We often hear about many who are leaving the Church. Some are disappointed in their expectations; others are attracted by prospects or seduced by the glamour of worldliness and secularisation. We also hear of the danger of schisms, of heretical positions.
What is happening in our Church? How should we move in this moment of crisis?
The disciples experience the harshness of his word when Jesus said that it was necessary to assimilate his flesh (the flesh is not the muscles, but his person). Approaching Christ, have we experienced the hardness of what he asks of us? What do we feel when we approach the Eucharistic banquet wherein he tells you: I have become bread, I have offered myself to you as food for life, I have made myself a servant; then, do you want to join your life to mine? Do you also want to give your life to your brother or sister, even if he or she is someone who has hurt you but who now needs you? Are you willing to give your life for them?
If we understand this, we realise that the decision we are going to make is hard. If we do not feel this hardness, then we approach the Eucharist without fruit. When we understand that Jesus teaches us not to receive but to give, become poor, and be left with nothing because we give everything out of love, then, we realise how hard it is.
Many who followed Jesus after seeing his signs and miracles, now reject his proposal. And Jesus is not surprised. They have not followed him to give life but to receive; they expected something from him but when they are asked to give instead of receiving, they find it useless to follow him.
The conclusion is bitter, as many had left the company of Jesus. What happens today in our communities is not anything different. These disciples who left Jesus were not bad people; they were not traitors. They just withdrew. Jesus respects freedom because faith does not come from enforcing it; it is an adhesion that comes from being in love with Christ. You cannot force people to fall in love. He does not force people to eat his flesh.
To trust or not to trust Jesus is the choice every individual has to make. The proposal – to welcome Jesus, the bread which came down from heaven – can be accepted or rejected but not negotiated, modified, or made more acceptable by cancelling some of its demands. If worthily receiving the Eucharist calls for radical changes in giving one’s life together with Christ, who can ever dare to take communion?
For your reflection
What parts of the Gospel are most difficult for us to accept? What do we not accept about the life of the Church or our Christian community? What has helped us to walk again? Do we then turn to prayer to find in the Lord the strength to continue walking?
Father Fernando Torres CMF
www.ciudadredonda.org
Translated by
Father Alberto Rossa CMF
