Homily for April 19th, 2021: John 6:22-29.
“This is the work of God,” Jesus says
in the gospel reading we have just heard, “that you believe in the one he sent.@ Or as another translation has it: “have
faith in the one he sent.” What is
faith? For many of us, I think, faith means belief in the truths contained in
the creed which we recite every Sunday at Mass.
Some Alpine guides in a Swiss village
organized a climb late in the season, after all the tourists had departed. They
reached their chosen summit without difficulty. They were disappointed,
however, not to have found an edelweiss, the delicate star-shaped white flower
that grows only at high altitudes and is prized by mountaineers as a souvenir
of their exploits.
The group had already started their
descent when one of them spotted a single edelweiss on a narrow ledge some
thirty feet below. To get it someone would have to be let down on a rope. There
was no time to linger, for the weather, which changes rapidly in the high
mountains, was deteriorating. The climbers turned to the youngest and smallest
member of the party, twelve-year-old Hans, making his first major climb with
his father. It would be easy to let him down. In five minutes they could be on
their way again.
“What about it, Hans,” they asked. “Will
you do it?”
Hans peered anxiously at the narrow
ledged with the treasured white flower -- and at the sheer drop of hundreds of
feet immediately beyond.
“I’ll do it,” Hans replied, “if my
father holds the rope.”
That’s faith -- unconditional trust!
That is what Jesus is talking about when he says in today’s gospel: “This is
the work of God: that you believe in the One he sent.”
We pray in this Mass that, through
the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, we too may receive the trusting faith of
that twelve-year-old boy.
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