I’ve already taped next week’s Your Prayer Intentions show which deals with the beginning of the Bread of Life Discourses. It’s one of the most ignored parts of scripture because our protestant friends tend to pass it over because it’s very hard to spin the Eucharistic away as a symbol rather than the actual body and blood of Christ when reading it and of course our non Christian friends ignore the lot.
It’s so blatant that Jonathan Roumie, the devout Catholic who plays Jesus in the show did a reading of the passage in his Jesus voice at the latest Eucharistic Conference because as he noted it’s unlikely that they will get to film that scene.
To give you a sneak preview of what I said note this part just of the scripture involved which will be part of this sunday’s Gospel at every Catholic church in the world:
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.”
So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?
The irony here is that he literally had just fed five thousands of them with 5 loaves and two fishes. They saw it happen. In fact as I noted in last week’s show if this story had been false it would have been the easiest to prove because the logistics of 1st century Judea would have meant that the supplies and wagons to carry food for 5000+ (that number didn’t count women and children) would have been very visible, yet they still asked for a sign.
I submit and suggest they asked for another sign because they didn’t want to acknowledge the sign they had just seen because once they did, then a choice would have to be made.
Basically it’s the same choice Israel had when God actually appeared to them on the mountain (Exodus chapter 19 & 20). People often forget this in scripture, God actually appearing to the people of Israel and the people of Israel asking through Moses for God not to do that again. I blame Cecil B DeMille because that bit was left out of his epic The 10 Commandments and thus people who never actually read Exodus chapters 19 & 20 don’t realize it. I suspect that it’s the primary reason why the people of Israel still exist as a people.
And that brings us to the opening of the Paris Olympics and God’s public response.
I’m not in the least surprised at the acts of the left in their mockery of the Last Supper, nor am I surprised by their disingenuous response claiming in English that this was not what they were doing when in French it clearly stated that this was the case:
What surprised me was the very public response by God. The blackout that followed can easily be explained away as a technical issue and under normal circumstances that would be the reasonable response to the blackout the next day.
What can’t be so easily explained away is the fact that there was one rather prominent structure in the city that was not affected by the blackout:
The real irony is that Church was built in reparation for sins against the church by France.
I’ve argued for many years that God has not stopped giving signs, but we have trained ourselves not to see them because to see them generates a choice that comes down to this.
If God in general and the Catholic Church in particular is real, what will I change about my life in response?
I’ve argued that said signs are usually personal and only rarely public and certainly not commonly visible to the entire world. Apparently there are exceptions.
Well God has given you a classic sign, a public sign, nobody hurt but a visible sign of his existence. The media will of course run away from it, my parish priest has already noted that while many protestants acknowledge the blackout as a sign they have ignored the church retaining the light. Now it’s up to you.
You have a choice, you can explain it away or you can acknowledge it and act accordingly.
Your move.



