Why do we stay?

Analyses and studies about the crisis of the Christian Church in modern society have multiplied these recent years. Reading them is necessary in order to know better some data, but they turn out to be insufficient for discerning what our reaction should be. The story narrated by John can help us to interpret and to live through this crisis with a more Gospel-based depth.

According to the Gospel writer, Jesus sums up the crisis that is being created in his group this way: The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. It is true. Jesus introduces a new spirit into those who follow him. His words communicate life; the program that he proposes can generate a movement capable of orienting the world toward a more dignified and a fuller life.

But to be part of his group does not guarantee faith. There are those who refuse to accept his spirit and his life. Their presence around Jesus is feigned; their faith in him is not real. The true crisis within Christianity is always this: do we or do we not believe in Jesus?

The narrator says that many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Who the true followers of Jesus are gets revealed in crisis. The determining option is always this: who turn back and who stay with him, with the identity mark of his spirit and his life? Who is at: who goes away and who stays with him, identified with his spirit and his life? Who is in favor of and who is opposed to his project?

The group begins to get smaller. Jesus is not upset and he does pronounce any judgment against anyone. He only asks a question to those who have stayed at his side: Do you also want to leave? This is the question that today is made to us who remain in the Church: What do we want? Why have we stayed? Is it in order to follow Jesus, welcoming his spirit and living his way of life? Is it to work on his project?

Peter’s answer is exemplary: Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Those who stay should do so because of Jesus. Only for Jesus. Not for anything else. They are committed to him. He is the only reason to stay in his group. No one else.

As painful as this current seems to us, it will be positive if we who stay in the Church, many or few, keep on turning into Jesus’ disciples, that is to say, into men and women who live by his words of life.

August 23, 2015
21 Ordinary Time (B)
John 6, 60-69