• About The Alternate Path

The Alternate Path

~ Thoughts on Walking the Path of Christian Discipleship

The Alternate Path

Category Archives: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

The Eucharist and friendship with Jesus: Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

11 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by mcummins2172 in 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Eucharist, friendship, scandal of the particular

≈ Leave a comment


One of the authors that I keep returning to in my life is Jean Vanier – the founder of the L’Arche communities.  L’Arche communities are houses where men and women – mentally handicapped and not – live together in a community of friendship and support.  I enjoy Vanier’s writings because he has great insight and he is able to express great truths in simple terms.  Recently, I read this thought by Vanier which I would like to share:

Jesus invites us to make a difficult and sometimes stormy passage of faith from the enthusiasm of discipleship to the gentleness and humility of friendship.  Friendship with Jesus – the Word made flesh – becomes the nourishment for our hearts and lives.  

Jesus is not only the Word of God – fully transcendent, enlightening our minds and intellects.  Jesus is also the Word made flesh.  God incarnate for us.  God wanting to give himself to us as He is.  God wants our friendship, our kinship, and through the incarnation of Christ reveals that He is willing to become so vulnerable and so very ordinary in his flesh in order to achieve this.

In many ways this is the scandal of the particular and the ordinary.  It is what the people murmur about in this Sunday’s gospel (Jn. 6:41-51) and the same murmuring continues today.  After Jesus says, I am the bread that came down from heaven; we find the people saying, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?  Do we not know his father and his mother?  In other words, we know this man, how can he say such things?  Why would the omnipresent and all-powerful God reveal himself in a particular and seemingly ordinary person, in a particular place and in a particular time?  The murmuring continues today in a variety of forms.  “I am spiritual but not religious.”  “My God is bigger than your dogma.”  “The Eucharist is not really that important.”  This murmuring demonstrates an approach to faith that is happy to keep things open and generic and also one that easily congratulates itself on being “enlightened”.  But, it also should be noted that it is an approach that keeps any real demands on me at a minimum.  A truly open and generic God will not make particular demands on my life, my time and my desires.

The quote by Jean Vanier also highlights another aspect of the scandal of the particular.  It is rooted in fear.  The fear of having to make that truly necessary but stormy passage of faith from the enthusiasm of discipleship to the gentleness and humility of friendship.  The truth is that there is a part within each of us that prefers discipleship to friendship.  Discipleship is quite respectable and yet it still keeps God and Christ a bit removed.  Christ is the master and we are the disciples and although this is always true the Gospel today should shock us, it ought to shock us, into the recognition that this is not enough for God.

Jesus says, It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ … I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will life forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.

God wants our friendship.  

In the very ordinary stuff of bread and wine Christ has chosen to give us his very self – full divinity and full humanity!  The infinite chooses the finite to reveal himself.  The very particularity of Jesus himself and the very particularity and ordinariness of the Eucharist reveals to us that before God is ever an incomprehensible mystery for our reason and intellect to ponder, He is an unfathomable mystery of love to receive.  God has chosen to give Himself for us.  God wants the gentleness and humility of friendship.  We do not need superhuman effort in order to understand something of heaven nor do we need extraordinary mediators to communicate with God.  God is here.  God is present.  Christ gives himself in the Eucharist.  All that we have to do is receive.

As we approach the altar we should be aware of what we are about and what God is about.  We should neither do this half-heartedly nor half-mindedly.  We should be aware that in the Eucharist Christ wants and invites us to undertake that stormy passage of faith from the enthusiasm of discipleship to the gentleness and humility of friendship.  And as we undertake this, we come to realize in the very particular and concrete way of our own life that friendship with Jesus – the Word made flesh – truly becomes the nourishment for our hearts and lives.     

         

Follow The Alternate Path on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Previous Posts

  • April 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007

Popular Posts

  • mcummins2172.files.wordpr…

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Alternate Path
    • Join 137 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Alternate Path
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar