Which is more important: faith or acting on your faith? The readings this week come at this question from both sides.
The lines in the gospel reading today about many of Jesus’ disciples having trouble accepting his words about being the bread of eternal life—and some actually leaving him because of this teaching—reflect both an actual division among Jesus’ followers in his day as well as one in the emerging Johannine Christian community. Belief in how Christ is really present in the Eucharist has always been a decisive one for Christians.
Wisdom or foolishness? Those are two of the choices scripture offers this week. How to live wisely and well is a timeless question for Christians. Fortunately the words of Jesus and the gospel stories that depict him in action are timeless guides, as relevant today as when they first happened. Jesus lived and taught values that we can use to govern our own choices today.
Those who “murmur” about Jesus in the gospel couldn’t seem to understand how the human being they were familiar with could claim to have come down from heaven. They could not see past the immediate situation of the human Jesus they knew on earth to the Son of God they could know forever, just as their ancestors who ate the manna God gave them in the desert could not see past their hunger to the God who was not in fact abandoning them, so they grumbled for food.
If you read the entire story about the manna, all of Exodus 16, you will find that it was a way God would test the people “to see whether they follow my instructions or not.” Indeed, the giving of the manna becomes a series of tests of whether the Israelites would follow God’s commands, concluding with Moses telling Aaron: “Take a jar and put a full omer of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to keep it for your future generations.”
Chicago State University graduate Tiffany Richmond came from a background of poverty. She joined the U.S. Army after high school and then attended the South Side Chicago college thanks to the G.I. bill and by working while going to school.
In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech given in Oslo in June 2012, 21 years after it was awarded, Burmese democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi said of the award, “Often during my days of house arrest it felt as though I were no longer a part of the real world. . . .
LAST APRIL Wabash College student Andrew Domini saw a CNN Presents documentary on Mother Theodore Guerin, the French nun who founded the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana.
Once, while in a discussion about the existence of God, the person with whom I was arguing said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t believe in God because where do all the dead bodies go?
THOUGH PADRE PIO spent most of his life in small monasteries in remote areas of Italy, this Franciscan friar is one of the most popular Christian saints of all time.