Sunday 11 August 2024
19rd Sunday During the Year – Year B

1st reading: 1 Kings 19,4-8
Psalm: 33 (34),2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
2rd reading: Ephesians 4,30:5 – 2:XNUMX
Gospel: John 6,41-51

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"The work of God, we heard last Sunday, that you believe in him who sent me"

Today we hear Jesus say to us: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” If you are here, each one of you, it is because the Father draws you to Jesus. And if you want to know how the Father draws you to Jesus, you have to look at your own life and see how, in your history, the Father drew you to Jesus and how this morning, the Father draws you to Jesus. This happens through many mediations: human mediations, the mediation of the Holy Scriptures, the mediation of the Holy Spirit who can speak directly to the heart and so on… 

We are here because the Father has drawn us to Jesus, but we are not here simply for ourselves. If the Lord, throughout Sacred History, chooses men and women to entrust something to them, it is always with a view to others, with a view to the people, with a view to all nations. If we have been drawn to the Son by the Father, it is to do something for the world. Pope Francis, in his exhortation "It's trust" on Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, takes the time to develop this question of attraction which comes up several times in Therese. 

I quote the Holy Father (n°10): The last pages of the story of a soul (Ms C, 33v-37r) are a missionary testament. They express his way of conceiving evangelization by attraction (the gospel of joy, n. 14), and not by pressure or proselytism. It is interesting to read how she sums it up: “Attract me, we will run to the scent of your perfumes.” O Jesus, it is not even necessary to say: As you attract me, attract the souls I love. This simple word: “Attract me” is enough. Lord, I understand that when a soul has allowed itself to be captivated by the intoxicating scent of your perfumes, it cannot run alone, all the souls it loves are drawn after it; this is done without constraint, without effort, it is a natural consequence of its attraction to you. Just as a torrent, throwing itself impetuously into the ocean, carries with it everything it has encountered in its path, so, O my Jesus, the soul which plunges into the shoreless ocean of your love, draws with it all the treasures it possesses… Lord, you know, I have no other treasures than the souls which you have been pleased to unite to mine” (Ms C, 34r).

And the Pope comments:

11. […] What is striking is that Thérèse, aware of being close to death, did not live this mystery closed in on herself, in a feeling of sole consolation, but with a fervent apostolic spirit.

Yes, if the Father draws us to the Son, if the Son obeying the Father draws us to himself, it is not only for ourselves: it is so that with Jesus, through Him and in Him, we can to work the works of God by putting all our faith in Jesus and allowing our lives, made available to the Lord, to be missionary, not by a particular work, but by our conversion to Jesus alone. 

Pull me along, we'll run. 

What Thérèse understands is that by letting myself be drawn to Jesus, I draw in my wake all those I love, all those who love me, all those who are part of my daily entourage. 

The Pope continues:

12. The same is true when she speaks of the action of the Holy Spirit, which immediately acquires a missionary meaning.

He quotes Thérèse again:

"Here is my prayer, I ask Jesus to draw me into the flames of his love, to unite me so closely to Him, that He may live and act in me. I feel that the more the fire of love will set my heart ablaze, the more I will say: Draw me, the more also the souls who will approach me (poor little useless scrap of iron, if I were to move away from the divine brazier), the more these souls will run with speed to the odor of the perfumes of their Beloved, because a soul ablaze with love cannot remain inactive" (Ms C, 36r).

In Teresa's heart, the Pope continues, the grace of baptism becomes that impetuous torrent that flows into the ocean of Christ's love, carrying with it a multitude of sisters and brothers. This is what happened in particular after her death: her promise of a "shower of roses" (CJ, June 9, 1897). The Father therefore draws us to Jesus. But how can we let ourselves be drawn even more? How can we enter into this movement ourselves? Well, Saint Paul, in this passage from the Letter to the Ephesians, tells us very useful things. He dares to make this unheard-of affirmation: “Imitate God” ! “Imitate God as beloved children.” How to imitate God? Well, the first thing to do is to contemplate God. We cannot imitate what we do not know. We must therefore always know God better and for that, we must contemplate him: contemplate him in the great book of Creation and contemplate him in the great book of Revelation: the Holy Scriptures through which the Holy Spirit makes us hear the Word of God. And as if that were not enough, the Word of God became flesh. 

As Saint Paul reminds us: “Live in love, as Christ loved us”. You remember the end of the prologue of Saint John: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is turned toward the bosom of the Father, he has made him known to us.” (Jn 1,18:XNUMX). So that we may understand how in our humanity we can imitate God, God became man. 

The Word became flesh so that by contemplating this holy humanity of Jesus, we could understand how to imitate God. And the famous work The Imitation of Christ was for Saint Therese in her childhood a very precious book, and it would remain so until her death. 

Imitate God…

And Paul gives us some elements: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God who has sealed you for the day of your deliverance. 

This Holy Spirit of whom Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, tells us that he may display in us the charity of God (5,5). So " bitterness, irritation, anger, shouting or insults, all these must be eliminated from our life as well as any kind of malice." But how do you eliminate this? Well, by Jove, you only eliminate darkness by putting in light, you only push back evil by putting in good. And so Paul continues: “Be generous and kind to one another. Forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.” We cannot love the poor sinners that we are without having multiple opportunities to forgive ourselves, since we are all very poor, very weak. But it is this merciful love that can make us grow. It is by truly loving one another that we encourage each other to progress in daily concrete charity. And this is how we enter into this attraction that the Father never ceases to arouse in us towards Jesus, this is how we learn to imitate God. 

Finally, on this path, we need to be nourished. “A second time the angel of the Lord touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat, for the journey ahead is long.’”

Me said Jesus, I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.Jesus is the bread of life first as the Word of God. And we must first nourish ourselves with Jesus as the Word of God, so that then the Eucharistic food can truly bear fruit in us. Because the Lord whom we “eat” with our ears in the proclamation of the Holy Scriptures is indeed the one whom we eat in the Eucharistic mystery so that we can live what we have heard. But this will have to be developed next Sunday in the continuation of the reading of this great chapter 6 of the Gospel of John.

Next Sunday we will be given the opportunity to contemplate precisely the mystery of Jesus, the bread of life.

Amen.