Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - A Personal Relationship

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 04.15.24 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

John 6:22–29

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd,
which he just fed, to believe in him and relate to him personally.
Why is this so hard? Well, it is intellectually counterintuitive.
Why would this one figure, this Jesus, be the one and only?
Why should I choose to relate to him and not the numerous other religious leaders and philosophers?
Are all other religious people just lost or misguided?
Wouldn’t it just be easier to relate to Jesus’ ideas and principles,
to imitate his style of life?
Yes, indeed it would, but that’s not what he says.

Perhaps we could look at it from Jesus’ side.
Jesus no longer calls us “servants,” but “friends.”
What if there were someone who wanted to be friends with you,
and you were to say,
“Oh sure! I admire you and would like to imitate your form of life,
but I don’t want to spend a lot of time with you.”
How would that strike your prospective friend?

What is unique to Christianity is that God is offering us friendship.
You don’t mess around with friendship;
you don’t turn it into something abstract;
you don’t compromise with it.
You enter into it fully.

[MurphsLaw]

+++ [After Jesus had fed the five thousand men,
his disciples saw him walking on the sea.]
The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea
saw that there had been only one boat there,
and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat,
but only his disciples had left.
Other boats came from Tiberias
near the place where they had eaten the bread
when the Lord gave thanks.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”,br> Jesus answered them and said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me
not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”+++