A couple of months ago, while I was in line at the grocery store checkout counter, two teenage grocery store employees were discussing “rizz,” a colloquialism used by Gen Z.  I understood the conversation only because I had seen an article in the Wall Street Journal that defined “rizz” and other favorite idiomatic sayings of people younger than the shoes I was wearing while grocery shopping.  If you don’t know what “rizz” means, you might be “mid.” 

Idiomatic language is unique to an individual culture, and often needs to be explained to those from foreign cultures.  There are several idiomatic expressions in today’s Gospel reading; this section of the “bread of life” discourse makes sense only when one understands those expressions. 

In today’s Gospel, “many of his disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’” (Jn 6:60)  The “hard saying” was Jesus’ statement that he is “the bread that came down from heaven.” (Jn 6:58)   

The description of the saying as “hard” was an idiomatic expression from the Hebrew language.  In context, “hard” meant outrageous or objectionable.  In ancient Israel, for example, the preaching of the prophets was often judged to be “hard” because the prophets exposed the faithlessness and immorality of the monarchy and the People; these were duly shamed by the prophets’ words.  In this Gospel reading, some of Jesus’ disciples found it abhorrent that he claimed to have descended from heaven; they parted company with him because of his shocking claim. (Jn 6:66) 

The second idiomatic expression comes from the unique beliefs of the Christian community for whom John’s Gospel was written.   

After the disillusioned disciples complained about Jesus’ alarming claim, he asked rhetorically, “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (Jn 6:62)  Jesus was identifying himself as divinely pre-existent and equal to God the Father.  Today, Catholics are accustomed to thinking of Jesus as fully divine and pre-existent with the Father, but this was not the case in the first few centuries of Christianity. 

In the early centuries of the Church’s life, there was great diversity of belief about the person and nature of Jesus.  The proposition that Jesus was divine was widely accepted, but the proposition that the Son of God existed with God prior to the Incarnation was not widely accepted.   

The church community for whom John’s Gospel was written believed that the Word of God existed eternally with God the Father.  The Gospel states this belief in the Prologue, “In the very beginning, the Word existed.  The Word was face to face with God because the Word is God.” (Jn 1:1) 

The belief in the divine pre-existence of the Word of God was a minority opinion held only by the church community associated with John’s Gospel.  The wider Church believed that Jesus became divine at some point in human history as the result of God the Father’s intervention. 

Eventually, the diversity of belief was resolved by adoption of the minority opinion proposed by the community associated with John’s Gospel.  We see evidence of this in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which describes Jesus as “consubstantial with the Father.”  The resolution of conflicting beliefs did not occur, however, because of the compelling nature of the minority opinion; rather, it was the result of the desire to preserve Church unity. 

The guiding principle of Catholic belief is unity with fellow believers world-wide; this is the one belief that can never and has never been altered.  The central and non-negotiable character of the Catholic Church’s commitment to ecclesial unity reflects the fact that God’s will to save the world is directed toward people rather than ideas.  In Catholicism, it is imperative to maintain Church unity because salvation is the result of remaining in the company of Jesus’ disciples.  In today’s Gospel reading, those who “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” were assumed to be lost to God. (Jn 6:66) 

In Catholicism today, there is very little disagreement about beliefs but quite a lot of disagreement about ethics, spirituality, and devotional practices.  Although the nature of our contemporary disagreements differs from the nature of the disagreements in the early centuries of the Church, the obligation to preserve Church unity remains unchanged. 

There have always been differences of opinion in Catholicism, and differences of opinion will remain in Catholicism.  In the ancient Church, the temptation facing the baptized was to focus too much on Jesus’ human origins; today, the temptation might be to focus too much on Jesus’ divine origins. In every era, however, calling oneself Catholic requires that one is not scandalized or offended by cultural differences or individual opinion.  One is redeemed by maintaining one’s attachment to Jesus rather than by one’s attachment to ideas. In the twenty-first century, this might sound like a “hard saying,” but it remains an obligation for the Church community as well as individual believers. 

If you find it hard to forgive enemies, pray for persecutors, or be generous toward haters, you can find solace in Jesus’ promise to raise up those who believe in his hard words.