A few years
ago I spent two days in a parish in Los Angeles. The parish
priest was an Irish man and he was explaining how things work over
there. He said that for years there was a man in the parish who
used to lead the folk group. He played the guitar. Then
one day he decided to start his own church. So he rented a
building down the street and started his own church, just like that.
That’s how it works in LA. I doubt if it would happen so
easily here.
What if you
could change whatever parts of the faith you wanted to? You
could have women priests, married priests, divorce. You could
change some of the more difficult teachings like having to love your
enemies; seems a bit extreme after all. And you could tailor it
just to suit your own needs. You could believe what you wanted to
believe. What would you end up with? A religion of nice ideas,
of wishful thinking. It would mean nothing. It might make
you feel better, but it would be empty. Why? because it would
be man made, not God made.
The word of
God and the teaching of God can be difficult, but at least they are
the teachings of God. It’s not just something we made up.
We are free to either take it or leave it, to accept it and struggle
with it, or to walk away from it.
Look at what
happened in this Gospel passage. Jesus was just after teaching
about the Eucharist. He had said, ‘I am the bread of life’
and ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have
life in you’. And the people said, ‘this is ridiculous, who
could accept it’ and they walked away. But Jesus’ response
is even more interesting. He didn’t go after them and say,
‘let me explain’. He said to the disciples, ‘are you
going to go away too’? In other words he said, ‘this is the
teaching, take it or leave it.’ And it says that many people
stopped following him then. They couldn’t accept what he
said, so they left. But he didn’t change anything he had
said. How could he, if it’s the truth? And this applies
to all of the teachings of Christ, handed down to us. They
don’t change. They can not change. But we are free to
accept them or not.
Jesus says to
us, ‘if you love me you will keep my commandments.’ Above
all this means putting putting God above everything else in your
life; above your wife or husband, above your children, above your
work. God must be at the center. And God assures us, if
we put him first, everything else will follow.
If it were
impossible for us to follow God’s teachings God wouldn’t have
given them to us. So it must be possible to follow them.
Trying to do it on your own seems impossible and it probably is.
But God doesn’t ask us to do it on our own. He asks us to
continually turn to him and receive his help, which he gives us
through prayer, through Holy Communion, Confession and all the
sacraments. God knows exactly what we’re able for and He
gives us all the help we need, if we ask for it.
At the best
of times it can be difficult to live our faith. But the
invitation is to keeping coming with an open heart to listen to what
God might be saying to us? Have we already decided we know what
God has to say? Could God say something new to us that we haven’t
heard before? It is an ongoing struggle for us, but we believe a very
worthwhile one.
God also says
to us, ‘what about you, will you go away too?’ And we can
go away, or we can say, ‘Lord where else will we go, you have the
message of eternal life and we believe, we know you are the holy one
of God.’
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