GOD DOES NOT INTERFER IN HUMAN FREEDOM (John 6:60-69) Homily for Saturday of the 3rd week of Easter 7th May 2022

Theme: GOD DOES NOT INTERFER IN HUMAN FREEDOM 

(John 6:60-69) Homily for Saturday of the 3rd week of Easter 7th May 2022

Just like the bird called the pelican that lives in the African desert. The mother's undying love for the young ones at the time of crisis or shortage of food is so sensational that the mother pecks her breast with its powerful peak and wounds itself until warm blood trickles down and nourishes the starving young ones. Thus, feeding them it dies. Brother and sister in Christ, Jesus is the True Pelican, who through the offering of his body and blood, died upon the cross to bring salvation to the whole world. 

He says in Jn 6: 53-57 “very truly I tell you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day; for my flesh is true food and blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the father, so whoever eats me will live because of me”.  Beloved in Christ, the Father's of the church attest to this truth that a more intimate union with Jesus can only be conceived in no where else other than the Eucharist.

This truth of Jesus’ identity as the Living Bread, shook the faith foundation of many who followed him so much so that some perceived him as a cannibal and his words as an intolerable language. Consequently, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him (Jn 6:66). He then asked the twelve, “Do you wish to go away too?” (Jn 6:67) Simon Peter answered him “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:68).

Brother and sister in Christ, God does not interfere in our freedom nor does he destroy it. It is a gift from him to humanity. He respects our freedom and wishes that each one of us like the disciples should decide for himself or herself whom to follow, whom to worship. Discipleship is a free-personal choice of submission and commitment to God, it is never a coercive mandate even though it has a cost. Christianity is not by force, it is the free giving of one's total self to God through and in the church. But let us remember that Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. Dearest Friends in Christ, Simon Peter reminds us that to forsake Jesus at any point in time  would spell absolute catastrophe. It would amount to dereliction of  “The Way, The Truth, and The Life” (Jn 14:6), in search of crookedness, illusion, ignorance, falsehood and death for guidance; it would mean desertion of “the Fountain of living water” into making cracked cisterns that can hold no water (Jer 2:13); it would mean the abandonment of the “Light of the world” (Jn 8:12) into the embrace of spiritual darkness; it would mean the forsaking of the “Living Bread” (Jn 6:51) to die of spiritual starvation; it would mean going away from “the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25) into eternal damnation. It would result in the dereliction of the “the Good Shepherd” (Jn 10:11) into followership of the hirelings that flee at the emergence of wolves that destroy the flock. It would signify the desertion of “the True Vine” into the embrace of a fruitless life. 

Dearest brother and sister in Christ, I pray for you this that grace of Christ may abide with you in all you do, that no crisis of life will dissuade you from following Jesus, so that you may freely remain faithful to Christ always. May we never be like Judas who betrayed our Lord (cf Jn 6:64).

Have a glorious day

Fr Remigius Okafor osj