Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 113 

"What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."

We have heard in today’s Gospel Jesus’s flat declaration, “You must believe in the One God has sent.” 

When his critics demand a sign from him, some kind of proof that he is truly sent from God, they also suggest that they believed in Moses because he gave them manna, which was  bread from heaven. 

They want to see him perform some kind of sign although, only yesterday, he fed an enormous crowd with five barley loaves and a couple of fish. If that wasn’t proof for them, they obviously have no intention of believing in him or any other sign, wonder, or miracle he might perform. So long as they see only what they want to see, they will not believe in him. 

But they are misremembering. Moses did not give them manna. God gave them that bread of angels, as a sign not of Moses’s authority but as a demonstration of the LORD's superabundant generosity. There will always be more where that came from so long as they prove themselves as God’s holy people, worshiping him daily, living by his moral standards which are healthy, healing, and normal, caring first for the neediest among them, and demonstrating to the gentiles the kindness and mercy of God. 

But the critics want an inexhaustible supply of bread that will last forever, “Sir, give us this bread always!” They think that would be like heaven. But they’re mocking him! They don’t believe a word of it. 

And then he promises them precisely what they want…

 "I am the bread of life;

whoever comes to me will never hunger,

and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

Times have changed since Jesus faced his critics in Capernaum, but our human nature has not changed, and people are still demanding signs from Jesus. One of the changes is the rise of so-called science, and especially that pseudo-science that says we should believe only in facts. We will not take anyone’s word for it, not even if that word should come from God. We want scientifically proven facts. 

Let's look at science. Well into the twentieth century, scientific phrenologists studied the shape of people’s skull to discover their moral character. They wanted to prove that European skulls are virtuous, but African skulls are criminal, and Jewish skulls are wicked. Does anyone remember that science of hard facts?

A century ago “medical scientists” proved we have souls because amputees, soldiers who had lost arms or legs during the Civil War, complained about phantom pains. That pain is coming from your ghostly soul, they said, which still has two legs, two arms, two feet, two hands, and all your fingers and toes. We laugh at such nonsense today, and no one believes it; but gullible Christians, eager to prove that religious mysteries can be proven with science, still buy into facts that prove their faith in God. 

In the 19th century, credulous preachers argued that Jonah must have been swallowed by an enormous whale – the King James Version called  it a fish, as does our Catholic Bible  – and Jonah not only survived in the belly of a whale for three days, he even composed a prayer and sang it while he was in there. If the Bible says it, it must be a fact, a scientific fact! Along with Noah’s ark. And don’t you know that God intentionally planted fake dinosaur bones all over the world so as to make people believe in evolution. Although it never happened, because the Bible says the world was made in seven days. 

We laugh at such nonsense today, and no one believes it, but gullible Christians – and many Catholics – are still eager to prove that religious mysteries can be proven with science. They eagerly consume scientific studies of the Shroud of Turin and Bleeding Hosts, and DNA tests of consecrated wine.

It’s a trap, and when Catholics fall for that nonsense we make our faith look ridiculous even in our own eyes. We cannot prove God’s goodness, mercy, or fidelity; and we have no need to prove it. We cannot prove the Blessed Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Jesus. We believe it because he said "This is my body!" and "This is my blood!" and he commanded us to eat his flesh and to drink his blood. And he urged us, on the night before he died, "Do this in memory of me." 

No man can prove he loves his wife, nor can a wife prove she loves her husband. They either believe in each other or their marriage collapses. They can buy gifts, they can take them on exotic vacations, they can give them anything they want, they can swear on the mothers’ graves, but they cannot prove they love one another. 

Parents who try to prove they love their children by never disciplining them and giving them everything they want, are only rotten parents. They will be bitterly disappointed by selfish, ungrateful children.

"This is the work of God, believe in the one he sent." 

We don’t have to prove our faith by any scientific standards. We believe in God, and we believe God, and we don't believe in facts. Facts are made by men; they are manufactured. (Both words come from the same Latin root; facere, which means to make.) We work with facts; they are useful tools. We build theories out of facts, and when the facts are accurate we trust our theories. And when we discover that some facts are not as reliable as we thought they were, we throw them away, and dismantle the theories to build new ones with better facts. 

Science knows nothing about sin. It doesn't believe in sin, it doesn't see it anywhere in the world. Nothing that we do is called sinful, so far as science is concerned. Everything can be explained, our pseudo-scientists tell us, without the theory of sin and without the theory of God. But we know because God tells us, much of our human behavior is sinful. It is unnecessary; it is harmful; and no good can come of it.

Science may discover useful facts, but we don't believe in science or in facts. We believe in God who reveals the Truth to us. And we believe God when he speaks to us, even if he must tell us about our sins.  

Today’s Gospel comes from John, chapter 6. Over the next several Sundays we will hear more of the same chapter as Jesus insists, 

Amen, amen, I say to you,

unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,

you do not have life within you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood

has eternal life,

and I will raise him on the last day.

We believe Jesus and we believe in Jesus because he remains with us and he still speaks to us. Last month Catholics throughout the United States demonstrated our faith in the Blessed Sacrament with four amazing pilgrimages from Connecticut, Mississippi, Texas, and California; and converged in Indianapolis. Thousands of people participated; millions of people saw it and wondered what it was about. 

We declared not only that we believe in Jesus, and that we believe in the Most Blessed Sacrament; we also declared to our fellow Americans, “We are still here, and we still believe in God despite everything you might say about God. Jesus, the Blessed Mother, or the Pope. Or about us. And we’re not going away because God sent us here to invite you to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and believe in the One he sent.