“It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless”.
Try telling that to a hard-working farmer or a world-class athlete. Flesh allows us to do incredible things, do marvelous feats. It is also weak. Not everyone can work day in and day out on a farm; not everyone can sprint around a racetrack in seconds; every one of us will die at some point.
The Spirit gives us life, enlightens our minds to understand divine mysteries. We often place more hope in what we can see- the Spirit is invisible, intangible, while the flesh isn’t. Yet Spirit and flesh must work together. Isn’t that what faith is- unsettled harmony between flesh and Spirit?
When the disciples left Jesus in today’s Gospel, is it not because their human reason, which comes from the flesh, could not comprehend Jesus’ words? Yet we find in Simon Peter’s words a harmony of flesh and spirit. This guy gets it- where else can we go but to Jesus?
Let us pray for a harmony of spirit and flesh as we contemplate the mysteries of the divine from our earthly perspective.