John 6:60. When many of the disciples heard it, they said,
“This teaching is difficult.”
This teaching is difficult, who
can accept it? Today, you might hear someone say, “are you really going to
swallow that?” Yes, in our generation, it might just be blown off entirely.
Seems really weird. Even then, they were probably scratching their heads, or
worse, totally scandalized. To the Jew, taking in any blood was scandalous.
But, all one must do is go back and read what all led up to this. Jesus was
laying the ground work, trying to make clear just how close, how committed he
was asking his disciples to be.
One of the lessons in the
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd curriculum for young children regarding the
Eucharist starts with the catechist pouring wine into a chalice. The catechist
says to the children, “this is Jesus.” Then he or she will take a cruet of
water and say to them, “this is you.” As is often the case in Catechesis, the
children will be offered a chance to see the chalice and the wine and look into
it. “This is Jesus,” while they are looking into it. Same with the water.
Then the catechist pours a little water into the wine, and then asks,
“Now, can you get ‘you’ out of Jesus?” And again, shows the children the wine.
I love this so much. It is what I would use in Inquirer’s classes, with adults,
to answer their questions as to “why does the priest pour water into the wine?”
This is much the same as what
Jesus was saying to the people. It is not enough to simply say you believe, to
give it lip service. You had to truly “ingest it,” take it in, make it part of
you so that it could not be taken out, even if you wanted it to be. That close.
What a gift!
—The
Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, Bishop of Olympia
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