Dear friends in Christ,
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). With these words, pronounced at the end of the longest chapter in any of the Gospels, Simon Peter declares his continual loyalty to Christ, one based on human ties of friendship and affection, but above all on the supernatural virtue of faith that Jesus recognized in him when he said, in another context, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father” (Mt 16:18).
Where do you and I go with our wounds, our problems, our anxieties and fears? The dreadful situation in Afghanistan, the seemingly never-ending effects of covid-19 on our society, and a noticeable rise in anger, distrust, and malaise can get us all down from time to time. The world knows what we should do with our problems: we should buy more things we don’t need with money we don’t have; we should live for the moment and deal with consequences later; we should distract ourselves with social media.
But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that none of the solutions the world offers are any good. In fact, they only make us more unsettled. They cannot satisfy us because only God can satisfy the deepest yearnings of the human heart. And so, we must return to the Lord with Saint Peter: “Lord, to who shall we go?” Indeed, many of Jesus’ disciples left him precisely at the moment when he announced to them that they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood if they wanted to have eternal life. Our Lord’s teachings were just too much for many of his disciples (Jn 6:54). His proclamation to “take up [one’s] cross” and follow him must not have been pleasant to hear, either (Mt 16:24). Yet the road to happiness is to follow Christ, who alone has the words of eternal life.
May God be Blessed!
-Father Eric Banecker