UNLESS THE FATHER DRAWS THEM

 

UNLESS THE FATHER DRAWS THEM

The sixth chapter of John is a pivot calling for a decision.  Up till then Jesus gives “signs”- the marriage at Cana, the woman at the well, the multiplying of the bread - which call for a response.  That response will depend on people’s underlying attitudes in ordinary life.  Are they loving and forgiving in their relationships with one another?  Are they considerate with the poor, the weak and all who suffer?  Their daily dispositions prepare them for how they will react when something big is asked of them.

John Henry Newman lived through almost the entire nineteenth century and his influence had a huge impact in the twentieth.  His contemporaries wanted a comfortable Christianity that allowed a place for religion in their lives.  But it was a “tamed” religion, drained of the painful struggle that faith demanded.  He called it a “notional” faith where people accepted the core teaching on Christianity but did not delve into its often painful demands.  He contrasted this with an “imaginative” or “real” faith where people used their mind and heart to open themselves to the mystery even though they did not understand everything.

At the end of chapter six, we are told “many left him” because he was stretching their minds and hearts beyond the accepted norms of the Jewish faith at the time and they could not take it.  It seemed safer not to venture beyond what they knew.  Peter by contrast, led the few disciples who remained into an act of real faith.  He did not understand but he had the imagination, the breath of vision, to know that if Jesus was saying something it must have a meaning even if he didn’t get it at the time.

If we look into our own hearts, do we find that we often live on the “notional” level?  Maybe we too often “take things for granted “? Or do we wonder at our world? There is one thing I give myself high marks for: flying! It is so easy to take a plane and fly off somewhere but every time I fly, I find myself pausing as the plane leaves the solid earth and takes off into the sky.  How can we take that for granted? How our ancestors would have wondered!  But we don’t.  We take it as a normal part of life. That’s what planes do! But it is amazing!

In our life in the Spirit, our life as baptised people, do we take many things for granted?  Even the Eucharist? Do we not often slip into the “notional”?  Yet we are called to wonder, to use our imagination to ponder the mystery, to make it “real”.  Jesus told the Jews, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father.” These words need pondering.  But if you have read this far, it surely means you have been drawn to do so!

 

25 August   Sunday 21B           Jos 24:1…...18    Ep 5:21-32    John 6:60-69