Daily Reflection – 5/6/19
Sacred Scripture
After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea. The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat, but only his disciples had left. Other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they had eaten the bread when the Lord gave thanks. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” (John 6: 22-29)
Reflection
In the Gospel reading today, Our Lord makes very clear to us that we need to be working for food that lasts forever — for the food of eternal life. He tells us that we have to be doing the work of God. The primary work of God, He says, is to “have faith in the One the Father has sent”; to have faith in Jesus Christ. Faith requires not only the firm belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah, it goes beyond that. It requires belief in all the doctrines that He teaches, in all the things that are required by Him.
To gauge the depth of our faith, we need to look at ourselves. If we are in trouble, do we maintain our interior peace because our focus is on the Lord? Or do we take our focus off the Lord and put it right back on ourselves?” We get worried, we get anxious, we get upset, and we sit around trying to devise ways of dealing with the situation, coming up with neat defenses for ourselves.
In the midst of our struggles, what we need to do is put our faith into practice. The question is the depth of that faith. Is it just surface-level faith? Or is it a deep, profound faith? Or is it somewhere in between? That is, we are pretty good most of the time; but when God allows the right buttons to be pushed, we still get shaken up, we still lose that peace, we still get upset, we still look at ourselves, we get worried and anxious about what is going to happen. That is God’s way of trying to deepen things, of showing us that it is not perfect yet and that it needs to go deeper. That is the kind of faith we are looking for: To do the work of God in all times, in all things. The work of God is, ultimately, to have that perfect, complete, and unshakable faith in Jesus Christ, whom the Father has sent.
Prayer of The Day
Jesus, help me to seek You. Help me to seek You for the help and healing I need. But more than that, help me to seek You out of love. My Jesus, I do love You. Help me to love You more. Jesus, I trust in You.
Daily Note
Reflect, today, upon your desire to seek Jesus, or lack thereof. When you can begin to seek out Jesus simply because you love Him and want to love Him more, you are on the right road. And as you walk down that road, you find it is a road of the utmost delight and fulfillment.
