The Words of Eternal Life

Jesus teaching was very powerful in words and deeds for what he taught he practiced the same in his life. Jesus taught his disciples and common people with authority unlike the Pharisees and scribes in the synagogue. Many miracles and wonders took place in Jesus’ ministry. People had never seen such marvellous wonders, they only had heard similar acts from their ancestors that the Israel God with great power had performed during the Israelite Exodus. He had redeemed them from slavery wit his might and feed them with Manna for 40 years. Similarly, here too when people were fed by Jesus with 5 bread and 2 fish they followed him wherever he went and expected that Jesus should filled their belly in a similar way, with bread. One day while Jesus was teaching them about the life giving bread and eternal life ie. He was talking of offering his own body and blood for the sake of the sin of the world, people started  murmuring among themselves and started leaving him. They thought he was talking of eating human flesh. Even many of the disciples left. However the chosen apostles remained with Jesus. Among them Peter confessed to Jesus, ‘Lord, whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.‘ His chosen Apostles very closely followed him and paid attention to his words of teaching, hence they understood the teaching of Jesus and remained with him.

In today’s competitive world many of us mainly focus on worldly things and accordingly plan our careers. We do regular practice and feed our mind and hearts. We keep on doing research or search things and keep ourselves updated. We never bother about our spiritual body, soul, mind and heart. There is always struggle between the flesh and soul, even if we succeed in the world, still there is a lingering feeling of emptiness in our hearts, which is a result of our unhappy soul. We can feed our flesh with worldly food but we cannot feed our soul with worldly food. The only food available for our soul is scripture. St. Jerome says “ignorance of scripture means ignorance of Christ.” 

In todays passage we saw people started murmuring and moved away from Jesus  due to their ignorance of scripture and the values of Jesus’ teaching. Similarly, today we too knowingly or unknowingly are murmuring and moving away from Jesus. We see Jesus as a magician in our life. We expect all things to be changed over night. If this does not happen then we slowly start moving away from Jesus way of teaching and quote Scripture as per our situation and say its very difficult to wait patiently in the presence of God or it is difficult to know the will of God and take the decisions for our lives, without waiting on Jesus.

Friends, always remember that there are so many things to be learnt from Jesus’ life and his teachings, but we never spend time in reading the Bible and learn from it. If you spend time with the Bible and talk to Jesus, then definitely you will see the solution for all your problems, all your confusion will clear and your anxiety disappear. We shall be enlightened by Holy Spirit and like Peter we too confess boldly, ‘Lord whom shall we go too, for you have the words of eternal life.’