Over the last several weeks we’ve been listening to the Bread of Life Discourse. If you have a little time, you should consider reading the whole thing -- Chapter six in the Gospel of John. Jesus has miraculously fed the crowds, and then began to teach them that difficult teaching -- that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, and if anyone wishes to attain eternal life they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. And today Jesus adds to the teaching by saying something to the effect that the words that he has spoken are spirit and life -- in other words, he’s not talking about symbols, he means what he says. And then he says, more or less, if you have a hard time with this teaching, what will you do when you see me ascending to where I was before? And the crowds, hearing what appears to be crazy talk followed by veiled blasphemy, leave him. Jesus asks his apostles whether they will leave as well, and Peter speaking for them, says, “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, you are the Holy One of God.”
One of the saddest things I witness, week after week when I visit the nursing home, is that so many of the elderly people on the doorstep to death are former Catholics. Saint Paul talked about this in his first epistle to Timothy -- he called it the shipwreck of faith. If you work through the New Testament, you will meet many people who have experienced this shipwreck. There are those like Judas who did so for money. Some did so out of fear, like the apostles who ran away and hid when Jesus was crucified. Some just refused to believe, like the Greeks who laughed at what Paul was telling them. And some must have left because of persecution. When I talk to former Catholics they usually bring up the priest scandals as an excuse, but when I push on, that’s just an excuse -- they dropped out because they had been Christmas and Easter Catholics long before. One lady I met dropped out because her husband stopped going to church and she never learned to drive.
Why is it that people leave Jesus really, though? There is an old book called “”Diary of a Country Priest”. You can still find it on Amazon. It’s about a young priest who doubts himself, works in a rural parish where he is looked down upon by the leaders of the community. People talk about him behind his back and he is always being nagged by his superiors to do a better job, which translates into getting more money from his parishioners. He has a sense of futility, a sense that he is in the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong vocation -- he’s not even sure there is a God. But he perseveres; He gets up every day and says mass to a diminishing congregation. He spends hours hearing confessions. He visits every family in his parish every year. He diligently works on his sermons. And he writes in his diary every day to keep himself honest. And he eventually dies of stomach cancer. Ih his last entry he writes “Well, it’s all over now. The strange mistrust I had of myself, of my own being, has flown. The conflict is done. I am reconciled to myself, poor shell that I am. I believe forever. If pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity.”
The Diary of a Country Priest portrays a true saint, someone who never gave up, despite a lifetime of uncertainty, of lack of affirmation, of God being seemingly absent from his life. The young priest never reaches a point where there is a shipwreck of his faith; but persisting in his faith is painful. Like Peter, though, he has said, “To whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life”.
Jesus said, if you want eternal life, you must take up your cross and follow me. And I think that’s what the cross is. It’s not martyrdom. It’s not wearing a hair shirt, or even giving up your Sunday mornings to spend time at Mass. Taking up your cross is resisting that temptation to give up, a temptation we all have, sometimes a very strong temptation when things just pile on, when our prayers aren’t answered, when we hear about bad priests, when we see a Cardinal give the invocation at a political party that is giving free abortions and vasectomies outside it’s doors. The temptation can be very strong when a lifetime goes by and nothing seems to change for the better. The temptation is strong when churches are being closed and vocations are seemingly not happening. The cross is continuing to go through the motions, as it were, even though everything says, “what’s the use?” And that’s what Peter recognizes, and that’s what the country priest recognizes and that may be what Mary recognized when everyone was talking about Jesus rising from the dead and as far as we can tell from scripture, he did not appear to her. So let us pray that we will avoid that shipwreck of faith; let us pray that we will have the courage and fortitude to take up the cross and follow Jesus even when he seems to be silent.
