In today’s Gospel the Jews who don’t understand what Our Lord is trying to teach him are like people who’ve become so accustomed to listening to a muffled voice that they don’t even realize it’s muffled anymore. Even now they have an intuition that Our Lord is trying to tell them something: they recognize he is speaking of some sort of departure that involves death, they recognize that he claims to be someone special, and they recognize that he claims to be sent by someone very important to knowing and understanding the importance of him and his mission.
Like the Israelites in today’s First Reading, their lack of faith has condemned them to wandering, lost, confused, and angry in a desert. The Israelites feared the Promised Land and therefore returned into the desert. The Lord provided for them and they complained about it. Just as the Lord sent them what they needed to survive in the desert, now he has sent his Son to lead them out of the desert. It is a lack of faith that strands them: that generation of Israelites died never entering the Promised Land due to their lack of faith and their sin. Our Lord is warning the Jews in today’s Gospel who don’t believe in him or the Father that they are lost, and they are not open to letting Jesus guide them out of the desert of their lack of faith.
Not everyone listening to Our Lord that day heard a muffled voice; John tells us that, “Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.” Faith is what enables us to hear and understand what Our Lord is trying to say. Ask him for a greater faith and let him lead you out of whatever spiritual desert in which you may be wandering.
Readings: Numbers 21:4–9; Psalm 102:2–3, 16–21; John 8:21–30.
