Starting this Sunday we will read from the Gospel of John the section of Christ’s discourse on the Bread of Life.
In the next three weeks, his Gospel asks who Christ is to us: “It is either you are with me or against me.”
Today, we have the debate between faith and good works. We also hear Christ declare that he is the bread that came down from heaven, the Bread of Life.
This carries a meaning and significance far greater than what we see on the surface.
The supreme work of Moses was providing manna from Heaven.
Because of this, manna from Heaven has become an incontrovertible part of the belief and tradition of the Jewish people as a sign of the Messiah.
Christ does not pit manna from Heaven and the Bread of Life against one another, but asks, “What is the greater choice? The greater good for the greater glory of God?”
The framework of choice is not simply a choice between good and bad or white and black but a choice of what is the “greater good” in the words of Ignatian spirituality.
In the end, good works and faith are all about our relationship with God.
Faith is the quality of our relationship with Christ and the good works that come from this relationship is not simply a by-product, but an integral part of the relationship.
When we do something for someone we genuinely love, we do not expect any payback. The deed is done out of authentic love for the other.
As Ignatius’ Prayer for Generosity puts it, “To give and not to count the cost, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and ask not for reward, save that of knowing that I do your most holy will.”
The premium on our relationship with Christ as the core of faith is more deeply and clearly presented in the grace Ignatius prescribes to help us make the best choice.
Elements of grace
Aside from the primacy of our relationship with God, this grace highlights two key elements: one, the “magis”—see more clearly, love more dearly, follow more nearly; two, the Christ-centered core of the process and the choice.
The process to see and to love Christ more is synthesized in the choice to follow him more nearly.
In Ignatius’ framework, “Love is best expressed in deeds,” and one deed is to follow Christ—all the way to the Cross and the Resurrection, the Paschal Mystery, the central, the core mystery of our faith.
The end game of the process of knowing, seeing is to love and to follow.
In classic Ignatian images, love expressed in the action of following Christ on his mission—under the Standard of the Cross and living in the spirit of the Risen Lord—is the meaning towards which we are led to make the choice.
At the end of the discourse three weeks from now, Christ poses the choice: are you with me or will you leave me? It is not simply the question of choice, but an empowerment in freedom.
The question Christ will pose is not as a trick question.
He leads us to it after a long discourse on who he is—the Bread of Life, the Truth.
He declares this in no uncertain terms yet it disturbs people who are his “fans.”
The truth becomes inconvenient when we are made to face the truth of who we are; face the truth of what our world is and needs; and face the truth that we cannot be fence-sitters.
This is the inconvenient truth—we need to make a choice out of our own freedom.
Yet this is the greatest gift of Christ, of our God. He gives us greater and deeper freedom as he confronts us with the choice.
For Ignatius the first level of freedom is freedom from our shortcomings and sins and even from our blessings and giftedness.
Ignatius, as Christ first did, emphasizes that the freedom to aim for is the freedom to commit to a worthy cause, to a dream that inspires us to be more of who we are meant to be; the freedom for mission.
This is the freedom that allows us to make a choice.
This is our roadmap in the coming three weeks as we read and reflect on the discourse on the Bread of Life.
