SEEK THE LORD

A life without research
it doesn’t deserve to be lived.

Socrates (470-399 BC)

It is the glory of God to hide things,
it is the glory of kings to investigate them.

Proverbs 25,2

Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, which we continue reading today, began last Sunday. It makes us attentive to how desire and question stimulate the disciple’s search for Jesus Christ. Not only that, we are also told how Jesus was sought and how he must and can be sought by us too. Search – let us never forget this – constitutes the beauty and authenticity of the Christian path. In this regard, Boismard noted that «following Jesus to dwell where he dwells, seeking Jesus to find him, is what constitutes the very essence of following».
In the Fourth Gospel, the subjects sought are various. We have first of all the Father, who seeks true worshipers (Jn 4.23) and the glory of the Son (Jn 8.50b); we find Jesus, who seeks the will of the Father (Jn 5.30); the disciples, who seek Jesus (Jn 1.38; 13.33); the crowd, which seeks bread to feed itself (Jn 6.26); the Jews, who seek Jesus to kill him (Jn 5.18; 7.1). What emerges? That there is search and search. We seek Jesus for various reasons; there are those who seek him to be with him, and those who seek to kill him. There is a search that finds and one that cannot find because his motivations are flawed. But the Johannine Gospel tells us of a primary search: God who, in the Son, set out in search of man. In John there is an echo of the question that God has always asked each of us: “Adam, where are you?” (Gen 3:9). This question opens a path that reaches each and every one.
The crowd seeks a powerful Messiah (political security), the repetition of the miracle of the loaves (economic security), the works to be done to do the will of God (religious security). But the crowd finds Jesus who scandalizes (due to his origins), disappoints (due to his refusal to allow himself to be recognized as king). Yet, Jesus appears, in the evangelical narrative, more and more clearly as God’s unique and definitive response to humanity, to the hunger of a humanity that seeks the bread of life.

Commento a cura di d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey