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Prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is. One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer”, “I have an infallible method”. That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect a “sense of the supernatural”…And one should wish for no prayer, except precisely the prayer that God gives us – probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way!

On the other hand, the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray—and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God…The rule is simply: pray as you can, and do not try to pray as you can’t.

Abbot John Chapman (1865-1933) In Treasury of the Catholic Church compiled by Teresa de Bertodano (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1999)

Reflection on the Gospel – 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Veronica Lawson RSM

John 6:41-51

Jesus was a Jew, as was John, the author of the gospel. It may seem strange, therefore, that John has the ‘Jews’ complaining about Jesus. It is strange indeed, and it has caused many a reader to wonder. John seems to use the designation ‘Jew’ as a code word for the opponents of Jesus. These opponents are almost exclusively Jewish leaders and not the ordinary people who followed Jesus. The designation does not include all the leaders of course: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea stand out as leaders who came to accept him and to take risks on account of their faith.

The complaint of the ‘Jews’ relates to Jesus’ claim: ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven’. Jesus shares the world view of his contemporaries: God is in the heavens above, so that anything or anyone coming from God comes down from heaven. The problem for his adversaries is that Jesus is one of them: they know his father Joseph and his grandparents, so how can he be making such a claim? They make the mistake of thinking that is all there is to know about his origins. ‘Don’t complain’ is Jesus’ response to them. He goes on to tell them that there are dimensions of his being of which they know nothing. Yet they need to know, as do we. It is God who draws us to Jesus. Like the opponents of Jesus, we need to listen and to learn, to be taught by God. We need the bread of God’s teaching.

Jesus makes a future promise: the bread he offers is different from the bread the Israelites ate in the desert in that those who eat of the bread that Jesus offers will live forever. Furthermore, the bread that he will give for the life of the world is his flesh. This leads to further misunderstanding and the opportunity for Jesus to teach at a deeper level, as we shall see in next’s week’s reading. The eucharistic overtones in today’s reading are subtle but nonetheless present, as they were in the feeding story. John is writing some seventy years after the death of Jesus for communities that gathered every week for the breaking of the bread-in memory of him. Like the early Christians, we reflect on the mystery of eucharist. At the very least, we are invited to move beyond over-literal interpretations that can blind us to the deeper dimensions of our faith.