Daily Gospel Reflection
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May 2, 2022
[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.”
This passage immediately follows two major miracles from the same day—Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes and later walked on water through a storm.
Today the disciples are trying to make sense of the miracles they witnessed. What just happened? How is it possible? Who is Jesus, and what is God calling them to do?
At the end of this gospel text, the clear call to action is to believe that Jesus is our savior, but there is also an invitation to reflect on how the divine moves through our day-to-day. Turns out, it is crucial to process and reflect on the miracles in our lives and to notice how Jesus is working.
At a tough time in my life, I realized it is vital to make space for your relationship with God each day. If we fill our days with rushing and busyness, we are not leaving room to notice how God speaks to us and moves us. This often makes us feel more stressed, lonely, or afraid.
Making space for God meant for me to let go of the need to be productive by optimizing every minute. I stopped reading during my train commute and started using that time just to be still. Some days that meant praying, some days meditating, some days observing, and some days mulling over recent events or conversations, as the disciples are doing here.
It’s a subtle shift, but creating this space helps us to tune in to God’s rhythm and can allow us to recognize when God is tapping on our shoulders with a message.
An excellent spiritual director concisely summarized this idea: “One, there are no coincidences. Two, pay attention.” Let us make the space in our days and in our hearts to see the ways in which Jesus is working.
Prayer
Lord, we are often tempted to work for “food that perishes.” Too often we take the easy road and the sure thing. We come to you today with open hands, that we may be filled with the food that endures for eternal life. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Athanasius applied his heart and mind to articulating Jesus' divinity and humanity and faced exile for his work, which helped shape the way the Church understands this mystery.
He was born in 297 in Alexandria, Egypt, at the end of the Roman persecution of Christians and at the start of the ascension of the Emperor Constantine. His parents were Christians, and he received an excellent education. He learned the Scriptures inside and out, and for a time he followed St. Anthony the Great, who established a life of prayer in the desert.
Athanasius was ordained a deacon at the age of 21 and was assigned as a secretary to the bishop of Alexandria. It was in this role as an aid to the bishop that Athanasius attended the great council of Nicea, which gave us the Nicean creed that we still recite at Mass today.
The council was called because of the rapid spread of a strain of thought—named Arianism, after its first teacher, Arius—which claimed that because Jesus was born as a man, he could not have existed before his birth, and therefore was not fully divine. The council definitively stated that Jesus was, in fact, divine, and had existed as part of the Trinity before the Incarnation. The bishops condemned Arius and articulated the creed as a standard of orthodoxy.
Shortly after the council, the bishop died, and Athanasius was appointed his successor, even though he was not even 30 years old. Arianism, despite its condemnation, was still a popular belief, and Athanasius spent most of the rest of his life dealing with that heresy.
He steadfastly proclaimed the conclusions of the council, even in the face of threats. His Arian opponents accused him of treason and even murder. Because they had connections to powerful people in the empire, they succeeded in having Athanasius removed and exiled. Political maneuvers resulted in his restoration and exile several more times—by the end of his life, he had been banished five times and spent 17 years in exile. He was a constant thorn in the side of the powerful who wanted a more convenient version of Christianity, and for this reason was called the “Champion of Orthodoxy.”
Athanasius was known as the greatest man of his day, and is one of the greatest religious leaders the world has ever known. He defended the faith when everything seemed stacked against him, and without his steadfastness, we would not have received the fullness of the faith that we have today. The Church recognizes him as one of her doctors, and his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Sacred Heart Basilica on campus. He is depicted there in stained glass windows, including one with an image showing him faithfully handing on doctrine, in the form of a scroll, to the Church.
St. Athanasius, against all odds, you preserved and passed on the fullness of our faith in Jesus—pray for us!