St. Athanasius, bishop & doctor

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Acts 6:8-15

 Stephen, full of grace and power,

 Did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.   Some persons then came forward, who belonged to the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia.   They argued with Stephen but they could not match the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.   As they were unable to face the truth, they bribed some men to say, “We heard him speak against Moses and against God.”

 So they stirred up the people, the elders and the teachers of the Law; they took him by surprise, seized him and brought him before the Council.   Then they produced false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking against our Holy Place and the Law.  

We even heard him say that Jesus the Nazarean will destroy our Holy Place and change the customs which Moses handed down to us.”  And all who sat in the Council fixed their eyes on him, and his face appeared to them like the face of an angel.

 

Ps 119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30

Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊ 

John 6:22-29

 Next day the people who had stayed on the other side realized that only one boat had been there and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples; rather, the disciples had gone away alone.   Bigger boats from Tiberias came near the place where all these peo­ple had eaten the bread.   When they saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Master, when did you come here?”

Jesus answered, “Truly, I say to you, you look for me, not because you have seen through the signs, but because you ate bread and were satisfied.   Work then, not for perishable food, but for the lasting food which gives eternal life. The Son of Man will give it to you, for he is the one the Father has marked.”

Then the Jews asked him, “What shall we do? What are the works that God wants us to do?”   And Jesus answered them, “The work God wants is this: that you believe in the One whom God has sent.”

   

Gospel Reflection：

Faith as Work

In the early Church arose some tensions about the primacy of work or faith. We have James writing plainly that without works, faith is as good as dead (cf. Jas. 2:17). John is providing us with a different perspective, combining both. Jesus invites the people to work for the imperishable food.

The crowd wants to know what they must do, to which Jesus answers that the work God wants them to do is to believe in Christ. Faith is Work. Ask those who have walked the dark path of faith. Faith is work that makes one’s soul sweat blood. It is work that demands one’s entire life space.

Faith is a verb that demands constant doing. Those who are engaged in that work know well that they cannot realize it on their own, and they must beg, “I have faith; but help my unbelief!”(MK 9:24)

 

St. Athanasius was born of a Christian family in Alexandria, Egypt.

He was the great champion of the faith against the widespread heresy of Arianism,