Why some people believe – and some refuse
Even the clearest evidence is useless if someone closes himself to grace.
Even the clearest evidence is useless if someone closes himself to grace.
Editor’s Notes
In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:
Why many who saw Christ’s miracles still refused to believe in Him
What role the Father’s grace plays in leading souls to faith in Christ
How faith is not produced by miracles alone, but by a reponse to grace and the guidance of God.
For more on this series, see Part I.
Faith in the Son of Man
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV
Chapter X
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)
The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested
What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve
Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father
How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life
Effects of the Bread from Heaven
Our Lord says that He is Himself the Bread of Life. He does not say that they must eat or drink Him, for that would have been too rapid an advance on His former statements, but He speaks of the effects of food, or of the want of food, in connection with Himself.
‘He that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall not thirst.’
Here then He speaks as having a claim and right to be believed, a right founded on the miracles which He had wrought. To come to Him and to believe in Him are not different effects, any more than to hunger no more or to thirst no more are different effects.
The meaning is the same as if He had said, He that cometh and believeth on Me shall not hunger or thirst. To come to Him is more than to believe in Him, in one sense, and in another to come to Him is the fruit of believing in Him, for it implies union with Him, submission to Him, obedience to Him, the placing in His hands our will, and making Him the guide of our life. In this sense to believe comes before coming to Him, and in a general sense therefore it may be said that the words may be understood of faith in our Lord.
But they are qualified and made precise in their meaning, by the former words of which they are the explanation, in which He declares Himself to be the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven, and by the use of the images of hunger and thirst.
There is therefore included the latent though the necessary sense of the food of the soul, by means of which there is to be no more hunger and no more thirst. That is, it is signified that our Lord will not only give to those who come to Him and believe in Him the Bread of Life, but that He is Himself the Bread of Life of which He had said such wonderful things.
Why they did not believe
Having claimed their faith as His due, our Lord goes on at once to point out how it is that they have not believed Him. They were asking for fresh miracles, and He had already, over and over again, won their faith as His right by the miracles which they had seen.
The true cause of their unbelief He now points out in a manner which might strike their souls with awe and compunction, for it implied that they had been neglectful and disobedient to the teaching of His Father. They had spoken of the evidence of miracles as that which they required, and it was right, in a certain sense, that faith should be rested on the manifestation of the presence of God with Him Who claimed their faith.
But there was something else requisite, without which even the evidence of miracles would be addressed to them in vain. What was this other thing which was requisite, without which faith could not be formed in their hearts? It was the grace of God working in their hearts, without which evidences are in vain.
Men are always inclined to take the grace of God for granted, as it were. It is true that God does not deny His grace to those who use with faithfulness what they have already. But there is a state of the heart and mind which shuts out the grace of God, and when this state exists, the most powerful miracles and evidences, of whatever kind, fail to produce conviction, or at least to produce faith.
This state especially prevails in those who have already trifled with their opportunities, been deaf to the calls of grace, turned away from evidences, shut their eyes to the light which was offered them. These men seem to have a kind of obstinacy about them, for they imply that they insist on His giving them just that particular kind of proof which they demand, that is, a repetition of the miracle of the manna.
So the Chief Priests taunted our Lord, when He hung on the Cross, saying that if the King of Israel would come down from thence, they would believe. Thus these men deserved the reproach which is addressed to them by our Lord. For they had had evidence enough, and yet He could see that they would not believe Him, now that the time had come for Him to claim their faith in this great point of His teaching.
Those given by the Father
‘But I said unto you, that you also have seen Me, and you believe not. All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me, I will not cast out. Because I came down from Heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.’
When and where our Lord had said to them in so many words, that they had seen Him and had not believed, is nowhere mentioned in the Gospel history. It is the characteristic of such histories now and then to refer to things and sayings which have not been mentioned, because they relate the words as of our Lord, in which this reference is made, although the things referred to have taken place without being recorded.
But it is not difficult to find the place where our Lord had said this in substance. He had said it in substance in the answer which He gave to the question of the disciples about His teaching in parables, when He had found a reason for this comparatively obscure and difficult way of teaching, in the dulness and hardness of the hearts of the people to whom He has been preaching, saying that ‘seeing they had seen and had not perceived, and hearing they had heard and had not understood.’1
This was their general characteristic, and even the disciples were not altogether free from this dulness and slowness of comprehension. In the case of the priests at Jerusalem, He had said, in the discourse delivered to them after the miracle at the Probatic Pool, that they could not believe, because they sought honour one from another.2 This moral defect prevented them from believing, and if that was the case with them, the case with others was similar to theirs.
And now He speaks of this action of Divine grace, which works in those who do not place any obstacle in the way of the formation of faith in their hearts, as the working or drawing of the Father, as His giving the soul to Himself, as His leading the soul to Himself.
He speaks of it generally, and so gently, without applying His words directly to them, leaving the application to be made by themselves, and He speaks also affirmatively rather than negatively, partly perhaps for the same reason of tenderness and gentleness, partly also that He may take the opportunity of dwelling, in His own Sacred Heart, on the happy and consoling side of the matter, instead of on the side of disappointment and failure.
Not to be cast out
‘All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me, I will not cast out. For I came down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.’
If those who believe in Him come to Him and are not cast out by Him, and if the dull-hearted listeners to the discourse in the synagogue of Capharnaum did not believe in Him, then the words imply that they were not among those given to Him by the Father, not among those whom He would receive and not cast out. But this He does not say again, having once said that they did not believe.
His words range over the whole world, Gentile as well as Israelite, and represent to Him the millions of believers whom He will make partakers of His bounties, and for whose sake He will be willing to forego, perhaps, many whom His natural feelings might have led Him to choose first, those of His own nation, His brethren according to the flesh.
Many of those who are to come in this way to Him, by the gift of the Father, are now considered outcasts, for they do not belong to the commonwealth of Israel. But to Him they will not be outcasts, because they are given Him by His Father, and because it is His Father’s will that they should be partakers of His treasures. He seems to appeal from the dulness and incredulity of His immediate hearers, to the multitudes who would not be incredulous, and at the same time He warns those hearers most terribly of the danger of not listening to the guidance and teaching of the Father.
Not to listen to that guidance and teaching is the same thing as not being given by the Father to our Lord, and, in consequence, as being outcasts from the blessings which He has come down from Heaven to impart.
Faith in the Son of Man
The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested
What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve
Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father
How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life
Previous Chapter:
The Discourse in the Synagogue
How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist
How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us
How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd
How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist
From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV
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St. Matt. xiii. 13–15; St. Mark iv. 12.
St. John v. 44.
The reasoning in this section by Father Coleridge is singular and profound, and I have never heard the relation between faith, grace, and the Father's gift to the Son explained in this way. Yet, one never gets the feeling that he speculates or goes beyond what is justified by the words of our Lord. Rather, he draws out more and more what Jesus is revealing in the wealth of his speech given for our benefit.