No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him; and I will raise him on the last day. (John 6:44)
Concerning salvation, we must never forget God’s absolute sovereignty. It is complete and foolish arrogance to attempt to circumvent it or to alter it.
Our God is in heaven; whatever God wills is done. (Psalm 115:3)
Clearly then, the first danger that we who are chosen must avoid is the presumption of trying to limit God’s favors and predilection only to the selected group to which we belong. It is a hard lesson to learn for Joshua (Numbers 11:25-29), for John in the gospel (Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48), and for us as well.
The Father can call anyone; he can pour his Spirit on anyone; he can give the power to cast out demons to whomever he pleases. Nobody but God alone decides about the size of his family and on the number of those benefitting from his favors. Therefore, the safe and wise decision is to treat every single person whom God places in our life as his favored child. Our wisdom will be measured by simply keeping in mind that the Father will reward even something as little as giving a cup of water to one of Jesus’ brothers or sisters, as they, too, are the Father’s children.
However, human nature being what it is, wounded by self-centeredness, the Father’s work of drawing whomever he wishes to his Son, the Christ, meets with obstacles. This gospel passage speaks of causing one to sin, or more accurately, to place stumbling blocks on their way to Jesus.
Led by humility, it is wise to check often, perhaps daily, our stance vis-à-vis the Gospel to assure that our stance is consistent with the official viewpoint of the Church’s teaching authority: the only true interpreter of Jesus’ message. Humility will guide us to progress from questioning if we have understood correctly a particular aspect of God’s will to openness of mind and heart, to flexibility, to the attitude of embracing others who are drawn to Christ as much as we are but are expressing their love for him and for his Church in a different way.
Secondly, we should create for ourselves an environment of silent recollection before God. There is no other reliable way of discerning his will for us. We might also want to discern if our presumption, pet peeves, ideas, preferences, narrow mindset might create a permanent stumbling block to our being drawn to Christ. Obviously, if we do not experience times of serenity, sustained hope and inner strength, we might be keeping ourselves from being drawn to Christ by choice.
In Jesus’ unusual jargon, which should not be taken literally, the word hand might stand for any attachment to material things that have such power over us as to keep us from giving our heart totally to him. Foot might stand for any wrong turn that we might take in life away from Christ and from his Gospel. And the eye must be the outward organ that feeds information to the heart. We ought to be careful that our eyes do not feed our heart the wrong information so that we might be led to find value where there are only passing attractions and fading happiness and, eventually, disappointment and sadness.
We might place stumbling blocks also on the path of the little ones. The “little ones” are not just children, but anyone whose faith is simple and anyone who is weak, easily misled, in need of extra light and guidance. Hence, a touch of genuine wisdom born of humility will convince us that, for one reason or another, in the eyes of our Lord and of the Church we are, indeed, all “little ones!”
Our faith might be so weak that our heart gets easily frightened and our mind obscured by worries and passing fads. What we place on the path of little ones drawn to Christ could be something which we, personally, consider an essential expression of the Catholic faith when, after consultation with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it turns out to be marginal and not worth losing any of the little ones over it.
Relying on the Spirit’s help and driven by open mindedness and humility we, little ones, must get ready for the shocks of the Gospel paradoxes and Jesus’ unconventional conduct, so that we can grow spiritually. In his infinite love, Jesus jolts us from the torpor in which we are for having been exposed for too long to the secular mentality of this world. Intentionally, Jesus places “stumbling blocks” in the life of the presumptuous, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental.
And, we ourselves, need to absorb the enormous shockwaves that he sends around by associating with our modern version of tax collectors and sinners. We must be ready to be embarrassed anytime we are quick to focus on the obvious sins of others while forgetting that most of the times, we love in measured, calculated ways prompted by self-interest and personal gain. We should be also hesitant to judge and even more so to condemn if we were inclined to hide behind a law when we could have inconvenienced ourselves out of sincere love.
Today, then, we shall stop to thank the Lord Jesus for these few of the many shocking statements and unconventional actions exhibited by him and recorded in the Gospel for our spiritual growth.
