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“Lord, to whom shall we go? Peter’s words echo in our hearts. When we have opportunities to grow deeper into Jesus, either through loving or suffering events, we too can speak this conviction: ‘you are God’s holy one’. Sometimes in life we can also be like the disciples who didn’t understand Jesus’ words. Often Jesus spoke in metaphors as in John’s: “I am the Bread of Life”. Some of those men and women walked away because they didn’t understand Jesus’ words or the meaning of bread as Eucharist. Or they were baffled when Jesus talked of “the will of my Father”. How could Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, be Son of the Father? To ask questions, to delve deeply into the mystery of God, is important to our growth. Jesus, God, never gets tired of questions. We do. When we don’t understand, we are tempted to give up and go away, just as some disciples. I had a quick crisis of faith in my young 20’s. I questioned, “How can Jesus be in the Eucharist?” With lots of heavy thinking, after years of catechism, I agonized looking for the right answer. After four days, light dawned in my heart. God’s presence is a mystery of faith. I/We choose to believe in the mystery or not. The millions of us who haven’t seen Jesus, and still believe Him to be “God’s holy one” look at our life experience to find God. I recently spent some days in the Dominican Republic with our Physical Therapy students as they treated disadvantaged patients who needed rehabilitation after accidents or disease. Their compassionate care of their patients was Jesus with skin on! The patients’ hospitality, welcoming, generosity showed the joy of Jesus – poor, yet joyful. Where is it in my life that I have been poor? Where do I need God to touch me? Or, how has God touched me, drawn me to Love, to Him-Herself? How do I thank God? |