Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of John (6: 44-51) in which Jesus says ‘No one can come to me unless they are drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, they will all be taught by God, and to hear the teaching of the Father and to learn from it is to come to me’.Fr Paul says in the verses just before this Gospel the audience in the synagogue, which is simply called ‘the Jews’, interrupts Jesus. This is the sort of thing that still happens in a synagogue, where the atmosphere is far less formal than in a church, and everything is discussed and mulled over. The interruption also serves to highlight the homily and move it on to the next point, Jesus himself is the true Wisdom of God.The ‘booster quotation’ from the Prophets (Isaiah 54:13) which always occurs half-way through this type of homily seems at first sight to be startlingly irrelevant. However, one of the features of the New Covenant is that the individual will no longer rely on the inherited religion of the People of God as a whole but will be directly and individually taught – and taught Wisdom – by God. The Wisdom offered is not a generalised gift: it is the opening to the profound knowledge of God, offered to each one who desires it.In closing, Fr Paul shares today’s Gospel Challenge – Do I desire, do I want, am I open to the profound knowledge of God that Jesus is offering?