In last week’s Gospel, Jesus had just told his disciples to eat His body and drink His blood in order to gain eternal life. This week, we get to see how many people reacted. A lot of people who had followed Jesus up to that point, couldn’t accept this teaching and so they left Him to return to their former lives.
It’s not surprising that many left. Hearing the instruction to eat flesh and drink blood is very shocking. They didn’t understand what Jesus meant, and instead of taking time to figure out the meaning and why He said it, they left.
Jesus made lots of shocking statements throughout His life. He challenged us to seek greatness by serving others, which is a radical idea. Telling His disciples that they can’t be His disciples if they don’t hate their mother, father, wife and children is jarring as well. Loving enemies was also never a popular opinion at any time in history. He delivered one of His most shocking statements when He declared that He is the way, the truth and, the life.
Jesus came to us because we were headed in the wrong direction and He desired to alter our course. Jesus wouldn’t go through all the trouble of coming to us only to reinforce the current ways of thinking at the time. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that His teachings are controversial and shocking.
We’ll never understand everything that Jesus teaches completely, but we should always work on learning more about Jesus and what He teaches. Never give up just because something is difficult. Jesus will give us grace and wisdom to fill in the gaps if we trust Him. The main goal isn’t to be able to understand everything with our imperfect brains, but to open our souls up to Jesus and allow His grace to pour in.
