“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Jesus asks us to believe in things that are hard to accept on a human level. The mysteries of faith are not opposed to reason, but reason itself does not contain the true inner logic by which the mysteries make sense and are revealed as fitting. Indeed, human reason can present an obstacle when one demands that everything should be readily intelligible according to one's own intellectual capacity. Reason can remain closed to even consider the question of what God himself is teaching and open only to the conclusions it can reach unaided.
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, “Does this shock you?
The followers of Moses murmured in the desert, expressing their dissatisfaction with the manna that God provided through Moses. Here too, the crowds grumbled because the way Jesus offered to solve their hunger and thirst was not according to their preference. They desired only more of the food and drink that would leave them again hungry and thirsty. They did not desire and did not know how to desire that which they truly needed and which alone Jesus himself desired to give: life, life of which Jesus himself was the only source. It was not to be merely life marked by a span of days or years, but a life which, after the Jesus himself rose, could never die again.
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
When we see that Jesus has defeated death and risen victoriously we have more of the necessary context, given to us by faith, wherein we can find the inner logic of the Eucharist. We can see more truly how and why it is the very flesh and blood of Jesus that is itself lifegiving for those who receive it.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”
But, as we see, Jesus sometimes presents a teaching before time and faith have presented the full context. We must remain humble when this happens. In order to come to terms with the hard teachings of Jesus we must let ourselves be drawn by the Father. This, significantly, as opposed to letting ourselves be drawn by lesser things. He draws those who are willing to find higher pleasures in him even when they are at the expense of lower pleasures of the flesh. To those who delight in him he himself gives the desires of their hearts (see Psalm 37:4), those desires having been purified to find fulfillment in him.
"But there are some of you who do not believe."
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him.
There is a real risk when we try to proceed only by what we are able to understand, and insist on accepting only what seems fitting according to our understanding. The point is not that we throw out reason entirely, but that our reason is meant to be open in humility to the supernatural truths of revelation, to being drawn by the Father, taught by Jesus, and open to the inner confirmation given by the Spirit. When we cannot understand we must not for that reason harden our hearts. Just because we can't understand doesn't necessarily mean there is a contradiction in the truth. It may mean there is a contradiction within us, a knot that needs untying. When we hit on difficulties we ought to open ourselves upward rather than fortifying our hearts and closing in our ourselves.
It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.
Faith is above reason, and cannot be attained if we insist on reason strictly and entirely. Faith is a gift whereby we respond to God teaching truths which we could not attain on our own, even had we the greatest minds in all of history. Faith dodges the dangers of rationalism by remaining open to the transcendent as revealed by God. It avoids the dangers of credulity by remembering that reason too was a gift given by God that, in proper proportion, when used with humility, could point to truths beyond itself. Peter demonstrated that he did not yet understand what Jesus was teaching, but that even his reason recognized the need to remain open to what faith alone could reveal.
"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth;"
- Fides et Ratio, Saint John Paul the Great
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
We need to attune ourselves more to being drawn by Father, to learn to delight in him more and more. The words Jesus himself is speaking to us today are Spirit and life, and we need to be open to his Spirit to receive them, or receive them to a greater degree, for there is always more. What does this look like? We spend time prayerfully listening, pouring over the Word of God, allowing God himself to reveal himself and to delight us as he does so. Faith is something that grows when we surrender to the grace of putting it to use. The more we do so the more able we are to believe that which to reason only seems impossible.
Peter sent them all out and knelt down and prayed.
Then he turned to her body and said, “Tabitha, rise up.”
She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up.
He gave her his hand and raised her up,
and when he had called the holy ones and the widows,
he presented her alive.
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