A. And this then brings us to the third thing that Jesus did. But let's first put it into context...
From St John we know that He has already spent two years preaching throughout the length and breadth of Galilee and Judea. Among those who came to listen to His teaching, He picked 12 men (Lk 6:12-15) whom He focused special attention on: forming them (Mt 10) and explaining His teachings to them in greater detail (Mk 4:10-13). They were to continue His work after He left (Mt 28:18-20). Without them, His miracles and preaching for three years would end with those three years. They would never reach or spread to the rest of the world, throughout space or time. Without them, the Good News would within a couple years have become old, stale, rumours:
"Did you guys hear about that guy... That carpenter guy who multiplied bread and fed like the whole town!?"
"Ye! My grandad tells us stories about him from time to time..."
"My grandma is always telling us how at her wedding they had run out of wine and then the same guy made some more and better wine just like that!"
"No way!"
"Serious!"
"He must have been pretty something..."
"Yup! For sure!"
"Anyway. Pass me the water jar over there, please."
Q. Haha! Joker!
A. And now Jesus - like the Jews He's just been preaching to - is faced with a decision.
The previous day He had fed 5,000 plus people with five loaves of bread and two fish and walked on water. The crowd was so impressed they wanted to make Him their king by force there and then. Jesus snuck away. But the majority of that mammoth crowd catches up with him the following day. And they basically want more! More miracles and definitely more food!
But Jesus steers the conversation to REAL food, REAL bread: His body.
When He insists on this topic for the better part of what could have been half an hour, the mammoth crowd forget the hunger they had for such a benevolent king, for miracles and for food and decide to stop following Him.
Jesus is left with a shadow of the formerly mammoth crowd and His 12 apostles. The rest have abandoned Him. This is the only record we have where people abandoned Jesus for doctrinal reasons.
And with all this as a background, now comes the third thing Jesus did. Faced with this mass abandonment, what does He do to salvage the situation?
St. John writes that as the crowds left, Jesus turned to them. He faced those special 12 He had invested more energy and effort in forming; those who were to "take over" from Him and asked them: "Do you also wish to leave?" (Jn 6:67 Other translations have "Do you also wish to go away?” )
They too had to make a decision: can this man give us his flesh to eat? Jesus was not backing down on this one. He was ready to lose even those Twelve on this one doctrinal point: "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; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." (Jn 6:53-55)
Every single follower of Jesus since then has unavoidably had to answer this same question: can this man give us his flesh to eat? Including you... and I.
To be continued...
Tomorrow 1st Nov is the solemnity of All Saints Day. A holy day of obligation for Catholics.
31st October 2016