This Week's Gospel Discusses The Concept Of Hardcore

Being a priest I can imagine is hard work. Out of everything they do the one part of their job I think I can get into is composing a sermon . Which is what I end up doing in blog anyway except source material is seldom the Gospels. Though it's happened once or twice. 

Well it's not to well known among my family or most of my friends that I attend a sort of bible study. It's called the School of the Word where we take the Bible dig deeper and appreciate its intricacies even more. This is headed by a religious organization called Verbum Dei.

The last time I attended it was worthwhile as usual. Father Gerson is always well prepared and links several passages together to further stress the theme for that day. What is always enjoyable is wrapping it up with input from the group how the readings spoke to them. 

Last week, I had something to say regarding this week's Gospel but we were running short on time and my thoughts on the matter left my IPad. I just came from church where I encountered the reading again (albeit in Spanish) and it occurred to me to refine my thoughts somewhat and if I could not share it at that moment with our group then share it in cyberspace. Besides my blog my rules. No restrictions on time and I can meander anywhere in my depraved thinking.


John 6:60 - On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" is the first line. The title of the Gospel in my Bible 360 is Many disciples desert Jesus. 

To follow the path of Jesus is supposed to be hard. Hate to break it to some of you but the last three years of Jesus life was no picnic. This Gospel story struck me because it's very much like life. Anyone who ever tried out for a team will be familiar with cut down day. The day that the pretenders are separated from the contenders. Life is a weeding out process.

The day of this particular Gospel for me seemed like Jesus' cut down day. Where he picked the final 12 he would go to war with so to speak. The ones who would ultimately establish the Church in his absence. It is truly a daunting task and it's not for just anyone. Jesus was just left with the "hardcore".

There is a thing called the 80/20 rule . Which simply means 80% of a business' revenue comes from 20% of its clients. The 20% are the hardcore.

A slightly older blog I recently wrote was about the Philippines lack of success in the Olympics. To medal in any Olympic event an athlete must compete in a series of events leading up to the Olympics to the point that person is one of the top 3 in the world at whatever event. That takes discipline , attitude and consistency . Along the way there will be a weeding out process. There will be talented people who will fall by the wayside only because some less talented people overcame that gap because of desire and discipline. This process is repeated over and over around the world and converges every four years in the Olympics and only three competitors will get to the podium and one of them will hear the national anthem of their country play at the end of the event.  In other words one has to be hard core to get a medal.

My previous blog entry  spoke not so much about the hardcore but the soft core opportunists. The bandwagon that gets filled up quite rapidly by people whose main value is to be with the in crowd. In a previous blog I spoke about Christ being hailed then condemned by bandwagon mentality all in the space of five days. Bandwagon jumping is for people whose values are so weak and undefined that they just want to be seen with the crowd instead of being seen for what they stand for regardless of crowd size.

Hard core can be defined as not casual or devoted. That is what it's going to take to excel at anything, even as a follower of Christ.   I never paid much attention to this Gospel before much less break it down. Guess I had to be hard core before it spoke to me. 

Ed