angelicus [Thus Angels' Bread is made]
fit panis hominum; [the Bread of man today:]
Dat panis cœlicus [the Living Bread from heaven]
figuris terminum: [with figures dost away:]
O res mirabilis! [O wondrous gift indeed!]
Manducat Dominum [the poor and lowly may]
pauper, servus et humilis. [upon their Lord and Master feed.] 

Traditional Latin Mass 

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost 

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 08-25-2022 if necessary).

Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24.  Gospel: Matthew 6:24-33.

Wheatfield with a Lark

Vincent van Gogh [Web Gallery of Art]

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26; Gospel).